Happy New Year 2015!

One of my school friends and her husband traveled to New York City a few days ago to take part in the famous New Year’s Eve countdown in Times Square. She posted a short video of the countdown and the midnight celebrating, complete with Frank Sinatra crooning “New York, New York” in the background. It gave me a pretty amazing eye-level feel for what it must’ve been like to be there at that moment. She and her husband were having the time of their lives, singing along with everybody else. It was fun to watch!

Lots of crazies in NYC.  Lots of crazies here, too.

(Trivia: One of the balloons popped right before the camera went off for this picture.  :-D )

Things were a little different at the Worley homestead at midnight. Lights dimmed, fire in the fireplace, Christmas tree still up and on (we always leave it up past New Year’s Day), glo-sticks being held and worn, about 40-50  balloons scattered on the kitchen and dining room floor. Yes, very different from my friend’s celebration – but pretty much perfect. Sure, there was a teenager with strep throat, but other than that – perfect. ;-)

We spent much of the afternoon working on the food: Breaded Chicken Fingers, meatballs in barbecue sauce, Twice-Baked Potatoes, my friend Brit’s Mexican Cheese Dip, fruit plate and homemade brownies. I also roasted 2 chickens (and Mick de-boned them) for the White Chicken Chili we planned to have on New Year’s Day. The girls helped with the food and dish-washing, while Erica and Sarah put together a photo album of pictures from 2014. I don’t know why this is, but it’s so nice to be able to hold and look through an actual photo album, rather than just digital images on a screen. It just seems more relaxing.

Late in the afternoon, Sarah blew up nearly all the balloons for the balloon drop by herself. I don’t know how she did it without hyperventilating! She said she felt a “little dizzy” toward the end. HA! Meanwhile, after a phone call to the doctor’s office, Mick had to make a quick run to get some antibiotics for poor Rachel; she spent most of the evening on the couch. :-(

Us looking sad because Rachel was sick.  I love Claire’s pose! 

After we ate dinner, interrupted by toast after toast (I think someone toasted to “toasts” :-D ), we played “Big Boggle” (25 letters instead of 16), the dice game and charades. Always fun to play charades with kids; the ever-helpful Trent told us what he was going to be before he acted it out. Ha!

The countdown, as always, ended up with lots of rushing around at the last minute, trying to get the glo-gear unwrapped and assembled. Some of those things were pretty complicated!! So, we ended up counting down about 10 minutes after we intended to. HA! Oh well – the balloons still dropped and everybody was happy. :-)

 

Happy New Year to all!

		New Year's Eve 2014 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Profoundly Thankful

I love looking through old pictures. It’s especially fun to find a really good one that you don’t remember ever seeing. This morning, I found this one of Trent taken two years ago, just past his second birthday.

There have been many moments since he was hospitalized that I’ve been particularly struck with thankfulness that he is still with us. Often, it happens during special occasions: his birthday, of course, watching him open his Christmas gifts, toasting the old and new years last night. And then, unexpectedly, this morning, when I came across this picture of him that I don’t remember ever seeing. I had two immediate reactions:

Awwwww … look how gorgeous he is, and

Wow … I’m so very thankful he’s still with us.

Thankful that I wasn’t looking at this picture of his little face in an “In Memoriam” kind of way … wondering what he might look like as a four-year-old.

To many, that might sound strange and maybe even a little macabre, but that is how my thought processes tend to go these days.

I know our older girls have a changed perspective, too. Not long after Trent came home, as Courtney was stepping over his toys, she suddenly said “I’m so glad we still have his little toddler messes!” More thankfulness. Were we ever thankful for his messes before last August?

Sometimes, it surprises and disappoints me that I can still have times of anger, frustration and discontent over things that are so minor compared to what we went through. It’s just more evidence of our fallen natures, of course. But thankfully, God gives us all these moments -- the big milestone events and the little things like the discovery of a photograph -- to remind of us His goodness and mercy. And we are profoundly thankful for all those moments … and for our healthy little boy.

 

  

Prying Pup

We’re planning to put together a photo album on New Year’s Eve with pictures we’ve taken throughout 2014. Kind of a “Year in Review” thing. So, I spent literally hours yesterday combing through all the pictures we’ve taken, picking out the ones that give a feel for what the year was like. I think I’ve got them all picked out and as of now, we have 268 pictures! Here’s a screen shot of a small portion of them

Notice the one of Samson in that screen shot? Here’s what it looks like:

 

Cracks me up!  I’m not sure who took this – I’d bet Courtney. It gives you a good insight into Samson’s personality. I doubt you could get a picture of Jack like this – he doesn’t slow down long enough. But Samson is the slower, more calm one. And he’s always right there. HAS to know what you’re doing at all times.  Ha!

Christmas 2014

 

With all the Nutcracker craziness and some extra work opportunities to take advantage of early in the month, much of our December activities were squeezed into the week before Christmas. I did the vast majority of my shopping from December 19 – 23 (I even bought one gift on Christmas Eve morning!!). I’ve never done my shopping that late, but that’s just the way things played out this year. In the end, I was just incredibly thankful we had the money to get the things we wanted for the kids (and more!), but more importantly, that we all stayed healthy this year!! Not even the sniffles on Christmas Eve and Day! What a blessing that was!

We did have our second annual Christmas Tea here at home, even though we couldn’t find time until December 23rd. Like last year, we moved our school room table into the piano room which was so much more cozy than the long dining room table.

  

Hmmmm … I don’t know why I don’t have a picture of Rachel from our tea. She was there. Oh wait – here she is …

 

Oh yeah, this is something else that happened in the days leading up to Christmas. We found out Rachel got accepted to Butler! Very exciting and we made a special trip down to Indy to snap this quick picture of her at the campus entrance. Our girl is “Butlerbound”!

So, back to the Christmas prep. The girls were asked to sing at our Christmas Eve service, so they had quite a few practice sessions, working on a special arrangement of “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus” and their parts. As usual, the others were a little distracted with pre-Christmas excitement, while Rachel had laser-like focus on getting the song just so. This is pretty typical. HA! 

Christmas Eve was spent driving down to Mom and Dad’s to greet the Virginia Ramseys (YAY!), the usual mad dash to the Noots for caroling (42 of us this year!), then back up to church for our wonderful Christmas Eve service, culminating in the traditional candlelit singing of “Silent Night.”

The girls wanted us to wake them up early, so they could open presents while it was still dark, but when I got up a little before 7, I could hear some noises (Sarah told me later she’d actually been awake since about 4:30! Ahhh … memories of my youth.  :-) ). By the time we got everything ready, it was just starting to get light (no need for a flash for the camera. Yesssss.).

We spent not only Christmas Eve and Day at Mom and Dad’s, but ended up driving down there the 2 days after Christmas, just to spend as much time as possible with the Ramseys before they headed back to Virginia today. We watched home movies, had an adults-only trip to BJs for dinner on Friday night, and basically spent a lot of time relaxing and eating.

And now, Christmas 2014 is behind us. During the season, there were moments of great beauty and wonder, times of joyful anticipation of celebrating that great moment in time when God came near to us in such an unusual and awesome way. Of course, not every moment was a “Kodak moment.” There were still times of everyday busyness (school, work, bills, chores, …), times of frustration and strife, disappointments and letting go of some expectations. As Christians, we work hard to keep a balance between honoring the birth of our Lord in a way that seems fitting while knowing that “in this world you will have trouble.” Thankfully, none of that changes the fact that Christ did come, and his birth marked the beginning of His work here on Earth on our behalf – a work which was perfect and sufficient in every way.

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” -- Luke 2:11

 

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