Happy New Year!

"Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right." -Oprah Winfrey

Yes, thank goodness for second (and third... and fourth...) chances! Happy 2013, everyone!

It's been a while since I've updated. I'm not going to make this a huge long update to cover everything, because trying to keep up is what gets my blog backed up to begin with. Here's a bit of what we've been doing:

• Went to a benefit concert at my old high school, raising money to help pay for a civics and arts center in my hometown. It was great!

  

  Picture from dinner before the concert. It's been a while since we've taken a picture together!                                       

• Had Thanksgiving with my family. Totally relaxing.
• Did my first Black Friday shopping in my hometown - and I did it by myself! I only got a couple things, but there was one bigger-ticket item I wanted that I was able to get: a KitchenAid stand mixer! I've used it several times since buying it, and I love it.

  

  The wait outside of Kohl's before midnight

                                  
                                            
• We switched David over from sleeping in a crib to sleeping in a toddler bed. Really, we just took one of the sides off the crib, and that works perfectly. He does really well in the bed, and we haven't had much trouble since the switch. :)
• I threw a Christmas gingerbread house-making and movie-watching party! It was fun! We watched the Christmas classic White Christmas.
                                                
• Went to California for Christmas with Jason's family. It was wonderful! And colder than I was expecting for California. And rainier. Yuck. But I loved it all the same! We also rented our first rental car while we were there so we could drive the 8-ish hours from Jason's aunt's house to his Dad's house, where he lives about an hour outside of LA. It was fun visiting him, and driving a 2012 car... if I ever own a car made in 2012, it'll be in 2020, just because we're never going to have a new car... *sigh*

  

  This is the beautiful car we drove. It was even red! Oh, I miss that car... Haha!

• I got sick during our trip to California. I had the nastiest sore throat. It was awful. Thankfully, we were able to relax a TON during the break, so that helped a lot.
• We came home to Ohio and there was SNOW on the ground! It's snowed a few times since then, and I love how beautiful everything is. I love the snow. As long as it doesn't come before December and it doesn't last after March. :)
• We celebrated Andrew's 4th birthday! He turned 4 on Sunday. I can't believe he's 4 years old. The time just passes so quickly... Anyway, he has his 4-year wellness appointment in about 45 minutes, so when I get back, I might do another update just about him and how he's grown.
• We celebrated New Year's with my parents! We spent the night at their house, and everything was really laid back. I read a book, we all watched tv, and the boys slept right through everything. Happy 2013!

And now we're back to the regular daily doings that are known as Life. It's always hard for me, going back to normal after the hustle and bustle and fun of the holidays. It's almost depressing, but I'm trying to keep my head up and have a good attitude and keep life fun. Maybe I'll make some cookies later today. ;)

Secret: I think my brain has a hard time multi-tasking. Or letting me do things outside of my normal patterns.  With my boys, I'm constantly frustrated or flustered because there's constant upheaval or chaos. My brain doesn't know how to process it all or how to begin to get things back to how they should be. I think this is part of the disorder I have (Auditory Processing Disorder, or something like that). The problem is, I don't know where to start to fix it. *sigh*