Happy New Year!

Last year I noticed something kind of neat going on in the blogging world. Instead of making new years resolutions many were coming up with one word to describe how they wanted their new year to play out. I thought this was a fabulous idea. I mean everyone knows that most resolutions are going to fizzle out before February arrives so this seemed like a much better alternative. 
I thought about what word I would pick and it took me all of two seconds to come up with one. Family. My husband and children have always come before anything, but I wanted to extend it a bit. My mom and dad had both just recently retired from their jobs, my youngest brother was going through marital problems and my oldest brother seemed to have gotten in over his head with his new house. Not to mention it seemed like everytime I turned around I was having to attend the funeral of yet another family member. So I decided that I was going to make spending time with all of my family a priority this year and that is exactly what I did. Yes, there were a few times I wanted to ignore the phone, or grumble a little about having to pack up the kids to go to a family reunion, but all in all I think that I accomplished what I set out to do. 

We've hosted cookouts and birthday parties this year and my mom and dad set up a mini playground in their backyard for the girls to play in when we visit. 

The girls are constantly wanting to go visit everyone and tell me all the time how much they love going to visit granny and paw paw and that they have the funnest uncles in the world.

Looking back over the past year I feel really good about how things have gone. I feel like my family is closer and that is awesome. I've been trying to think of a new word for how I want 2011 to play out and have been kind of stumped. So I think I'm just going to take the easy way out and recycle last years word. Sounds good doesn't it?