Christmas 2012

The last couple of weeks have flown by and as I was looking through pictures and getting ready to write this post one thing kept coming to mind.  I just can't believe how much difference a year can make.


Last year, well I guess year before last now, December 2011.

This years Christmas photo. Yes I know I put it in the last post also, but seeing the two pictures together really shows the difference.


Christmas was a lot of fun this year.  It included all the classic holiday situations the house was crowded, children were running everywhere, we ate too much, someone ended up at the ER, along with going to Christmas church service, Christmas P.J.'s, opening gifts, laughing and togetherness.  It was all as it should be.

Dravyn's favorite Christmas gift was a vacuum the same color as mine.  She loves the thing and "helps" all the time now.

The day after Christmas we took family pictures, and said goodbye as family members went back home.

She is really into sticking her tongue out lately.

The whole gang.

The fur babies wanted in on the camera love too.

That day we also took down the tree and re-arranged the furniture while Dravyn slept, I like keeping the tree up longer, but I feared for the ornaments, the days of Dravyn staying out of the tree are over.  We hung out the next few days, had a Home Improvement marathon, and we Dravyn played with our her new stuff.  Of course I got sick, and was sick for about a week just starting to feel better yesterday
and I think I am back to normal today.

It snowed right around the New Year, and it made me so happy, I just love snow, plus Kevin stayed up with me until midnight New Years Eve, so I got a kiss, and drank some sparkling grape juice.

I am so lucky to have a husband and a daughter that I love so much.  I truly feel blessed, and am so excited to start a new year with them.  In this calendar year I will be celebrating my 5 year wedding anniversary, I suppose I will be trying to potty train Dravyn, hopefully Kevin and I will get to go to another NASCAR race, I really want to take Dravyn to the zoo for the first time, and work on my business.  But more importantly I hope this year is full of laughter, smiles, and hugs, and I hope to recognize, appreciate, and remember those moments.

I hope your holiday season was wonderful.

Friends

I have never been a person who has a lot of friends, or even a lot of acquaintances that I hang out with.  I have always been more comfortable with 2 or 3 close friends, friends that you know have your back, I remember all my closest friends through my life.

I think the first was Anna, she was a girl that went to the same daycare as I did, we used to dig holes under the structure at the playground, and when I say we dug holes I don't mean little dents I mean we were up to our shoulders digging up the little pebbles and dirt and we would talk about the day we would break through and be in China, we imagined there were two little girls digging in China and they would meet us in the middle.  But she was a couple years older than me, and so when she went to real school I was left behind.

The second was Amanda, she was the first friend I ever had a sleep over with, I thought it was so cool I got to spend the night at a friends house.  We stayed up really late and danced around the room to TLC, and we took swim lessons together.

Then came KC.  She lived just down the street, and we swam in her pool, tried out for choir together and talked on the bus all the time, I was always running down to her house to hang out after school, and played card games with her and her family.

The forth was Sara, and she became probably the best friend I had ever had.  We went to the movies together, she came to my family camp out once, we hung out so much that eventually her mother told me to stop knocking or ringing the doorbell, just come in, so I did.  We would stay up super late and watch scary movies, convince her little brother he was adopted, and just hung out like friends do.

My birthday party, I think it was my 12th or 13th, but I can't remember which.  Anyway I'm on the far right of the photo, and sara is behind Katie-Roo taking a picture.

Then I moved, I changed schools and had to start over, and all of those friends were too far away.

The first day at my new school I met Esther,  she was my closest friend for a long time in high school, but then I started dating a guy that wasn't such a catch, something I already knew, and she told me that, eventually when I caught him kissing another girl in the parking lot after school I broke up with him and a couple weeks later Ester was dating him, so that friendship went out the window, though by the end of high school she was very pregnant and engaged to him, even though again I saw him kissing some other chick, so I think in the end I dodged a bullet there.

Then it was Kathleen and we were friends my senior year and into my first couple years of college.  I got engaged and asked her to be my maid of honor.  Then she got engaged to the guy she had been dating for a couple months, set her wedding date, and wanted me to be in her wedding across the country a week before mine, plus she would only be back a day before my wedding, so I picked a different maid of honor and we split ways.

After that was Jennifer, but then they moved, and then after that Victoria was my closest friend, she is still my friend but we haven't really seen each other in over a year.

When my Kevin and I moved here we had a couple we always hung out with when we visited, they were our friends and they have a child close in age to Dravyn and I really thought hey this will work out great, but that ended up being a fair weather friend situation, and I have given up again.

I am done being in friendships like that.  I have always been there for my friends in any way I can be, I try hard and don't think that I deserve to be treated like an after thought.  At the same time though, it's that common sense of if all the situations have only one thing in common and that one thing is you, you just may be the problem..

I have the best friend I could ever have now, he is my husband, and I know it is cheesy to say he is my best friend it's the truth.  He makes me laugh, and we have the best time just hanging out together.  I am really lucky to have found such a great friend and be able to spend the rest of my life with him.

Anyway, Dravyn has water babies swim lessons starting next week, and I am hoping maybe I will meet other parents of children close in age to her, and even if nothing comes of that, I am hoping that it will at least get Dravyn some more socialization.  I don't think she will be swimming laps any time soon, but who knows, I may have a one year old swimming prodigy on my hands.  I just love that I could find some activity for her to do outside the house.  She loves being outside and I love being her mommy.