Happy New Year's Eve!

Happy New Year's Eve!  To finish out our year, I did what any other thrifty person does and took advantage of 75% off sale of all Christmas decorations. We're now fully loaded with lights and wrapping paper for next Christmas. I took Charlotte out with me and hit up Chicken Salad Chick for lunch. It's our new "ladies lunch" place. We rounded out the day with a trip to Staples to buy more school supplies for tutoring so that I can write them off on my taxes. It was a weird mix of proactive and procrastinated purchasing all in one.

So while Charlotte and I enjoyed our lunch, I asked her what she thought were the best and worst moments for her in 2016. She gave me a list of best moments, but neither of us could come up with a decent worst moment. We both came up blank. I know the year looked awful in the news, but for the Dumonts, it was full of normal, happy moments. I think this was a year of depth for us. After spending the last 15 years widening our experiences, lengthening our list of former addresses, adding actual humans to the world and getting them to the point that they can dress, feed, and buckle themselves in the car, this year we grew deeper.

I hope everyone has a wonderfully safe, peaceful, joyful celebration of the end of another year!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Beauty, awe, and trust

Image
The past few days my mind has insisted on drifting back to Paris at every opportunity. Generally during the day there are too many sounds and responsibilities to merely sit and think. At night, however, my mind has been coming alive with memories. This time, my heart keeps going back to the Eiffel Tower. My first day in Paris was ridiculously perfect, but that evening was one of those surreal experiences that still feels halfway imagined. Actually, it's not even the Eiffel Tower that I keep picturing, it's walking in Paris afterwards. It was midnight, and we walked through a light rain. The city was quieter than I expected a major city to be. Hardly anyone was walking, there were few cars on the roads. We walked by this one restaurant with a red awning that was full of boisterous cyclists celebrating the end of the Tour de France. The rain made the city lights sparkle. The lights weren't harsh and florescent. Instead, they all had a soft, warm, incandescent glow that made t...
Read more

I think people wouldn't like me as much if I had a better filter.

Hello, friends. So. We all have that thing or two that is our signature trait; the thing that people identify us with. I have two, but only one is applicable for today because someone said it to me this morning, and then I exhibited it this evening. People tell me that I tell the truth. Bluntly. Or that I say the things that they wish they could say. Some people admire it, but really, I just lack a filter. I see it as more of a fault, but there ya go. The thing is, I don't share nearly enough for me to feel all "transparent" or whatever the new buzzword is for today. I generally feel like I hide most of the things we're all supposed to hide. And then I'll say something like I said tonight, and I think to myself "Oh. Yeah. That's why people say I'm blunt." This evening as I was talking to another mom, she asked me about homeschooling. She admitted she didn't know very much about it and it seemed overwhelming. Then she asked about testing and...
Read more

Goodbye to you.

Hello, friends. Despite my lack of posting, I've been doing a decent amount of writing, and it's good. I mean, I know I shouldn't say that, but a few things are really  good. You know how I know? I know because I can't bring myself to let anyone else actually read it. So there ya go. But really, here's the thing.  Everything that I want to say doesn't seem to fit in this space anymore. I started this blog mostly as a way to keep friends and family up to date as we moved or they moved...everybody was always moving. Then it morphed into a place to say some of the things. Not all  the things because I like to keep friends and acquaintances in my life. Even so, it was a place to drop some of my thoughts that needed to be dropped for the people that want to keep up with our world.  Now I've settled down enough that I can be slightly more focused. And so...I think this is the end of this blog. It's a little sad, but it's long overdue. This dinky littl...
Read more