New Year, New Resolution

I have a goal of posting once a week all year. I hope that there will be enough interesting things to write about. My worst fear is that this blog will start sounding like an extended Facebook posting: "Had cheese for breakfast, feel sick." It is posts like that which keep me from getting an account. But I love blogging because it gives me a chance to write, and I love using words to describe and to convey emotion.

So I thought that this first post of 2012 would highlight all the goings-on of the last month or so, not including any of the major holidays or events like my sister Grace's spectacular wedding in November. The holidays I will save for a mid-January post when the only interesting thing that happens in Wisconsin has to do with the thermometer (or maybe the Packers). The wedding was one of the highlights of the whole year... and we don't have a single picture. It would take too many words to write about the wedding dress, made by my mother, or the incredible flowers, or the supreme joy we all felt. So I won't even try.

Since my entire family was together for the wedding, Mom had Thanksgiving on November 12. It was the first Thanksgiving we've all shared since 2001, I think, and I had forgotten how much I love that holiday. All the old family favorites were present, especially the creamed onions. I hope it doesn't sell anyone out if I say that not one in-law enjoys them; they are definitely an acquired taste and having them on the Thanksgiving table one's entire life makes them seem almost normal. In fact, in my family we all have a bit of a hard time with green bean casserole, so I guess we all have our things.

This meant that on the actual Thanksgiving, we had a whole weekend to turn our kitchen cabinets from this:To this:
I don't think that the picture of the brown does them justice. They were bad. Really bad. So bad that I haven't wanted to be in the kitchen much for the past six and a half years. But the white is a million times better. We used a system that involved stripping the old finish, painting the new color, and glazing the paint to make it tough. It wasn't easy, but I LOVE my new cabinets... and my husband, who did most of the work.

We've also been doing a bit of this:
In Anna's first "real" gymnastics meet, she took first place for the eight-and-unders, and Lizzie placed second overall for the 10 year-olds. We were so proud of them!

Here is a link to a video that Kelly made for each of them. Please know that it is extremely gratuitous and each one lasts about 5 minutes. It is a marvelous display of Kelly's video editing skills.





And what are the holidays without a visit or two to the doctor? This was taken by iPhone and I think the shadows are quite good. Lucy developed a cough a week before Christmas, the very day that I got a note and a phone call from school informing me that pertussis is going around. I didn't wait long to get her in, just to be sure before we took her to Christmas parties, school events, and other crowded activities. She's good, and we hope that the break gave the school a chance to sanitize all the whooping cough germs.
Lucy loved wearing that mask so much that I had to bribe her to take it off for her nap. Maybe a future in medicine where she could wear a mask all the time??