If It Ain't Broke ...

Its' January 1st and that means ... New Year's resolutions, of course! Seriously? I am about to make the same resolutions that I made last year and didn't live up to. In my defense, I have had a pretty rough year ... yes, I know, that I'm not alone here ... I'm sharing the "bad year blues" with about 200 million here in the US and another billion or two in the world.

My primary resolution? This blog. Last year, I made a New Year's resolution to start blogging again. For years, I had loved writing my blog ... It inspired me ... It made me see humor in my family that "in the moment" might have been tough to spot ... And, it recorded my kids' lives so we could easily look back and remember what we were doing last month ... or last year.

So, why quit? If it was so great, why did it disappear from my life? If it ain't broke ... ??? I guess you could say that I was juggling life quite well until the fall of 2008. Then, all of the sudden, the balls started to fall and I couldn't recover them. One casualty of the falling balls? The blog.

The cause? A typical case of basic human sorrow ... grieving for someone I love.

I would advise you to never underestimate the power of human grief in your life and in the lives of those around you. Believe me, it will knock your feet out from under you and you don't even realize that it's happened. If you've never experienced it, you can't understand it's power. It is paralyzing.

Anyway, part of my healing process is to make myself pick up those fallen juggling balls and to get back in the show. So ... a small step accomplished ... a blog post for the New Year!

I've posted a couple of holiday pictures ... We spent Thanksgiving with Bain's family in the Carolinas and Christmas at home without any extended family. Bain's family lost Bain's dad and Bain's brother this year. They decided it was time to get together for Thanksgiving - something that we haven't done ... well, maybe ever.

Christmas was lonely for me without Laura ... she always spends the week after Christmas here. But, it was fun and relaxing ... and I can't wait for some fun snow days with the kids so that we have more "cold weather" family times this winter ... maybe starting this Thursday and Friday! :)