Friday, December 31, 2010

preparations for the new year

in my ideal world, my husband wouldn't have to work during the week between christmas and new year's. we would spend the time reflecting on the year behind us and looking forward to the new year ahead of us. make some family resolutions. relax. enjoy a slow and blessed holiday season that didn't end on december 26.

but really, the reflecting and resoluting part isn't tim's style anyways, so i did some for myself.

2010 was a very full year for us-in good and bad ways. but we are still all together, and for that, i am most thankful.

there are some things that i hope for my family in 2011, but mostly i'm going to try to work on me. more exercise. sleep. prayer. mass! gratitude.

there will always be some hard days. and probably never any easy days (at least in the short term). but there will also be many, many very good days. and i will be thankful for them.

so to prepare for the new year, i tossed these guys into the pasture (not ben and max!):


i'm not kidding that these were still on my porch until two days ago.

and i cleaned my kitchen:


which had honestly looked like that for two days.

and today, while i was away at the shower and on my mini-road trip, tim cleaned the rest of the house. even the bathroom. and when i came home, instead of commenting on the few things he missed or didn't do, because his style of cleaning is a bit different than mine, i said thank you. many times. and i meant it. because although he didn't clean the paperwork off the table, he made the bed the way i like-way different than the way he prefers it, folded a special quilt on the bed because he knows it makes me happy, and put a bottle of water on my bedside table. waking up to a clean house and a clean start in the year new-a very nice thing indeed.

i might actually get the hang of this whole gratitude thing yet.

4 comments:

  1. My New Year's resolution (made last night at the Riopel's) is not to be too snobby about people's movie tastes or widescreen/fullscreen. This was made after I almost lost it when someone said they didn't like any of the Toy Story movies and another youngster said they almost walked out of Toy Story 3. gah!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds good, Mary. I hope your new year finds you doing all those good things you are planning. You are definitely off to a good start.

    I am going to try and remember that a day can be broken down into a lot smaller pieces than I give it credit for and try to focus on what needs to be done for each piece. (If that makes ANY sense at all.) Basically, I'm going to try and be present in each moment and focus on what needs to be done RIGHT NOW (not in five minutes or 5 hours, or 5 days). Hopefully this will keep me focused on what is most important. . . at least that is the plan :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great post, Mary. Happy new year. And Mary Elizabeth, I like your plan, it makes perfect sense. Blessings!

    ReplyDelete
  4. and by the way I can commiserate...no time off between Christmas and New Years here either. But I tried to make the best of it (despite the tummy bug that caught me by surprise midweek)

    ReplyDelete