an end + a beginning

Today I finally took all the Christmas decorations down. I really dislike that job and this year I kept putting it off. It's the end of the season. Tony's vacation is over and life is slowly returning to normal. I miss having him around during the day, I miss him cooking us breakfast and I miss sleeping in. It was a good holiday and it makes me a little blue to see it end.

But with the end also comes a beginning. A brand new year. I'm not one for resolutions but this time of year just naturally makes me think of starting fresh. This year my focus seems to be on two things. 1. Eating healthier and being an example of that to the kids. 2. Working harder on my parenting skills and looking for more ways that I can be a more stress-free parent (is there such a thing?) Certain parenting challenges seem to have been hitting me hard lately and my approach (or lack of one) is making me feel discouraged. My kids are little for too short a time to waste so much of it arguing and repeating myself. I recently came across a website, Love & Logic, which has really attracted my attention. There is a lot of stuff out there and many experts claiming to have the answers to parenting and I don't know if this one is any different. But I have often wished there was a helpline out there for me sometimes when I don't know what to do or if I am really screwing up big or just a little bit. I know that I need to be more consistent, I know I need to worry less about the kids thinking that I am 'mean', I know that I want the kids to be able to tell me when they are grown that I didn't do too bad of a job. So I am going to, in the next few days, look into this particular website in more depth. Maybe I will discover some tools to equip me better for this road I am on.

Also, on a lighter note, I am looking forward to learning this fantastic camera I now own. It feels very good in my hands and I really like the sound of the shutter when I hit the button. So far, that's not much, so I have a lot to learn. I am going to look into taking a course to get me started. I have been reading the manual but it amkes for pretty dull reading and it usually takes me onlya page or two before I start to drift. But what I do know is that it is going to give me some great photos. Here are a couple of examples that I have taken in the last week:

Happy Birthday to Mom - 83 on December 30th. Still beautiful.