Out With The Old

And In With The New

Image Source: openclipart.org

Another year has run it's course, and we struggled rolled with the punches.  Was it a bad year?  Not entirely, but it was difficult at times.

Here are a few highlights of 2014:

Winter and Spring passed with barely a nod since hubby spent much of the first half of the year traveling for his job.  We did have a good snow storm and a bad ice storm complete with power outage.

On the home front, I continued with the routine chores and looking after the cats.  Part of those chores included yard work, which resulted with me doing a face plant into the neighbors wooden fence.  Let me tell you that smarted and left me with an awesome shiner. Amazingly, other than the bruised face, there wasn't another scratch on me.

We helped a good friend celebrate her 80th birthday.  She was certainly surprised when she was escorted to a dinner with 15 of her closest friends.

We traveled to Pennsylvania to visit Ashley and her family.  That was a week filled with fun, laughter and shared friendship.  We went to an amusement park, took a steam train ride and found a lovely small town zoo in which to meander about.

Insert more business travel.  Sigh!

In October we made our nearly-annual trek to Madeira Beach (St. Petersburg, FL).  There we ate copious amounts of seafood, went fishing at Ft. DeSoto, and took a dolphin watch cruise. My favorite non-seafood meal was DeLosa's pizza eaten on our balcony at sunset.

November brought the devastating loss of Dood at age 14.  He was always the healthiest of our cats, so his brief illness and subsequent passing a little more than a year after Rosie really rocked our world.

There are always holiday memories, whether we want to remember them or not.  I choose to remember them...even when one of them is of my feet going out from under me on the dance floor at a Christmas party.  That it was our wine club Christmas party is irrelevant, right? Sorry, no pictures or video. 

Now we have a new year before us.  May it be filled with hope and joy, laughter and friendship, love and peace!  Welcome to 2015.

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Quote of the Week

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.  - Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Lucky Bee Press

New Year's resolutions are overstated and overrated.  Rather than put pen to paper and list all that we hope to begin, change or achieve, let's take the blank pages of the New Year and give ourselves permission to live one chapter at a time.





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Quote of the Week

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.  

- Roy L. Smith

Merry Christmas from our house to yours.

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Quote of the Week

 It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.  

- Edmund Hillary

Image Source: Wikipedia

Born in 1919 in New Zealand, Sir Edmund Percival Hillary was a mountaineer, explorer and philanthropist. He and a Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer were the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953.  After his climb, he held a life-long passion for helping the Sherpa through a trust that he founded.

The mountain is only a physical obstacle. In facing what life puts before us and persevering, we gain strength and confidence, ultimately overcoming our personal obstacles.

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A Christmas Puzzle

Christmas is a joyful time of year, but we put so much pressure on ourselves to find the perfect gift, or the right outfit for the party. So, let's all take a break from the hustle and bustle and stress of the holiday season and work a puzzle.  It's simple and colorful and will only take you about 5 minutes to complete. Just click on here Christmas Puzzle  to begin. (Note, the picture above is not the puzzle picture.)

A few tips - the pieces are not set in their final positions, they can be turned by degrees by right clicking on the piece.  In other words if it looks like it is the bottom right corner, it may actually be the top left corner. The same applies to all the pieces, otherwise it wouldn't be any challenge at all.

You can also view just the border or just the middle or all the pieces, and you can change the number of pieces to increase the difficulty, and you can preview the picture like looking at the box lid to a regular jigsaw puzzle.

It is timed, but just have fun with it, and if you enjoy it, feel free to share it.

Merry Christmas!