The End of the Year

Well this is my last opportunity to add one more post to my pitiful number of posts for 2010! I have to say that New Years has crept up on me rather as I've been under the weather a bit over the festive period - the snot monster has paid a prolonged visit but hopefully I'm on the way out of it's clutches now.

So 2010 has been a fabulous year for us. The safe arrival of Number 1 son in April changed our lives for the better as he's an absolute joy to have around and the family has definitely been enhanced by his presence. He is now nearly 9 months old and today crawled properly for the first time. He's a strong little chap and his favourite pastime is standing up holding onto our fingers. Oh and he also got his two front teeth for Christmas!

Number 1 daughter is also a delight - she's growing like a weed and still doing terrifically well at school. Her social life still dominates with swimming, ballet, Greek school and play dates defining our weekends. She'll be 6 in June and we're going to surprise her with tickets to see the Wizard of Oz in London. I'm not big on kiddies parties and given she was obsessed with the search for Dorothy on TV and asks incessently if she can go to the show I thought it was a much better birthday treat. Plus I'm pretty sure the cost of the tickets is less than the cost of a party!

Next year sees me turning 40 (eek!) so we're having a big family party that also includes a Christening in the morning. The date was chosen and booked back in September so imagine my horror when Royalty decided to crash my party weekend LOL. The Royal Wedding is the day before our celebrations and has done us a favour by giving everyone that day off work so it's not all bad (but it was my weekend first!)

2011 is going to be the year of belt tightening in our house for sure. I go back to work in a week (10th Jan) and 80% of my wages will be going on childcare some months (it's a term time arrangement so some months we won't have to pay the full amount) which means there will be very little spare income for us. This is a good thing though as we've become very wasteful over the last few years and I think looking at ways to use what we have, spend less and generally become better at managing our lives can only be a good thing.

Looking back on 2010 I have been pretty good at reducing the junk in the house and not buying more stash but that was definitely just a practice run for 2011. I haven't had many finishes stitching wise (6) but I also haven't had many new starts (5, 4 of which were also finished) so my WIP list is still long but not increased. I've also read 42 books this year which is pretty good (I usually try for one a week). Hopefully next year those numbers will increase a bit as I won't have that 'new baby' issue that curtailed my productivity for a while.

Anyway, I'm going to post my 2011 goals tomorrow and have to sign off now to go play 'Guess Who' with Lia so I'll just finish up by wishing you all a Happy New Year and I hope that 2011 brings you all that you wish for.