I love the few days between Christmas and New Year’s Day. As
I type, I look over at my unlighted Christmas tree with the hundreds of
ornaments no longer flickering in the warm glow. The presents are gone. The
stockings are empty. The dried and prickly greenery of broken cedar and pine
branches no longer provide the fragrance of Christmas. The carolers on my piano
have stopped singing. I'll put away all the Christmas sheet music. Two weeks of
festive decorating will be gone and packed away in plastic crates in a matter
of hours. I'll always have the joy in my heart brought forth in a manger.
Now I start the task of decorating for spring. Yes, once
Christmas is over, I skip to spring. 2016 has been a fast year for me, maybe
that’s why! It is true that the older
you get the faster time passes.
My husband and I managed to check a lot of items off our bucket
list in 2016. We closed our antique business – finally – and stored everything in a
rented locker space! We’ve been in and out of several antique malls and I’m
happy (and hoping) we are out for good—at least for the time being!
We drove across country to the Grand Canyon, Monterrey
Valley, the Alamo and saw amazing sights in between those stops. We saw a
fabulous Rod Stewart show in Las Vegas – check! We heard our favorite groups at
the National Quartet Convention in Tennessee. We spent time with our grandsons
and their parents most every month in Florida. We enjoyed time with our church
family and other senior adults at two senior adult conferences. We also celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary.
We played with
our five fur babies, our chow and Heidi, a mixed bloodhound. We watched a lot
of NCIS reruns and ate a lot of great food. I managed to write a recipe book with a lot of my mother's and grandmother's favorite dishes. It is being edited.
My husband enjoys his Woodmizer sawmill and cut a lot of
lumber this year. We enjoyed the social events with other sawyers, too.
But many items did not get a check mark. I did not finish my three novels started in years past. We did not
finish our wrap around front porch, bathroom or install a wood-board fence around the pasture. We cried when
our sweet Nero (part lab) who was 80 something in human years and our little Shep
(part Pyrenees) crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
So now to the real reason I like the week before the New Year – I get a fresh start. I make my list of everything I didn’t get completed, the trips I want to take, the people I want to meet, the novels I want to write and the puppies I want to adopt!
So now to the real reason I like the week before the New Year – I get a fresh start. I make my list of everything I didn’t get completed, the trips I want to take, the people I want to meet, the novels I want to write and the puppies I want to adopt!
2016 was good for me and I hope for you, too! Welcome 2017!
(What are your plans for the new year?)
