It's a Brand New Year !!

And how did we ring it in ?

We went down to Betty's and had snacks, conversation, and non-alcoholic beverages until about 10:30 when Andy and I kept dozing off on the couch. I had been up since 4am because I was the opening manager at work, and I knew I should have had a nap before we went down but never got to it. I moved to the lazy boy chair and that was it. Betty woke me up a few minutes later and told me to go home and come back next year ... which I did. We all went home and were asleep by 11. Are we exciting or what ??

I had to work New Year's Day as well, because now everyone is open on New Year's (thanks Sears!), and thankfully it wasn't that bad for us. Everyone kept coming in and saying "You know you're the only store open on this block ??". Yes, trust me, we knew.

January 2 was Lisa's 14th birthday. It seems like yesterday she was Lily's size, exploring things and learning about her world. Now she's a teen getting into all thing black (clothes, nail polish, eyeliner), vampires (don't ask me where this came from), and generally becoming an almost straight-A student. Her grades have improved so much this year from last year, we're starting to wonder if she's the same person. She's still playing the saxophone, and has become "quite accomplished" according to her music teacher.

She had a couple of friends over to help her celebrate, and they stayed in her room listening to music all afternoon, venturing out only for pizza and birthday cake. I always told her when she was small her birthday gift was a whole year in which to do whatever she wants, her gift from me this year was a journal to start recording what she does with her year. I've always saved the front pages of the newspaper for her since she was born, and its interesting to see how things have changed, and what the big news is every year. There's always the stories about the new year's babies, but the headlines are what's really interesting.

The kids finally went back to school on Monday, and I'm slowly starting to pack things up in preparation for our move. We haven't found anything yet, but we're packing the non-essentials and are going to store them in Rick's garage until we do move. That way we'll have less (or so the theory goes).

So that's the update for now. Back to my packing ....