Welcoming in the New Year

Well it’s here – 2013. It’s good that the world didn’t come to an end like they predicted that it would on 12-21 and I’m also hoping that the ‘experts’ are wrong that with a year that ends in 13 and that it will be another great year for all of us.

So I’m not sure how you spent New Years Eve, but with William down in Tennessee at the Iowa State bowl game and Kyle in Iowa City with friends at the Iowa basketball game, Daryl and I headed to town after work and started out the night with a movie that he’s been wanting to see. We saw the movie, Lincoln, and Daryl loved it! He almost started to clap at the end of the movie because he liked it so much. Then off to West Union to see the lights that are up in the REC center park. With my sister working as a volunteer and pretty much living and breathing this project, I thought that I would know exactly what it was going to look like. Man was I wrong! When we turned off the main highway and was taking the side road to the park, all you could see was this faint glow and lights everywhere. Then when we got close, we realized just how many lights and decorations there really was. It was just beautiful and after talking with her that night, she said just wait until next year to see what they have planned. From there we met up with some friends and headed to listen to a local band play. The New Year ended up with fun hats and some good friends – how can you beat that?

So today, it was clean up day. I just hated to take down the Christmas tree and shutting off all the outside Christmas lights,  but I knew it was time. Our tree was still really holding it’s needles, and even though it did tip over in our living room 3 times! it was still an awesome tree. Every time it fell over, it meant that our floor was just that much cleaner. So after taking off the lights and the garland, outside the tree went.

This years tree was one of our prettiest trees yet!

Reno was in the house at this time and she was wondering just what in the world was going on. For some reason, I don’t think she understands the whole Christmas tree concept. She was in the house because it was so cold outside, and also pretty much that she’s just plain spoiled. I was doing some laundry this afternoon and saw the peacocks looking for some of the spilled corn by the bins and thought to myself that I think that they are really liking that Reno is in the house also. Otherwise there wasn’t any time that they could just hang out on the farm without the dogs always chasing them.

Some of the peacocks this afternoon working on eating the spilled corn

But now that the room is all cleaned, and the one great thing about when you take down the Christmas tree, it gives you some inspiration to rearrange the room. I’m pretty much locked in where the furniture goes, but I’m working on the extra pieces in the room to change it up again. I moved some of the smaller pieces of furniture around and I’m liking how it looks. Now I just have to fix the other rooms where I stole that furniture from.

As for tonight, Kyle has made it home, and William is on his way home. William should be home either late tonight or early tomorrow. Since it’s a new year and my goal is always to try to get better organized,  I started to work on updating the monthly calendar with birthdays and appointments. As for now it looks we will have some open weekends, so I’m hoping that we’ll be able to fill in some of those days with fun things to do. It always seems that January, February, and March in Iowa are very long months. I guess I could work on putting away the ornaments and the Christmas decorations that we took down. For some reason it’s so much more fun putting them up than putting them away. I think I’ll wait until this weekend to tackle this. No use rushing into it right? Good thing that I didn’t have a New Years resolution to stop procrastinating 🙂

Just some of the things that need to be stored again until next year