Happy New Year!

I may not get a chance to update this blog until 2006. Just in case, I want to wish you all a Happy New Year, and I hope you have fun celebrating!

We've had quite a year in our little Anderson world.

1) We bought a house!!! We've "staked our claim" here and made a big step together. It is such a warm and cozy house, and I love everything about it. We even have great neighbors--all the little kids on our block come over every day to ask John to come out and play football! We're so proud and happy to have a place to call our own and it makes coming home each day that much better.

2) John graduated! Finally, after 4 institutes of higher education and 10 years he has a degree. He worked so hard for it, sacraficed a lot of time, and I'm so proud of him. It's already paying off for him which brings me to our next 2005 blessing....

3) Promotions! John and I both enjoyed promotions this year at work. It never hurts to be thankful for being promoted. We're gainfully employed and both (for the most part) really enjoy what we do. John will even be getting a company car in February, which means we can get a new car for me!

4) We added to our family! I know you all think I must be cat-obsessed, since I post pictures of them all the time, but that is what home is for us. We adopted our little cat, Faith in September and she's been so much fun. I think she's even mellowed Max out quite a bit, and she makes us very happy.

5) Our families are healthy! We have two awesome nephews, 3 great sisters, a great brother-in-law, 4 awesome parents, 4 grandparents (who are great, but are not great-grandparents), wonderful aunts and uncles, and each other. You've heard me say many times how blessed we are to have most of our family so close by and how wonderful it is to have them all so close. Having a happy, healthy family that we love and are connected to is amazing.

6) The Sooners had a winning season! I know, it wasn't an undefeated, National Title season, but it was still a lot of fun to watch. And it ended up a lot better than it could have. We love football. I wish every day was a football day, except March Madness because it's pretty fun to watch basketball during March!

7) We have each other. Recently, we've had some friends who have experienced serious tragedy in their lives, most notably John's friend, Andy who lost his wife at age 27. He's now spending his time at the hospital nursing their brand new, premature daughter to health and fighting his own battle with cancer. It's experiences like this that make me shutter in horror at the thought, and makes me value John beyond comprehension. It shouldn't take a tragedy to realize that, but we are so fortunate to have each other every day.

Which brings me to resolutions:
1) Spend more time laughing, less time getting angry
2) Get in shape!
3) Learn something new (anything!!)

Happy New Year!