Happy New Year!

Welcome to the new year everyone. This has been quite the year for us with the highlight of the year being our new house in Dundee. It is so much fun entertaining our family and friends. We have had a few gatherings in our house, including birthday parties for both boys and a band party in August. Thanks to everyone who has come out to visit and see the house. We hope that if you haven't that you will be able to make it out soon.

This Christmas season was quite the challenge! Heather and the boys were sick this past week, with Heather bearing the worst of it. She was practically in her bed for 3 straight days with migraines on top of the flu. I have never seen her so sick in the 12 years I have known her. The boys may have passed it on to her as they both caught what we thought were 24 hour bugs. Although they managed to eat again, they are both still fighting off a nagging cough. I am very happy to see their energy back though.

I think the most touching moment of this week was on Christmas morning. Heather and I were so excited to get the boys out of bed and have them see their gifts from us and Santa. We thought for sure they would tear right into the gifts. However, as we all sat around the tree and Parker was handed a gift, he told everyone to stop. He looked at us and said, "I want you to open your gifts before I open mine." Heather and I looked at each other for a moment and she started to tear up. I have to say that I was very proud of him. He amazes me so much with how good his heart is. God continues to teach me through my children.

Well, a new year often means resolutions. I do hate that term though. It is almost inherent in the term that they are not meant to be strong. It is in my thinking that if I call them resolutions, I am likely to break them and just join with so many others and say, "Well, mine did last a week!" So I am simply reverting to the term goals. Here are my goals for this year:

1. Birthday cards - this was a resolution from last year that lasted about two months. I wanted to get birthday cards out to more people and on time. My goal this year is to get everyone a birthday card for whom I know the birthday.
2. Patience with my sons- I struggle so much with patience. I listened to an old song from my Bible school days a couple weeks ago and for some reason, I could almost recall all the words. The chorus went:
   Have patience, have patience, don't be in such a hurry.
   When you get impatient, you only start to worry,
   Remember, remember, that God is patient, too,
   And think of all the times that others have to wait for you.
3. Love - I want to love Heather more than ever before. I think this goes back to 1 Chorinthians 13 that was read at our wedding. Here is a link if you don't know the passage. My biggest challenge in this will come down to listening. I mean, really listening to her. Someone told me today that the average American couple spends 9 minutes talking to each other a day. I don't have the metrics on Heather and me, but I am going to try and make sure our number is a little higher than that.
4. Blogging - Hey, so far so good, right?

I might have more later, but this what I have time for tonight. Gotta go back to work tomorrow so I should get myself into bed now. Hope everyone has a happy new year ahead. More to come (see #4 above!)