Happy New Year !

Well...another year has come and gone and a new one begins.  The year 2012 was full of emotions.  In January, my beloved father passed away and my heart has been broken since.  I don't think it will ever really heal.  I miss him so much and it is hard to ring in the New Year knowing he is not here on earth with me and I can't talk to him and give him a big New Year's kiss.

It is amazing what life can bring... On November 9, 2011, I was sitting in the CCU waiting room with my neice and her husband, who were in the process of moving away from Japan after living through a major earthquake and tsunami.  They both decided to visit the United States before moving to his home country of New Zealand.  Who knew at that moment that exactly one year later on November 9, 2012, my dad would be gone, and that they would be in New Zealand, with new jobs, a brand new home and experiencing the birth of their child, a beautiful baby girl, who they named Isobel Savannah?

It was like God called one angel home in 2012 and sent us down another one.  I talk to daddy all the time and ask him to watch over Isobel. Let her have a very happy and properous life, filled with happiness and love and let her always, always know that the Lord is with her.  I pray that she has a loving relationship with God and is constantly aware of His presence in her life.  Her mom, my niece, went to church when she was younger and both my neice and her husband were raised Methodist.  My neice's parents (my brother and sister in law) were not very involved in church, I don't know about his parents though.  I hope that since they had Isobel baptized the Sunday before Christmas, that they do raise her with religion in her life.  We shall see.  It is just something I will continue to pray about.

I'm not sure what is in store for me in 2013.  Last year my One Little Word was "Completion" In 2011, it was "Happiness".  I didn't do especially great with either word.  I did think of them and work on them but didn't generate as much happiness as I would have liked and certaintly didn't complete as many things as I would have liked.  But that is all okay.  It is not a big deal - at least I tried, right?

This year, my One Little Word is "Balance" - I have realized in the past few weeks that I simply do not have balance in my life, especially the balance between work-life and home-life.  I need that.  I need a happy medium.  I spend way to much of my life focused on work.  I need to spend more time focusing on the people in my life, my home, structure, etc.  I've tried doing Ali Edward's workshop the past couple of years but couldn't keep them up and therefore would get discouraged.  That is so not what the OLW is about...so I have decided this year not to do the workshop.  I am just going to do my own thing...maybe I will blog about it, maybe I will journal about it, who knows...but I will work on adding balance to my life in 2013.

I do have some goals for next year, as I usually do:

Spiritual Goals:

Each year I say I am going to read the entire Bible and each year, between February and April, I stop.  In the middle of last year, I bought the One Year Bible so I am going to read it every day!  It will be part of my routine and will add some of the balance to my life that I am seeking.

 

Also...I am really going to focus on my words to others this year.  Really be mindful before speaking.  

~Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing 
(1 Thessalonians 5:11)

This was brought on by reading the Two Peas in a Bucket NSBR forum of all things. There are 4 or 5 "peas" that are down-right mean, spiteful and nasty.  I can only imagine that it is because they are so unhappy in their own lives that it makes them feel better to beat someone up when they are down.  Plus, I guess since they are anonomyous, they feel like it is okay to use foul and hurtful language towards another person, that they don't even know.  Surely, they would not speak that way to a person face-to-face.  These particular people really should be embarrased and ashamed of the things they say.  I know there is a blog out there on the internet somewhere where they privately bash the other peas even more.  I saw the blog once, it was enough for me to know that it was not a place where I wanted to spend my time.

I figure I can use my words to build someone up (as mentioned in the above verse) or knock someone down.  Why wouldn't you make someone feel better if you have that ability?  So I am going to do that with the people in my life (and on message boards, if I happen to be on them)

Knitting/Crochet Goals:

Right now I have 2 goals and only 2.  The first one is to finish my Around the World Afghan and the second one is to begin and complete a Sky Scarf.  There are several other projects that are in progress, that I want to complete as well and I desperately need some new dishclothes and towels...but as for now, I'm only setting 2 goals for the year - to help me maintain the "balance"

Scrapbooking Goals:

I'm going to continue with Project 365.  I did that digitally through Shutterfly last year but haven't finished my book yet.  After dad passed away, I didn't have the desire to keep up the digital book, but I still kept taking photos.  I will continue the photo taking and I will decide if I want to order the photos through ShutterCal (where I currently post my P365 photos)

Christmas Cards - I will make and send out my Christmas cards at the end of 2013.  I want to start my cards really early - maybe even this month.  I haven't made cards the past three years and I miss that.  I got a home-made card from an old friend, Yvonne, this past Christmas.  She makes really pretty cards (I was her inspiration she said) and Yvonne passed away today from pancreatic/liver cancer.  I will treasure her card, especially knowing how sick she was, yet she took them time to make my Christmas a little more special.

Those are my only goals - I do want to scrapbook more and know what things I want to work on but I am only setting those 2 goals to keep things manageable. 

Other Goals:

 

Live healtier - less eating out and more exercise and being more mindful of what I put in my body.

Read - I have a set of books that I want to read - they are sitting on my ottoman in the living room behind a chair - I'm going to read them this year.

Visit mom more - probably at least monthly, this means I may need to change my work schedule but that shouldn't be a problem.

Plan a trip to NYC with Anita

I think those are plenty of goals for the year.  Will I set other goals? Probably...but for now I am keeping it manageable, keeping it small and keeping it balanced.