NewYear New Place New Lives Same Great Love

I need to get this post down because, goodness gracious it's already the 6th of January and where has this week gone to.  If this week is any indication of what this year holds, then before I blink twice we will be off to high school and then college and work and marriage and grandchildren.
Oh my - it makes my head spin just thinking about it.

There is approximately six years between the triplets and Matthew and six years between Matthew and James - 1998, 1992, 1986 - we must like those even number years.  Mike is the only odd number.
By the time they graduate high school I will have had kids in school for 25+ years.  That's a boatload of school lunches and field trips and projects and teacher gifts and HOMEWORK and conferences and report cards and all the rest that goes with navigating K-12 and coming out whole on the other side.
Four more years folks - four more years!

Back to my original thoughts - the New Year in a New Place.  In many ways our lives are very different now than back in New England.  We are settling in, finding our way around, and going about making it good.  The kids still miss their friends (so do I) and I miss our house.  Whereas MA was a small town life, which is both pro and con, Salt Lake is more city.  Growing up in Houston, it doesn't bother me, but the kids, well they are still amazed by all the lights and stores and such.  It's going to take time.

Imagine my surprise to see fireworks as I perused the aisle of Target! Maybe not blow-em-up spectacular fireworks, but sparklers anyway.  I was absolutely shocked.  In Massachusetts, they are pretty illegal in any form, not that that stopped everyone, but for the most part fireworks were verboten within the state line.  Last year I did manage to pick up some contraband sparklers from a friend of a friend and we froze our rears off "sparkling" them in the driveway.  It was a first for them. 
So to ring in the new and out with the old, I bought the sparklers. Conveniently they came in a package of 6 small boxes, color coded and divisible by three. And picked up a bottle of bubbly - which for us came in the form of sparkling apple cider.  Do we know how to party or what.

In order to truly celebrate, as if 12 straight hours of Disney Channel - and a little of Dick Clark - love Dick Clark! were not enough - we popped the cork twisted the top and toasted the year to come!

I am not really worried about my boy having a drinking problem if his reaction to "sparkling" cider is any indication.

To my friends and family, and folks who happen to stop by our little journal from time to time, I wish you a happy 2012.  May God richly bless you.