January 1st, 2008

I don't remember where I read this, but I once came upon some sage advice for ringing in a new year. Essentially, the suggestion was that you should start a new year the way you want the whole year to be; do the things you most love and want to do more of in the future. This year, I took that advice to heart. Brian and I spent New Year's Eve with family - Staci, Brad, and 21-month-old Evan. Ate yummy food, made the baby screech with happiness, even built a gingerbread house on the kitchen floor (a first for me)! We worked together to do a good thing for our parents, whose house we had chosen for our low-key festivities; we cleaned the old (expired around 2002 old) food from their fridge. Even took pictures of some of the really nasty things. Ew. A terrific blend of relaxation and good work, hopefully starting our 2008 karma on the good side of the balance.

Then, the two of us had a quiet, relaxing New Year's Day - slept in 'til 10am, hung around the house in our pj's, dreamed about a summer trip to Europe, and left the dirty dishes to be dealt with another day. Totally satisfying. However, we did another good deed. We sorted through all the for-the-troops donations given to us by Paul and Emily. Their generosity had seemed a little overwhelming; in their zeal, they gave us things we knew we couldn't send abroad. Some of the many books they'd given us got sorted finally into boxes, to form the basis of packages I'll top off with soldiers' other requests.

These are some of those boxes, lined up in front of the tv, waiting to be filled the rest of the way and sent to bring a bit of comfort and a sense of home to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.