goofballs.

This past week Dan and I have been hanging out up in Anchorage with my family for Christmas/New Years.  We spent Christmas in Tacoma and then flew up a couple days later.  It was so good to spend some time with my family.  A couple days into our trip my Macbook Pro decided it was no longer going to turn on, and upon a trip to the Apple store we found out that my hard drive was completely dead.  Thankfully, we took it to the Mac store and they put in a new, bigger(!), hard drive, and were able to salvage all my data off the old hard drive!  Yay!  It was actually really nice to have an excuse to have some technology-free quality time with the people I love most in the world.  No distractions, just family.

My family had decided on taking some goofy Christmas photos this year, so we all donned Santa hats, and had a cigar and a glass of brandy.  Silliness ensued.  There was some hamming it up for the camera, as you can tell.  After 26 years of "normal" Christmas photos, something had to give.  For a family full of goofballs, I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner!

  
This year I really want to be focused on being thankful.  Constantly.  Through the good and the bad.  I'm a naturally controlling person, and I get stressed out when things don't happen the way I want them to, or when I feel like I'm not doing enough or being enough, which is really just another way of trying to control things.  I want to be more aware that everything around me is an astounding gift.  Life is so much like falling in love.  At the beginning, your heart is bursting and every tiny things is thrilling.  But eventually it becomes regular, and the thrill is lost and you start to take it for granted.  And you get annoyed at things you used to find charming.  It's entropy, but that doesn't mean I can't combat it by making a conscious effort to be thankful and gracious every day.  I've been hearing about people choosing a word or theme for 2013, and I hadn't really thought of doing that before, but I would like to make 2013 about giving thanks.