I'm sorry and the standard excuses...

It seems like I can blog for a few months then I run out of juice. I think life just builds up and things get piled up and blogging just gets lost in the pile. Christmas stacked up fast for me this year with a really huge PTO project that I co-chaired just before the regular shuffle of things began to click off the list. But looking back, it seems like November serving up some unwelcome medical issues is what might have thrown me off track.

Anyway. I'll try again. I'll play catch up for the holidays and post some photos via the slide show method: here is Christmas 2008 for our family.

Of course the big family news is that we have a TEENAGER!!! Mary Grace turned 13 over the weekend. Ahhh! SHOCKING to me, because this mama feels like she should be 3, not 13. She is blossoming (she dislikes that word) into such a lovely young lady. She is so much like me (she'd probably dislike hearing that one too) it's scary. VERY into the 80s look, which thrills me to no end. Rock on, sistah! Here she is sporting her electric yellow shirt and finger nails with crimped hair. Of course she was wearing a pair of Chuck Taylor hightops to boot!



Overall it was a fantastic holiday. Lots of family time between visits with both sides, some dinners out with Don's parents, visits from the Alabama troops and a nice long two week stay for Mary Grace. And two weeks out of school for Andrew and Abi. We are truly blessed. We spent two weeks with people that we love dearly. Our family.

It's funny... the word family means something different now than it did to me growing up. But, it's still just as precious and just as wonderful. Family now means the people that we are kin to, the families that we have married in to, the families our loved ones have married in to, the friends we have made in this area and their precious ones... and even online friends who have supported me for 7 years now since my pregnancy with Andrew. And they are the ones who make me who I am and get me out of bed each day. I love my family. Blended, shaken and stirred as it may be. I love my family.