HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I can't believe another year has come and gone. 2009 had its joys and challenges, but I'm personally ready to put it behind me and embrace 2010 with renewed hope and excitement!

I'm not one who is big on resolutions because they are typically broken in such a short time. I have a lot of goals I will be working all year, but the one I'll share publicly here is that I just want to write... and write and write and write... I have such a love for writing. I don't always have much that is interesting to share, but I find it to be such a therapeutic exercise. So I will likely be blogging a LOT more in 2010, but you also might find me saying a lot more mundane things. :-) Oh well, it's my blog and I can say whatever I want right?

We had a wonderful holiday season and I'll be back to write more about it later on. We were blessed to be together as a family last night to ring in the new year (I'm typically working) and we did so aboard a Seattle ferry. We went with friends to a party at the church and then left around 9:30pm and drove up to Seattle. We took a ferry out to Bainbridge Island and then immediately turned around and came back. As the ferry got closer to Seattle around 11:45pm, the captain slowed the boat way down so that we could watch the gorgeous fireworks off the Space Needle. Indeed, it was a wonderful experience. We stood on the boat deck and had a front row seat to an amazing show! We went with the Worrells family and had a blast. Shortly after midnight, we broke open the bottles of sparkling cider we had brought on board and toasted in the new year. It was a blast! My mother also went with us. It was a first for her and she absolutely loved the experience. Lucky for us, the temperatures were mild in the 40s and it wasn't too cold on deck.

I am off to bake in my new oven now. Got a new convection oven two days ago and I'm baking a carrot cake to take to our new year potluck at work tonight. So happy to have an oven that works!!

As I said, I'll be back and I suspect I'll be writing a LOT more this year! I'm happily embracing 2010 and all that it has in store for our family! To start with, we are blessed to be welcoming two nieces into our growing family sometime in the next few weeks. (No, they aren't twins... one is my brother's and the other is Mike's sister's.) How exciting!

Happy New year all!!