Happy New Year

Today was a good day. Nothing planned, nothing expected......and it was a good day! Dh (whom I will refer to as Race Bannon (ya know, ala Johnny Quest) from here on out), took the kids to the highschool track today. He is training for a 50 mile marathon, to be run in the spring. The kids rode bikes and played baseball while he was training. Austin(13) was enlisted to help his dad with his sprints-you know, give him someone to run after,.........well, Race could only beat him by a step EVERY time! He has been training that kid a little too well. Savannah(10) took her bike, and had fun riding around the track, and surprisingly, she did some sprinting as well. Although in her mind she pretended to be running from cenataurs?? the whole time, and NOT competing. Jack(7) took his catching gear, and caught some balls for Austin. While everyone was gone, I got a few minutes to myself. I made some coffee, and caught up on some phone calls that I needed to make.
We have a tradition on January 1st. Every Christmas since Austin was born we have made a gingerbread house. On Jan.1st, the kids demolish and eat it!! This is SOoo much for fun for them than all of the time we spent creating it! It was almost 70 degrees today, so they took it out on the deck, and had a blast. I picked up the pieces and swept off the deck. They went down to our creek to visit the fort ,that they spent weeks building before Christmas, to find it still standing strong. Our neighbor came over for a visit. She is 16, and her parents are in the middle of a divorce. She has always come over here to talk, and to just get ot of the house. She was pleasant, and enjoyed seeing all of Savannah's Barbie Fairies that she got for Christmas. We had a nice visit, and then she went back home. We raked the rest of the leaves in our yard-(you have NO idea what an accomplishment that this is for us).
We went to visit my sister Th, who lives @20 min. from us. She sent us home with some leftover Crab Bisque that she had made for New Years Eve. Now, if that wasn't heavenly enough, she had also made some lemon bundt cakes for the kids, and a larger lemon bundt cake for Race and I. O.K., a confession. Race and I literally scooped out that still-warm cake with our hands on the way home, and ate it. You have no idea how good this woman cooks!
When we got home, Race built a fire outside in our little camp fire-pit-area. The kids have been happily roasting hot dogs and marshmallows ever since.
Are you aware that there are college bowl games on this weekend? Well, there are. A LOT of Bowl games. So, we had Crab Bisque, and hot wings, while watching the Texas game.
All in all, a good start to the New Year. We are going to visit a new church in the morning. We will see how that goes. Well, we are off to burn leaves, and then bathe extremely dirty, sticky kids. We are so blessed. Happy New Year!