Happy New Year!

 Wow!  2026 is here!!!!  We cheered in the New Year late last night with some of our best friends!  Eating sushi and drinking Ruthies sweet tea along with a bundt cake sliced at midnight, after watching the ball drop in New York on TV ... it's a great start to 2026!  The house fire alarm only went off just a bit from the sparkling candles.

The free, wild, mountain tree is drying up fast!  Ashlyn and I took off all the ornaments and lights and now we need Mike to haul it back outside for me!

Linda and I still meet at the park for daily walks.  It's been challenging to meet over the busy holidays and we are taking a break while the kids are off of school but she texted me on Friday and said she needs out of the house and needs a walk!  We meet at the park and it felt amazing!  30 degrees with a real feel of 7 degrees but we walked and chatted and got some vitamin D on our winter faces!

Matthew smoked a huge rack of ribs on his smoker and brought it over on Wednesday night.  Some of the kids are still under the weather and fighting off colds but we ate some pork and relaxed!  So good!

I made some goals to read books in 2025!  I'm proud of the books I got read!  I began with the book Atomic Habits and went from there!  It was a great read for the New Year and all these books were fun, inspiring and learning books for me!

And now we go from the old planner to a brand new one!!!  So much of our lives get recorded on these pages and it's how I can keep a busy schedule organized!  I would be lost without this kind of a system!

Mike cut up the tree and hauled it out!  He swept up so many pine needles and it's putting our brand new vac system to the test!!!!  

I am going to use the Bible Recap bible reading plan again in 2026.  I've done this for I think five years now and I don't think I'll ever stop!  I love reading through the entire Bible, in one year, in chronological order!  After reading scripture, I then listen to a recap of what I just read!  It's great!

And a few years ago, I started having a word of the year.  This is a word that I would think about as the year went along!  Last year, it was Seek Discomfort.  I saw it on a sweatshirt that Nata wears and I it took a lot for me to just write out these words on my calendar because I DO NOT LIKE DISCOMFORT!  I'm the queen of normal!  I don't like risk!  It's not in my DNA but I knew it would bring out some courage in me!  Digging through emotions that I didn't like about myself and praying through self motives and letting God deal with my religious beliefs all brought discomfort and growth!

When reading 1,2,3 John just the other day, the words LOVE DEEPLY came to my mind.  Or maybe just the word LOVE.  These verses are all full of love commands and you should read it!  I'm convinced that if I would love like Jesus loves, my worries would be gone.  My attitude would adjust!  My selfish motives and many expectations would improve!  I'm gonna try to make this my word for 2026!

New Years Day we ate pork and sauerkraut with Matt and Lena and our children!  With a heaping scoop of mashed potatoes and a side of brussle sprouts ... it was delicious!

Our house is still glowing at night.  The New Year is here and the lights will be taken down soon!

We met Hadassah and Gunnar at Fashion Cents as the kids and I went through our clothes and took some to sell.  We scooted up to Strasburg Creamery to sample their sauerkraut ice cream but decided to get a scoop of snickers!  🤣 Just don't like that flavor of ice cream.  Then we got some food at Speckled Hen and came back home!  I'm so glad Gunnar is feeling much better and his cold/cough is well!

We still have a few more days of Christmas break but it is time for the kids to get back to their studies and off to a new start of learning!