Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Bring it on, 2013! I always plan on the new year being better than the last! Live it up. Love it up.

A few exciting changes for the year??? Get my debts paid down and I really want to get into a bit of gardening. Since we live in a town home, we have no yard. We have a little porch and two side areas with dirt. So I got Container Gardening For Dummies for Christmas this year and hope to create a little garden of containers with flowers and herbs. I also plan on writing more.

You know the usual schtick about doing better and being better always happens this time of year. But I think every year it's a great time to reassess ourselves. Are we better off this year than last? Are we happier? Did we help others to be happier/did we do a bit to make the world a better place than we found it? And then in turn look to where we need improve, what we didn't like, and how we're going to make our piece of world a bit better this year.

I guess one other thing that's pretty specific has been on my mind lately. I have a friend who writes her obituary yearly. She makes a few changes to reflect new bits of her life accumulated each year. I think it's beautiful. So I plan on doing just that. Looking at mortality a bit more in the year and writing my obituary and planning my funeral. Death and rebirth, the cycle of life.

Welcome to 2013!

Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known---Carl Sagan. Yes, we are nerds.

Wolfy says Meowy Christmas!

A beautiful winter morning.

Living it up at our Winter Solstice party!

Taking a hayride!

Happy Holiday Season!!!!

I love this time of year!!!! From Halloween till January 6th I'm on happy la-la cloud! It's a great four months. Halloween and spookiness, Fall, the colors, mulling ciders and wines, baking pumpkin breads, and making chilis, soups, and stews. Love it.

Thanksgiving is a beautiful time to eat lots of food and see family and friends. It's a great excuse to party as well as a wonderful time to remember those less fortunate and to be thankful for what we do have.

Christmas time brings lights and candles, candy and Santa, trees, more baked goods, more yummy mulled ciders, wassails, egg nogs, and wines. It's a time to hibernate during the long winter and hold my dear ones more closely.

Winter solstice or the Yule is a celebration of the Sun. The days start getting longer. It's a time for new beginnings and new goals for the new year.

Yup, it's one big celebration in our house!!! Woot :) So here are a few pics over the last month or so of celebrations and fun!

Thanksgiving craft!

Movie and snow!

Shadow looking adorable

We finished our first big puzzle together!

We went on a pre-Thanksgiving hike and this was the view

Battle Creek hike

His Thanksgiving Day crown

Kitties love trees!

The Tree!

Being Shnuggly

Our shrine to the Winter Solstice

Trees in the Winter

We made graham cracker houses too!

Halloween!

Another Halloween gone. So fabulous this year. Gabe really got excited. We had a countdown calendar, lots of activities, chili, breads, cider, candy and more candy, costumes, etc. I loved watching his excitement!

I even dressed up the kitties :)

Frodo, my cowboy

Shadow, the Devil!

Wolfy, my angel

my zombie make up! Brainzzzzz....

Adobe Halloween set up for kids

Gabe's and mine!

Our creepy pumpkin porch!

Halloween Party!

My new Fall hair color!

I Love Autumn!

We went on a nice Sunday hike to celebrate the Fall colors. We got some pretty good photos, exercise, and family together time while basking in the awesomeness of Nature!





We got some great autumn leaves shots!









I was trying to be artsy ;)











Gabe got all tuckered out there in the end so Archie and I took turns carrying him down the mountain. It was a fantastic kick-off to the Fall season!!!!

Oh, Those Septembers of Yore...

It's been a fast and busy and oh so much fun September. There is still a week left but I thought I'd get started a bit early on updates.

Yes, he comes up with this stuff on his own.

Loves blowing bubbles and making messes!

We were both so excited about Halloween that we made a countdown chart first of September!

So tuckered out during our shopping.

Gabe started pre-school this month! He loves it.

My baby is growing all up. He's also started potty-training. He's pretty good about number one! Gotta start somewhere.

Lazy Days of August

Gabe locked himself in his room....we turned the door knob so that the lock was on the outside but it's been acting a bit finicky and last week it bit the dust. There was nothing we could do to get it unlocked. So I tried to take the door knob off but that still left us with the latch still on and thus still locked. So back on went part of the door knob to see if we could get it to turn the latch...success! Long story short, we got it out and we have a new door knob...and we are all in one piece. But whew....panic. Gabe took it all in stride, though. Even posing for a pic!



One afternoon after a long day of fun ;) I was in the kitchen and he was supposedly in the living room playing. Well, I didn't hear anything after awhile. I came in and found Gabe like this:



We've been hiking a few times as well...



This is Bridal Veil Falls. Not a long hike at all but a gorgeous view.

And we even got a new pool so Gabe could do some swimming before summer ends.



Now we are getting ready for Gabe to start preschool! He's getting very excited. He'll be going once a week til he can get completely potty-trained and then up to two days a week. I hope this will give him incentive to get fully potty-trained....sigh. Two more weeks :)

Crazy kid ;)