Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I don’t know about you, but 2009 was not a year that our family would like to repeat much of. Oh, there were parts that were nice for us, but there was a lot of stress and tiring times for us from moving, to David’s seizure and not selling our old house as quickly as we would have liked and that put an extra financial burden on us. We are grateful to be closing on the old house January 15. It has been a long time since we first put it on the market last July.

The good parts of 2009 would include the musical experiences I had from camp in Argyle and local jams, plus moving to our new older, but larger home which is closer to my folks, Abby’s school and our church. We all enjoy the back yard at our new house and the neighborhood seems very nice.

The kids have kept us very busy this year. David spent most of this past year showing us what his version of “the terrible twos” looks like. He had a lot of sweet and charming moments, too. Abby grew a lot in the past year. She looks so much older when I scan through photos I took of her earlier in the year and compare them to how she looks now.

We had a nice Christmas. I had requested we make a change to our typical order of events on Christmas day. In past years, we took all our gifts over to Pam’s sister’s house and opened them along with all the inter-family gifts in one big “shred-a-thon” of flying paper and random shouts of “thank you” and “look what I got” back and forth across the room. Everything seems to go by so fast that I don’t get to enjoy the excitement of each gift and the reaction of the recipient. If I pause to watch everyone, I end up delaying the process. I wanted a more intimate experience for my immediate family and asked that we keep our gifts at our house to open Christmas morning, then only bring over the inter-family gifts to exchange later on. I know my request was not popular with everyone, but I felt it was nicer for the four of us to “do our own thing” first, then not have to worry with hauling all of our gifts around and potentially losing or damaging things in transit.

New Year’s Eve was pretty uneventful over here. I lost interest in watching those New Year’s Eve programs on TV years ago and we couldn’t go to any parties because of “our situation.” So, I spent a lot of the evening downloading Christian-oriented pop songs to put on Abby’s new iPod and playing a little guitar along with the songs I was listening to on “Bluegrass Junction” on Sirius satellite radio channel 65. I joined Pam near midnight and we watched TV together until we couldn’t stay awake any longer.

The coming week has us returning to David’s kidney doctor for a follow-up. He had an ultrasound on his kidneys recently and a blood test this week. We don’t know what we’re in for, but we hope it won’t be any more bad news. Pam has been trying to potty-train David this week and on into the weekend. He’s still having a fair amount of accidents as I write this, but we’re going to keep working on it. After all, if we can train the dog and cats to do their business where we want them to, it should be easier for a boy. (Emphasis on should be.)

Abby has had a nice break from school since before Christmas. That makes for lots of “family togetherness” and generally means more messes to clean up. Right now it is a toss-up as to which is more difficult: getting David to do his business in a toilet or getting Abby to clean up after herself. Something tells me David will be potty trained soon and Abby will still leave a debris field in her wake for years to come.

Pam and I have both enjoyed connecting with so many friends online through facebook. I have reestablished contact with many of my former high school classmates this way. My 30 year class reunion is coming up later this year and I’m hoping to make it back to Indiana for that once they announce the date. Facebook has also allowed me to connect with many music friends and famous musicians. It is pretty cool when you post something and a famous person notices and comments on it. I was very much against getting involved with social networking sites for a long time. I assumed it was a haven for stalkers and people with emotional connection problems, but I have seen far more benefit than problems with using facebook. Besides, if someone is annoying to you, they can be removed from your friends very easily and you can block content that you don’t want to see. That’s helpful. So, I recommend facebook if you want a fun way to keep in touch with us and others. The only caution I would give is it is very addictive! Pam has many friends who love to see her posts about what is the latest funny thing David did or said. I enjoy those, too. There are some classic gems from time to time.

I hope 2010 will be full of good experiences for everyone and good news to report on our family. Stay tuned to see how things unfold for us this year. Thanks for checking in.