Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year’s! Take a deep breath and get ready for the ride that will be 2009.

We had a great holiday week. We trekked up to see my family in the Smokies for Christmas. I had a wonderful time visiting with them and playing with my nieces. I got to spend some time with some old friends that I had not seen in a while. My sweet husband gave me a SERGER, among many other gifts, so now I’ll be just a sewing fool! I’m so excited! Now I can properly sew my costumes!!!! Who knows, maybe I’ll take a wild hair and sew some mundane clothes or some drapes while I’m at it, now that the Holidaze are over.

We held our annual New Year’s Eve bash, and it was bigger and better than ever. I think 13 people showed up this year, which is a record for us. It is also the standing room only capacity of our den. We put out buckets of the Colonel’s finest chicken, set up the Wii, and turned our guests loose. One friend brought Guitar Hero, and we all rocked out to some Ozzy and some Eagles and some Pat Benatar and had a grand old time, watched the ball drop on TV, poured some bubbly (carbonated apple cider, since I can’t drink) and toasted each other (my toast: “It’s 2009, and we’re still standin’.”), hoping that the new year would bring us good things.

2008 was a rough ride for a lot of people. Hopefully we’ll pull together and make things better for all of us this year. There’s something psychologically comforting about the rolling over of a year, even though really it is just time marching on as usual. There’s an underlying feeling of a clean slate, a chance to start over, even if only for a little while. It’s a good thing to take that feeling and run with it and really start again on those things that you want to change.

I would like to thank everyone for all their love and friendship in the past year and say that I am looking forward to even more this year. I wish all of you love, comfort, lots of hot cocoa with big fat marshmellows, and all the contentment you can stand.