Living Large In Our Little House

Ah, another year com­ing to a close.

Time for res­o­lu­tions and for some of you, black eyed peas.

Like most of you, I find it fairly easy to make New Year’s res­o­lu­tions, but it’s much harder to stay on point and keep them through­out the year.

For the past few years, my res­o­lu­tions have been few. I try to remem­ber that each day is a new one and that we need to work toward our goals each day, not just at the turn of the yearly calendar.

I always resolve to read more and set a book goal. I haven’t reached it yet, but maybe one day I will.

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We cel­e­brated with friends last week­end, so we're look­ing for­ward to a quiet week­end here at Our Little House. Dale gets a 4-day week­end, so we have some errands planned and he has some fire­wood to cut and split while I have my office to organize.

We'll enjoy some time with a few movies and eat­ing some of our favorite foods.

I'll enjoy the last few nights of the Christmas lights before we put every­thing away for another year.

To all of our Living Large com­mu­nity that cel­e­brates, I wish you a very Merry Christmas!

What do you have planned for the hol­i­day weekend?  

I received over 200 greet­ings for my birth­day on Facebook. I know, right? Wow!

Facebook makes it easy to send birth­day greet­ings to those you are con­nected with by remind­ing you each day of a friend’s spe­cial day.

The thing is, the same thing that is mak­ing it easy to send greet­ings via a few clicks of the key­board is also mak­ing it easy not to send greet­ings via the good old fash­ioned tele­phone. I sup­pose, for some peo­ple who are pre­dis­posed to with­draw­ing socially, it is also mak­ing it eas­ier for them to become recluses.

Friends and fam­ily, the ones I main­tain con­tact with in the real world, vs. my con­nec­tions on social media, tra­di­tion­ally would call on my birthday.

One friend would always call and sing “Happy Birthday.” Another would always call me by 8 a.m. on my birth­day, because she knew this was a tra­di­tion that my mother kept and she took up the baton after my mother died.

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I was hav­ing a lit­tle trou­ble get­ting into the hol­i­day spirit here at Our Little House. It didn’t have any­thing to do with feel­ing blue; I think there are just those years when the hol­i­days sneak up on a person.

I got out my Christmas sweater and headed out to The Nutcracker with a friend in November. While the per­for­mance was awe­some and the com­pany good, it didn’t put me in the mood. I then put the lights out on our decks and put up the tree.

Not until this week did the spirit of the sea­son really hit. I’m now ready to fin­ish our lim­ited shop­ping and get those cards addressed and in the mail.

What really put me in the mood was to read a cou­ple of heart-warming sto­ries that are exam­ples of the true rea­son for the sea­son (and a gift of hol­i­day music sent by a Living Large reader helped too!)

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