I love the New Year, an empty year stretching ahead waiting to be filled like the pages of a new journal. One of the reasons I love blogging is the record it makes of family life, the small everyday things that are so easily forgotten but are so precious.
Once the flu had passed we had a lovely family Christmas, visitors and visiting, lots of food, new bike riding, new guitar strumming, film watching and just hanging out together.
Today feels like a fresh start as the decorations come down ( I'm a bit superstitious so even though the tree came down at the weekend (thank goodness for wooden floorboards that are easy to sweep) and I've taken the rest of the decorations down today, 12th night. So the house is relatively clean and tidy, as long as the doors to the children's bedroom doors are shut! All ready for a fresh start to the year.
2009 promises to be an exciting year as our family grows and we welcome the new baby in the spring. Knowing it will be a challenging year I'm not going to set myself up for failure with a raft of resolutions but I have some goals that I'm going to keep in mind this year
Allotment - I'm not expecting too much this season as bending will be a bit of a problem in the spring (!) but anything we grow will be a bonus. The children really enjoy it, they think it's a bit like Time Team digging for treasure and are really excited at all the bits of china and clay pipe that they dig up. My Little Helper wants to grow potatoes so he can make chips! Hmm not quite the healthy approach I had in mind.
Crochet - 2008 was the year I learnt to knit properly and 7 pairs of socks later my enthusiasm has not waned. So this year I want to learn to crochet, I see a ripple blanket or granny square blanket in my future.....possibly quite a few years in the future!
Simple living - drive less, walk more, get back into meal planning, tackle the clutter hotspots (like the tottering pile of papers on top of the fridge) no spend days and to address the cash trickle, you know when you get £30 out of the cash machine and somehow it trickles out of your purse without you really knowing what you've spent it on.
Happy New Year to all of you. May 2009 bring you peace and happiness.x