The New Year is Here!

Our 49th wedding anniversary was Friday, December 30th. Hard to believe it's been this many years, through thick and thin, we've made it. We celebrated by going out to dinner - doesn't take much these days to make us happy! We did stop on the way at Shipwreck Beads in Lacey, WA and I purchased all the "fixin's" for a Pandora style bracelet. I've seen many of these on TV and checking them out at a jewelry store was a major price shock (ea bead runs from $20-$40). The beads on these were murano glass. I purchased the bracelet and some beautiful glass beads and with hubby's military discount, I got the whole thing for right around $20. However, after putting all the beads on it, the bracelet ended up being too small, so I need to order the next larger size, but I'm lovin' it.

In preparation for Christmas, we had a little panic when I was plugging one set of light cords into another (an artificial tree), and the plug-in touched a piece of pipe cleaner that had metal in it, sparks flew, I jumped and hubby and I looked at each other like....what just happened. All the lights blew out so we had not choice but to go get another tree. This time just got a small one and put it on an end-table. It's 4 ft high and a lot easier to decorate. So some good came out of it.

We had a nice family Christmas. On Christmas Eve our daughter, hubby and our 2 grand kids came over from Richland, WA. The other daughter, hubby and 2 more grand kids came south from Covington, WA. We did the Papa Murphy's pizza thing for dinner, after snacking a lot, then most of us played Uno until 10pm or so when Covington family left for home.

The next morning, after opening gifts and having breakfast, we all went up to Covington for a wonderful Christmas dinner which included deep-fried turkey, ham and all the trimmings. We played Tripoli after dinner. All in all a wonderful day. My gifts included a Kindle Fire, Pioneer Woman cookbook, kids/family photo albums and some nice smelling things from Bath & Body Works.

The day after Christmas, Monday morning, our Richland family left for home and we kinda vegged out the rest of the day. Come to think of it, I've not done a whole lot this entire week. I'm going to my knitting meet-up tomorrow, so have to see what I can take along to work on that's not too complicated for knitting in a crowd of very fun talkers!

I've told myself I have some goals for 2012 - no resolutions.

1. Learn to de-stress more to keep my sanity!
2. For knitting I want to learn to add beads, and do colorwork.
3. Finish as many WIP's as possible!!!! (Like these below!)
I'm sure more will come up, but that's it for now.