This year, Matt and I actually stayed up for the New Year:

 

14 seconds until the New Year starts!
31 December 2006

 

Happy New Year!
(This was taken after our New Year kiss and our toast.)
01 January 2007

And where’s Lily?

Lily ringing in the New Year asleep on the couch.
31 December 2006

May 2007 bring laughter and love, kindness and hope!  I know that every year has the potential to be more amazing than the last; it’s just in how I choose to live… how I choose to treat myself and others and all the life around me… what person I choose to be.  Let’s see if I can remember that when I’m juggling the needs of two children, dinner, and laundry. 😉

Happy New Year. 🙂

My Family
24 December 2006

I’ve rebooted for the New Year.  It’s a lovely feeling… to reboot.  I have a ritual I go through every year to help me psychologically reboot.  I burn all my the files on my computer — email folder, Money file, everything — to DVD.  Then I delete delete delete.  Then I go through all the software programs on my C: drive and delete the programs that I haven’t used all year and are just taking up room and resources.  Next, I defrag.  (Sometimes, if my computer is running really slowly, I’ll just format and reinstall from scratch.)

Then my computer runs beautifully, and it’s clean of all the previous year’s clutter.  It’s shiny and fresh and ready for the New Year — ready for new projects, ready for new ideas, ready for whoever I decide to be and whatever I decide to do in the coming year.

And then I reboot.  I’m ready for new projects and new ideas.  I’m ready for the New Year.  I’m full of determination and excitement.  With each deleted file and each deleted email, it feels like I am freed from the previous year’s clutter, not just my hard drive.

The New Year rocks.  I think it’s one of my favorite holidays and not because of the party.  It’s because we get to reboot.

Lily and I playing on the couch
while we were taking our family Christmas photos.
17 December 2006

The baby has dropped. I woke up at 4am last night with a hot pain in my stomach. I thought I was getting sick, but then I felt the baby move down into my pelvis.  I tell you, that was a really bizarre feeling.

And then I completely freaked out because Lily was born one week after she dropped.  My mind was racing, thinking, “Oh no!  We’re going to have a baby in less than a week!”

I woke up Matt and we talked a little bit about what we had to do to prepare.  Then today, we both Googled “pregnancy baby dropping” (turns out it’s called “lightning”), and the baby can drop anywhere from hours to weeks before delivery.  So dropping doesn’t give you any indication of when the baby may come.

It still makes me really nervous though.  We’re one step closer to the baby being here.  He’s engaged and ready to come out. 🙂

Matt and I have been so blah today.  We’ve both done nothing.  I wonder what’s up.  May be lack of sleep… may be nervous about the baby… who knows.  And Lily has been asleep for hours.  Just a sleepy, lazy sort of day for the family.

Christmas 2005

We haven’t taken our Christmas photo for this year yet. Lily still has quite the shiner, so we’re unable to take it at the moment. Maybe we’ll be lucky like last year and serendipity will hand us a beautiful Christmas photo.  Last year’s photo was a picture that Ray took of Lily at the HotSchedules Christmas party and then Matt photoshopped it to a WebShots Christmas background.  It came out beautiful. 🙂

Lily and Sarah
17 October 2006

Well, in the end it was Lily who got most of the TLC last night from both Mommy and Daddy. Besides having a huge black-eye from falling on the hearth, she is sick.  When Matt’s co-workers asked after her, this is how he described her: you know how boxers look during interviews the day after the fight, that’s what Lily looks like right now.  So she was snuggled and coddled and held and fussed over for most of the night.

A quote I read today that I really like: “fear creates a desire to control.”  Andrea Scher was writing about how her fear of labor and delivery was making her try to control an inherently uncontrollable process.  She let go of the fear and is now along for the ride.

It’s not a quote that necessarily applies to my life right now, but it’s a quote that I like very much.  Another quote I read recently that I like very much: “whether you think you can or you think you can’t, either way you’re right.”  I think this quote applies to my life more right now.  There are things that I want to overcome, mainly my lack of willpower where food and finances are concerned.

I’m off now to wade through the pile of receipts that Matt and I generated over the past few days while Christmas shopping.  It’s only December 5th, and we have only three gifts left to buy.  We are so on top of Christmas this year.  Of course, we still have to brave the post office to mail most of our presents.  I should probably take a book and a sack lunch with me. 😉

Lily found the Christmas stockings,
called them “big socks” and put them on.
They were so big though, that when she walked,
she had to slide her feet along the floor so they wouldn’t fall off.
27 November 2006

Matt needs lots of TLC tonight.  We took Lily to the emergency room last night because she fell on the fireplace hearth and cut her cheek right by her eye.  After examining the wound and running a catscan to be extra sure, the doctor said it was a superficial wound and that she would be fine.

I guess most people would be thinking, “Isn’t it Lily who needs the TLC?”  Falling onto the hearth stones did hurt her, and she received lots of cuddles and kisses and hugs right after the fall and the entire time she was at the hospital, but she’s fine now.  In fact, she was fine even before we left the hospital, chatting away and playing (which the doctor also found very encouraging).

But when we got home at 2am, I went off to bed and Matt stayed up with her because she was wide awake by this point.  They didn’t go to bed until 4am, and then Matt got up shortly after 6am to go to work.  I didn’t get up until 8am.  So he’s running on just over two hours of sleep today.

That’s why Matt needs the TLC tonight when he gets home from work.  The problem is, I’m 34-weeks pregnant and quite moody.  I have to keep my own selfish moodiness in check tonight so Matt gets the lovin’ he deserves after being such a hero last night.

This morning, Matt found a site that sells fire resistant foam to cover your hearth: http://www.babysafetyfoam.com/. We are going to order one of these, especially since we have another wiggly, hyper, bouncy little Woodings arriving soon.

Matt and I were very excited about Thanksgiving weekend because it was four days with our little family together.  It was a very hectic four days with lots of cooking and visiting and travelling to and from San Antonio in one day to see Bruce’s gig (we had a very good time and enjoyed seeing Bruce out with his band very much — well worth the trip) and I made myself ill on Friday from eating sweets (I definitely have gestational diabetes — Matt threw out all the sweets in the house so I wouldn’t be tempted because they really do make me ill now).  But even with all the craziness, we had a great four-day family weekend.

And we wrapped our weekend on Sunday with putting up Christmas decorations.  All three of us were wiped out from the previous days, so Matt made himself coffee and made me tea, and he put on Christmas movies. Using caffeine to boost our lagging energy, we put up the decorations.

While putting up decorations, Lily and I put on a fashion show.  I was trying on a very pretty black dress that Mari, one of Carla’s co-workers, gave me.  It’s a bit bold to wear because it’s made of lycra material and proudly displays the baby belly.  I was adding red ribbon to make it Christmas-y and seeing if it would work as a Christmas dress.  I kept trying different combinations and asking Matt what he thought (Matt continued to put up Christmas lights all around the living room with Christmas movies playing in the background while Lily and I played with clothes).

So while I was trying on clothes and prancing in front of the mirror and showing Matt different choices, Lily started doing the same thing.  I think she came up with a lovely ensemble.

Lily showing Daddy the clothes she picked out.
26 November 2006

We also have pictures of Lily decorating the tree.  It was her first time to put Christmas baubles on the Christmas tree and she had a very good time.

Lily decorating a Christmas tree for the first time.
26 November 2006

Lily decorating a Christmas tree for the first time.
26 November 2006

The Christmas season has begun. Merry Christmas. 🙂

Dave, Ray, Casey, Justin, and Matt
at a HotSchedules company retreat in Billings, Montana.
(One of the reasons I like Matt’s work so much
is that all of the men are genuinely nice guys just like Matt.)
January 2006

• I installed IE7 and I like it very much. The tabs are very nice, and I’m especially impressed with the “ClearType.” It really does make the words on the monitor easier to read.

• Sugar makes me feel terrible.  It makes me weak, lethargic, and grumpy.  I think I have gestational diabetes, but I haven’t had time to take the test even though my OB has ordered it.  I really need to take care of that.  And I really need to quit eating sugar.

• I keep waiting for winter and rain.  Year after year passes, each one hotter and drier.  It was 80 degrees yesterday… on Thanksgiving.  I need to accept that we have permanently altered the climate on our planet even though that fact makes me extremely sad.  We  screwed up through a combination of naivete and greed, and now we need to stop the damage and fix whatever we are able to fix.

• I have a wonderful husband.  Sometimes I am moody, high-maintenance, indecisive, and uncommunicative, and he always treats me with kindness and love.  I can’t believe my luck because falling in love and marrying is definitely part luck.  The universe gave me the most amazing gift it could ever give me on the day I met my husband.

• I have to resize my photos again and make them a little smaller so that they will fit in the fixed column width of the Christmas WordPress theme I want to use.  I don’t like making my photos smaller; you can’t see details.

• I really like the fact that this Christmas WordPress theme was created by a woman (so was the last chocolate stripes theme I was using).  I love it when women create techie stuff.

• I love my husband.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving day with Carla’s family and their friend, Bones.  It was Carla’s birthday yesterday, so we also celebrated Carla’s birthday today.  Some pictures from our Thanksgiving:

Matt and Bones lighting 37 candles on Carla’s birthday chocolate pie.
Thanksgiving 2006

 

Logan and Carla blowing out the candles.
Thanksgiving 2006

 

Logan, Sarah, and Lily playing in the living room.
(Note Carla already doing the traditional
Tryptophan Thanksgiving Crash on the Couch.)
Thanksgiving 2006

And what am I thankful for today? Well, the most important thing in my life and the thing I am most grateful for is my family.  But, to choose something specific to this year, I’m grateful for Matt’s job which allows me to stay home with the children.  I know that being a stay-at-home mom is not a given in today’s world, and it’s not something that I should take for granted.  Matt also really enjoys his work, his boss and his co-workers.  I am very thankful for Matt’s job, and also very thankful to have Matt.  He really is an amazing husband and Daddy.

Shelley, Josh, Grace and Glenn Staggs with Santa
Christmas 2005

The anniversary of Glenn’s death is coming up, and I’ve been thinking about him a lot.  I wanted to post a picture of him; I want everyone to see his smiling face.  I like that he is in my thoughts right now.

Glenn may no longer physically be in this world, but he definitely left a presence.  He left behind goodness and warmth and laughter in people’s hearts.  He didn’t just come into the world and leave — he left it a better place than when he got here.  And that’s a life worth living, isn’t it?