Welcome 2010!

Happy New Year!  I hope everybody had a safe and fun New Year's Eve celebration.

Our celebration was spent at our favorite hotel/bar downtown for dinner and a room.  They were having a party with a band and DJ as well, but at $75 per person we decided that sitting at the bar with our friends/bartenders would be more fun, and we were right.  Although we stayed up late (2:30a), we awoke in the morning with little regrets from the night before.  The remainder of the day was spent lazing around the house, watching the Rose Bowl and generally enjoying the day off.

As part of our NYE celebrations, we did our Top 3/Bottom 3 list for the year.  It was fun to see that our lists were pretty identical.  We both had a hard time coming up with 3 Bottoms, and troubles limiting our Tops to just 3.  I was surprised that one of my Bottoms that affected Tony more than me wasn't even on his list ... it just goes to show you can learn something new about your partner every day.

Now we're 2 days into 2010 (are you saying Twenty-Ten or Two Thousand Ten?).  Today was our traditional day for taking down all the Holiday decorations and putting the house back to "normal."  Suddenly everything seems so bare and open.  By Monday life will be back to normal as well, Tony will be traveling, our son will be back in school and I'll start working on all our taxes.  UGH!

For me, this is the year of clean-up.  I hold onto EVERYTHING!  If we have purchased even the smallest thing, I have all the instructions, etc. that came with it.  Sometimes it's neatly filed and other times it get put in the "To Be Filed" stack which then becomes a box that then becomes a BIG box and gets put next to the filing cabinet.  But with the age of the internet, everything I could possibly want to know about any item we own can be found there so it's time to purge.

And althought I'm certainly not contemplating my demise, but I have realized I am holding onto things that are only going to end up part of the endless clean-up my kids have to do after I'm gone. So if they have not use to me now, and my kids will never make any use of them, why am I holding onto them? So my goal is to clean-out our storage of all unnecessary items and organize what's left. 

What's your goal?

I already know 2010 is going to bring significant changes to our lives; the biggest being that our youngest will be graduating from High School in June and off to college in the Fall.  Although we don't know where, we're 99% sure it won't be locally, so we'll be empty nesters.

This will bring about a lot of decision making on my part.  Do I continue with my company or look for a job (bad timing on that).  I love what I'm doing, but my reason for working from home is gone and with Tony traveling a lot with his work having something to get me out of the house everyday wouldn't be bad.  On the otherhand, where am I going to find a job that will give me all the vacation I need?  LOL

2010 will also mark some special milestones.  It will be my 30th High School reunion, my Granddaughters 1st birthday and our son will turn 18. 

Another big change will be the school/vacation factor.  In the past, our vacations have been somewhat dictated by the school schedule, but now that won't be an issue and we are going to be free to travel to Europe in September (after everybody has returned to work/school but the weather is still good) or to someplace sunny anytime during the winter.  So far the result is that we haven't done any of the planning we would typically have done by now.  Usually by January 1st we have our Spring Break, Summer and Winter vacations planned.  But this year we've only gotten as far as Spring Break ... and of course our Valentine's Day escape.

Oh yes, and there's the working out to be done.  As of today I am 100% well and back into the swing of working out.  Today's workout was a long walk in the hills around our house and I do believe tomorrow's will be back to the P90X DVDs.  It's time to get back into the routine.

I also want to learn to do a few things.  The first of which is paint woodwork.  I know that sounds funny, but it's hard to paint woodwork without leaving any brush strokes!  After 14 years in the house the woodwork could use a good repaint.  I've already attempted some of it, but am not happy with the results.  So I'll be watching Home Depot's workshop list for something about painting wood trim and go from there.  Wish me luck!

My second thing I want to try is sea kayaking.  As we'll be in St. Barths for Valentine's Day I'm going to try it there.  It's not something we'd do here, but I want to try going it so when we travel in the future we can use a kayak to take us to private places not accessible by road.

May you all have a wonderful 2010 ... I feel hopeful and I hope you do too.