Happy New Year!

Well folks, I hope everyone had a nice Christmas holiday with family and friends! Did Santa bring you everything you've always wanted and more? Were you spoiled rotten right down to the core of your being? Did you get to eat a lot of great food and take a nap?!

Ah well, whatever you did, I hope it was enjoyable and relaxing too.

Pete spoiled me rotten----he got me a brand new Apple Macbook Air laptop computer! He said that when my web site is rebuilt (should be done soon, stay tuned), he wanted me to have my own computer to work on it anytime, anywhere. How very SWEET!! It just blew me away! I did not expect such a thing, that's for sure. Then I felt bad because I got him a digital photo frame (for our wedding photos and stuff), and a portable DVD player----however, I didn't realize that his iPad does the same thing!! Silly me. I'm just not very techno-savvy when it comes to that stuff.

Well, in any event, we had a nice relaxing day. Everyone slept in until about 9:00 a.m., then we had a nice, leisurely breakfast, and then we all opened our presents and took photos. Then we decided to go back and take a nap! After a few hours, we woke up and started getting things ready for our special dinner. We had ham---in fact, Pete and I drove 1.5 hours to Rogers Ohio to the huge flea market and deli they have there, to get this perfect ham---and then we stuffed cloves and pineapple all over it, and it came out AWESOME. We had the usual fixin's too, like green bean casserole and mashed potatoes with gravy, and pumpkin pie (Nate made it)!

Here is Florence, enjoying the Christmas Village that we put together for her! She said she used to have one when she was a young girl, her parents added a new piece each year, as a tradition, and the train was always on the floor around the Christmas tree. So, we bought a train, a Nutcracker Theater that plays music and has ballerina's dancing, and a few other pieces to go along with it---a church of course, that lights up--and some carolers singing nearby. She loved it!

And here she is in front of our tree...

She's been having a bit of a tough time lately, we think her medications need to be re-evaluated by the doctor. She's been having bursts of anger and upset, out of nowhere, for no real reason, and it's got us very concerned. She's doing better now that we've broken one pill in half, instead of giving her the whole thing, so hopefully that is the problem. All of her blood work and urine sample tests came back negative, so she's healthy as a horse---but we're still waiting for the CT scan of her brain to be evaluated. Hopefully that will be negative too, for any problems.

Today my mom, and Pete and Nathan all drove up to Michigan to get her belongings packed and loaded into the moving truck to bring back down as a permanent move! She's ready to get her life started over, I think, so we're going to help her do that. Just in time for the New Year!

So, that's the news for now. I may be starting a new phase in my life too, starting in January. There is an online school called "Sheffield," out of New York, which is an Interior Design school. It costs $900 bucks, and it can be finished in as little as 6 months, or as long as 3 years if I want it to, it's at my own pace, and once I finish the whole program, I can then get a job as a freelance Interior Designer, or work at a furniture store like Ethan Allan that has designers, or I can just get a job in a firm that offers Interior Design. I figure, it's something I like to do, so let's see how it goes. Even if it only helps with my OWN decorating (if and when we get the new house...we're still working on it), that will still be worth the money. With that, and my new web site coming soon---along with my book that I will publish this year---I should be kept busy!

Pete celebrates his 53rd birthday on the 30th! His daughter Sybil and her husband Justin will be arriving today to spend the whole week with us, so we'll come up with a nice birthday idea for Pete while they are here to share it.

Well, bye for now.

Happy New Year!! Stay safe!! Have fun!! And kiss 2010 GOODBYE ONCE AND FOR ALL!!

Love, Becky