Putting it all away

I'm back! I wasn't planning to be computer-free while we traveled to visit family...but I filled my time with friends, family, and familiar places and it was great!

Now we're home, in time for the New Year, to put all of our goods and memories away for safe keeping and easy access.

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The New Year provides us with a calendared opportunity to stop what isn't working and start what might. It's like a blank sheet of paper: it tastes, smells, feels, and sees like a fresh start. And who doesn't love a fresh start.

But the truth is that every day is a fresh start. (Every day!) And while I certainly spend the days leading up to and after the New Year reflecting on personal and professional accomplishments and planning for ones to come, I also spend time throughout the year (and on a smaller scale, throughout the day) to reflect on what's working and what's not-- within me and outside of me.

I'll share some of the little strategies I use (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to do that and get things done in the New Year.

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As on-going as my internal maintenance is, there is some external maintenance that only happens once a year that I (and by extension Pete) will be tending to in the coming days:

• Change the batteries in our fire detectors
• Defragment and clean out files on my computer
• Clean out hard copy files
• Organize my 2007 journal writings
• Update friends, family, and client addresses
• Create a file for the tax-related mail that will start to arrive

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Finally...

Happy Birthday to our dear friend Duke. Call us if you're reading this. We don't have a new phone number!

and...

Happy, Healthy, Lovely New Year. Hope it's full of spectacular splashes and ordinary ones, with room for splurges short and tall.

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Splurge of the Year

I would have to say that our splurge of the year was our vacations. We traveled to Garden City Beach in South Carolina with my family to run on the sand and swim in the early May ocean (brrr!) and then to Florida with Pete's family to visit a grandma and a grandpa, aunts and uncles, cousins and killer whales...



and to have breakfast with some good pals from Sesame Street.