Homeschool Memoirs: New Year Traditions

THEME
For this week, since I’m quite curious, post about what you did for New Year’s and what your traditions are each year. Have fun!

Click HERE to go to The Homeschool Post to read more.

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We don't really have anything traditional that we do here at all. Some years we go to friend's houses & hang out & play games. Some years we have folks come to our house & hang out & play games. Some years we put the kids to bed early & watch TV. It truly varies.

I already blogged about part of our New Years celebration for this year. You can read about it by clicking HERE.

What I neglected to tell you was that as soon as we tucked in the boys in to bed - around 8:30pm - we popped in a DVD to watch of one of our favorite TV shows, Bones. We get a lot of our series through Netflix & it makes the viewing faster & eliminates commercials. We typically watch anywhere from 2-4 episodes in a sitting.

We decided to go for all four episodes. I did well until about the third episode - nearing on 10pm at this point. I knew I was drifting in & out & finally just gave up. I missed the last fifteen minutes so hubby told me "who-dun-it-and-why." I sat up instead of reclining on the couch & munched some M&M's & drank some Diet Dew (my drink of choice) & managed to watch the rest of the the series.

Then we watched a bit of the ball dropping but I swear I missed it. Did they even show it? It seems like they showed a bit of it & then the 2009 sign. We were watching Dick Clark & I have to admit it was a tad painful to hear him talk. The poor man is in his late 70's & had a stroke. His speech is affected & it was hard to understand him at certain points.

So that was our exciting celebration for 2009.

One Little Word for 2009

A few years ago I heard about the concept of choosing a word for the year to help you focus on something you wanted to change or do or just that pertained to your life. Ali Edwards was the start of it back in 2007. She's doing it again for 2009. You can check out her blog to see what she is choosing for 2009 & why & also to enter a giveaway that she is holding about it.


If you decide to really jump in to this project, you may want to check out the One Little Word blog. They even had a Flickr group so you can share photos. The blog gives you lots of different ways to have your word front & center with some pretty neat projects.


So, what's my word?

~~FAMILY~~

And why did I pick that particular word? Let me share. But first, let's define it...


The online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary states that a family is...

1: a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head :

They have seven more definitions, but the first one is really what I'm looking at. Just to see how it would relate, I looked up "family" in the 1828 Webster Dictionary as well. Here is how it was defined then...

1. The collective body of persons who live in one house and under one head or manager; a household, including parents, children and servants, and as the case may be, lodgers or boarders.

Again, I chose just the first definition. There were five more there.


As 2009 starts tomorrow, I want my family to be my focus. I fear that for too long, I've allowed others things and people to be my focus - including myself. I see how my children react & act towards each other & my heart hurts too often. I want our time at home to be enjoyable. I want my sons to grow up to be best friends. I want our time together to be full of fun memories.


So my focus for 2009 will be my family. I can't wait.