Raise Your Glass

Happy New Year!! I can't believe it is almost 2012 - just a couple more hours left in 2011. What a year is was for us - wonderful in some ways and heart breaking in others. 

I found some printables online thanks to Money Saving Mom for the kids and we talked about them tonight at dinner...while sitting at our new dining table!!! (yay! More on that next week, including pictures)  I want to make these printables another tradition for us. I like getting the kids to think about the year just past and the year ahead.  Harrison was asleep during dinner so I wasn't able to get information from him but here's what I learned about the girls:

Elizabeth loves tacos (I'd have said Chinese food). Her favorite book this year was Charlotte's Web.  Annie loves pizza and her favorite book was "That little Winnie-the-Pooh thing" (seriously, I love how silly she is)  Nin loves ravioli and her favorite books were the Mr. Putter and Tabby series. For each of them, the hardest thing about this year was that their PawPaw died. For Elizabeth, another hard thing was her close friend moving to Florida in August. And for Katherine, another hard thing was one of her friends moving to Florida in September.  Elizabeth's favorite memory was spending lots of time with her Grammie in the summer and seeing Mr. Popper's Penguins. Nin's favorite memory was playing with her friends. Annie's was becoming friends with Jane. Elizabeth wants to learn more math, she wants to get better at making cards for her friends and she wants to go to American Girl store. Katherine wants to learn more math, get better at reading and she's not sure where she wants to go.  Annie wants to learn more math, get better at reading and she wants to go to Grammie's now that she's six years old.

Lalaloopsy dolls were a favorite toy this year AND a favorite Christmas gift, too.  They also remembered the tons of snow we got in February and the super hot summer we had (114° in Little Rock - hottest day EVER). And they think it's really bad to be bitten by one of your siblings. That made me laugh.

While we did have some sorrows this year, we also had some wonderful things happen as well. We saw relationships deepen, new friendships developed - great things!

And, of course, I got a photo of us sitting around the table "toasting" the new year (at about 8:00p.m.) with our sparkling apple cider (and apparently we need to start buying two bottles of that stuff - the kids love it).

Wishing you a year filled with blessings!