Easing into a New Year

First things first...I haven't been on my blog since sometime last week so happy new year! I feel like I should say something deep and profound in this first post of 2012, but to be honest I just don't have it in me today. I'll get back in the blog groove soon but for now I want to linger in the post Christmas haze. Or laze if you want to get all technical.

We've had a week of walks in the woods and naps on the couch. We rang in the new year with homemade fondue and movies at home. Hubs and I were both awake at midnight much to daughter2's surprise and delight. Well, surprise for sure, but I like to think she was also delighted.

We've watched football and cooking shows and spent an afternoon browsing the shelves of Barnes and Noble. Fifty degree weather on the first day of January was all the motivation hubs needed to get the outdoor lights down. He rewarded himself with a spin in the little red car which most years doesn't see the light of day in January.

Daughter2 is home for another week and we've made a few plans which include fun things like dinner in 'The Big Apple', more shopping, trying some new recipes in the kitchen, and finishing a jigsaw puzzle we started after Christmas. It also includes not so fun things like a trip to the Social Security office for a replacement card and taking down the tree decorations.

Hubs has crazy travel coming up this month and he especially needed the down time we always seem to find at the end of a year. We both needed time to lay low and enjoy the gift of very un-December like weather.

I've taken lots of pictures in an attempt to figure out my new camera. We've trekked thru the woods to the top of our backyard hill and watched the hawk fly and the wild turkeys scatter. The forest is what our bird dog likes to call her happy place.

We've stood beside the quiet calm of our little town's lake and gained a new appreciation for the phrase, 'busy as a beaver'.

I should be this industrious in the new year.

In the month leading up to Christmas my blog was a little heavy on the 'how I spent my weekend' type of postings and a little light on substance. That's okay because life was busy and I'm going to be kind to myself and let me off the hook.

There is something about a new year that fills me with hope. Hope that I'll be better disciplined and less wasteful of the gift of a single hour. Hope that I'll make fewer excuses and log more hours in the gym/pool/countryside. Hope that I'll serve more and want less. More kindness, less irritation. Hope that I'll pray more and worry less. Hope that I'll seize the moment and be more intentional about how I spend my time and live my life.

Hope is good, essential actually, but if we want the things we hope for to become the things we have, then action is required. I don't know about you but I'm hoping this new year is action-packed.

"Start by doing what is necessary; next do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." St. Francis of Assisi