Endings and Beginnings

New Years Eve is a time to remember the last year and look forward to the coming year. We wanted to have some family traditions and here's our start.
Everyone picked out an appetizer, then prepared them and served them. As we served our plates, we told each other something we love about them. We started with K serving crab cakes, then T served Thai chicken skewers, C served empanadas, and KG served fried shrimp. Between "courses" we filled our first family time capsule. It'll be fun to open later! James and I just opened our time capsule from when we got married 15 years ago- lots of changes since then!

I've started to write this post a few times but struggled with what to write. How do I sum up this year? It's been a good last year- our move last April brought lots of changes. Funny that Baltimore is much bigger than Fayetteville but we spend lots more time just the six of us. In some ways I've gotten used to lots more options- there are so many museums, playgrounds, parks, ... we could never go to them all (although we've gone to a lot.) But we haven't really gotten to know a ton of people. When we're having a rough day, instead of inviting a friend over, it's been time for me to talk to God. (Of course, there have also been many phone calls to a few of my closest friends.) Ann Voskamp always names her years- maybe my name for 2011 could have been focus. Focus on James and our kids instead of time with lots of friends.

Some other traditions that we continued were our New Year's Day Run and traditional dinner Hoppin John, ham, greens, corn bread. This year we added baked donuts for breakfast- yummy!

we're excited for the New Year (even if I'm finally posting this in February!) :)