A Brand New Year

The holidays are over for yet another year. Christmas was good. We saw a lot of family members , so that was nice. On Christmas Eve, we went see Aunt Cyndi and Uncle Rick. We also got to see a couple more of Shawn's aunts, uncles and cousins. I kept thinking about the last Christmas we spent with Mary there. I can't believe she's been gone for 2 years now. Last year was hard without her, but this year seemed to be even harder. I think it had something to do with all of the changes in the family...weddings and babies and such. At any rate, I definitely thought a lot about her during the holidays this year. I'm sure that if it was hard for me, it had to be ten times harder for Shawn, Holly, and Dwayne.

After visiting Rick and Cyndi, we went to my parents' house. We had such a great time visiting and eating and opening gifts. I think Keira had a fun "FIRST CHRISTMAS". Everyone was so generous, and she had fun opening the gifts. She especially enjoyed the boxes, bows and paper. We also went to see Grandma Wilson, Uncle David and Linda. After that, we stopped by to see Aunt Sis and Uncle Doug. What a busy night!

That night, Keira was up with a fever, so we were exhausted the next day. We finally managed to get out of bed (later than we'd planned). After feeding Keira, we let her open her gifts from Santa. Then, we got ready to take Max to Rob and Lisa's. After that, we left to visit George and Roxana. We got to their place early in the afternoon. Once Holly, Jeff, and Tyler got there, we started opening gifts and then had dinner. It was nice. We all really enjoyed ourselves. I think it would have been even better if Dwayne and Becky could have been able to be there. I know that it's hard to rearrange schedules and traditions...but I hope that next year we'll all be able to be together, especially with their new baby on the way!

On December 26, we went to visit the rest of Shawn's family at his Aunt Beth and Uncle Ken's house. It was good to be able to see his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

We planned a small get-together at our place on New Year's Eve. Shawn and I were both really looking forward to hanging out with our friends and ringing in the new year with them. We cleaned up the basement, bought food and drinks, and even bought a couple of new games for the night.
On Friday (12/30), we went to dinner to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary, and we had a great time. The next morning (New Year's Eve), I woke up feeling so queasy! I ended up throwing up all day, and spent the evening in bed sick. What a letdown!! Luckily, everyone knew each other and felt comfortable hanging out and having fun together. I was just disappointed...what a way to start the year. Hopefully we'll all be ablt to get together again soon.

Now, I'm just hanging out with Keira on my last day before I have to go back to work. I've really had a lot of fun with her over the past 2 weeks, and am not looking forward to being away from her. Thankfully, the end of the school year is less than 6 months away.

I didn't make any resolutions for 2006. I guess I just hope that I'll be able to be the best MOM and WIFE (and daughter, teacher, friend) that I can be. There were a lot of changes in our lives in 2005, and I can't wait to see what changes this year brings.