The holiday season has come and gone which included 3 family birthdays, Christmas and the New Year. Even with the best of intentions on everyone's part, the amount of stuff given and received was overwhelming. To the left is a photo of the tree on Christmas morning (please note that this did not include any of the birthday gifts!). The number of toys which migrated to our living room was so incredible that I actually did a selective reduction of all the toys. Some of them are baby toys and are not longer needed while others will be set aside and pulled out on an "as needed basis". While on one hand we appreciate all the wonderful generosity, we are very aware of each and everything that has come into the house. We are needing to do some subtraction to make up for all that addition.
But that is just a rant about the "stuff". The rest of the holiday season was wonderful. We got to spend time with family and friends and that is the best gift of all. I love that my kids are getting to know their family even though we all live so far away. We had fun cooking and hanging out. We collectively took an astounding number of photos. The bad news was that several family members got sick. This has been a hard year in terms of illness. It seems as though our family has gotten and given many illnesses this past fall / winter season. I am hoping it was just a fluke and that we all be very healthy this year.
