Happy New Year!

OK - I know I've been missing for a month. If you can't tell by my absence, our lives tend to be crazy busy in the month of December. I feel like I'm running constantly and collapse into bed at the end of each night (and yet STILL the to-do list runs through my head in my dreams!). But we've survived another holiday season and now I'm ready for our normalness!

So we're on to a new year. I don't normally make New Year's resolutions but, for some reason, I thought I'd give it a try this year - with a promise to myself to not feel like a total failure if I don't succeed.

First, I have resolved to post daily to my blog. Well, I guess I shouldn't promise daily updates. My workload has doubled in the past month because of some changes at work. And Brian does still work nights and AC does have frequent Girl Scout meetings. Plus, this January we're going to start going back to doing Sunday and Wednesday nights at church. So, life will still be crazy. But I've kind of started thinking of this blog as something that may someday become something really important for my kids - and my self - and my sanity. Plus, I've found that I really enjoy it. So, I'm going to make it a priority. Maybe this will actually force me to take a lunch at work now!

Second, I have resolved to lose weight. It's cliche, I know. Everyone promises it. But after the awful shopping couple of days I've had, I think it's time to start making it a priority. This week I had a few left-over vacation hours that I needed to take or I was going to lose them. I decided to take a couple hours off work each day and try to spend some of the gift cards I got for Christmas. Since it looks like many retailers are going to be forced out of business soon, I didn't want any of them to go to waste. Plus, I'm tired of wearing clothes that are 15 years old. So I thought it was time to shop. But my two day shopping trip forced me to come to a conclusion: I'm fat and frumpy. I didn't like how I looked in anything (and refused to go to the Women's sizes to see if things there might look better on me) and I also spent a great deal of time standing in these stores looking at these woman walk past me and realized that I no longer know how to dress. Well, honestly, I'm not sure I ever knew how to dress. But at least I had cool sisters who could help me pick out clothes. Now, I'm forced to realize that I have no idea how to find clothes that will fit me and still look at least slightly stylish. I'd love to steal my boss and make her come shopping with me to help tell me how to dress since I'm so clueless. But I don't see that happening any time soon. And since my sisters are so far away and I can't force them to come visit me, I'm stuck to my own devices. And I'm clueless. But, as I watched the thousands of tiny women walk past me, one thing I did realize would at least help somewhat is if I could lose some weight, then I could actually pick out some clothes that would not only look modern and stylish, but they'd also look flattering on me and stop making me look like a stuffed sausage. So, I'm going to lose weight. I'm determined. My health needs it, my self-esteem needs it, not to mention I need the energy boost to keep chasing after my son!

Speaking of sons, I have to include the following picture. As is Blanchard-family tradition, we always let Ann Catherine wear the tree skirt when we put out the tree at Christmas. But this year, as Brian was putting up the tree, Will decided he wanted to try on the skirt. Of course, as a boy, he decided he had different plans for our tree "skirt"...