10 for 2010

I still feel like I haven't put 2010 down in the books.  So I want to do a 10 list.  Boring, I know. But I have to have somewhere to remember all this stuff!!


10 events this Christmas that were either truly awesome or just awesome because I was so lame:

1. I forgot 3 presents until late on Christmas day.  As in, we were done watching the kids open presents and Shane looked at me and said, Didn't we get Ben a pillow pet?  Oh, yeah.  I pulled it nonchalantly out of its hiding place and stuck it behind a chair and then said, Ben, what's that??  It didn't fool them. I admitted that I had forgotten to wrap it. 
2. Then on Christmas night, I remembered the books I had bought them.  I just handed those over, too. Sigh.  Awesome, right?
3. I wanted a Nike+ watch and got one.  But then it got taken back when I realized I could use my iPod with my Nike+ sensor.  Now I just want to run a lot so that I can see my running on the Nike+ website.  Why running seems more official on a website, I don't know. But it does.
4. Shane got me a running jacket that I have worn 24/7 ever since. It has really long sleeves and holes for your thumbs to go through so you don't have to run with mittens. I wonder if people just think we had to buy the jacket with holes in it. But I don't care. It rocks.
5. Shane got a nice socket set and some drill bits.  And this is what he wanted from me.  Okay then. Boys like strange things.
6. Thomas has talked about a PokeyWalker for his Pokemon obsession for months.  He got one of those.  It has a pedometer and he likes to wear it to count his steps.  I still don't understand boy toys after 9 years.  Maybe one day I will.  Thank heaven Shane does.
7. My sweet niece announced she is pregnant with a baby girl due in April. I started to cry.  She has two boys.  Yeah.  I am very happy for her.  This means that I will have great-nieces or nephews born in April, May and June of 2011.  I better get sewing....
8. I brought home some divinity and some fudge from my moms. I'm still nibbling on the fudge.
9. It was awesome to spend our first Christmas in our new house.
10. Mm, I made breakfast casserole AND pull-a-parts.  Yum.  Really, the food was the most awesome part of Christmas.

9 things I wish I would have blogged about:

1. The awesome (if I do say so myself) wedding gift (above) I made for my bestest friend Rebecca.
2. Our San Diego trip.  We had such a good time and it totally got eclipsed by our car getting totalled the day after we got home.
3. How happy the new friend I made in my ward has made me.  We have kind of danced around each other for months, both being too shy to really make a connection, but a few weeks ago she invited me to do some service with her.  I went and we had a great time together.  Yay for tender mercies.
4. That we have only had to shovel twice this year due to our awesome retired neighbors. We come home from work and they have already snow blowed our driveway.  I was sad to leave our old house, but we really do have some nice people on our new street.
5. How I am a lot more comfortable in my house now that it's winter. During the summer, we kind of just slept here, since most of our time was spent doing our yard and other outdoor stuff.  I didn't feel really at home here until it got to be cold and we have spent so much time together in it.  I love having the family room right off the kitchen; being able to see everyone while I was cooking stuff for Thanksgiving and Christmas was a fun experience. And I love cutting fabric for projects on the island in the kitchen. It is the perfect height for a rotary cutter and mat.  I'm sure that is what they were thinking it would be used for when they built it.
6. How much I love my new-to-me sewing table Shane made for me.  I still am a novice sewer, but not having to sew over the hump has improved things vastly.
7. That I should really give up Dr. Pepper again but don't know if I have the emotional reserve to do it.  Why should something like that take such resolve? It's dumb, really.
8. I feel really, really lucky to have the job that I have. They are so good to me and it's such a great place to work.  I have worked there for 11 1/2 years, and I can't imagine ever leaving.  I know I was being watched over when they employed me.  And I appreciate what working does for me emotionally.  I can get in such a rut when I stay home because I am not used to it.  Being able to get out a few days of the week and feel appreciated does a lot for me in all aspects of my life. 
9. And conversely, how glad I am that I get to be home with my kids a few days of the week. I like being home when they get home and getting them started on their homework.  To quote Miley: The best of both worlds...

8 Meals that got us through 2010:

1. Taco Tuesday.
2. Vegetable wraps.  I started buying frozen breaded chicken breasts and adding to these. This was a great dinner until I tried to branch out on wing sauces for the chicken. Two bottles of wing sauce in a row were absolutely horrific to taste. I can still have nightmares about one of them.  If you aren't sure if it's good or not, don't make it part of dinner.
3. Breakfast casserole.  I first made this for Thomas' baptism.  I love having breakfast for dinner.
4. Red burritos.  Amy shared this with me years ago.  I love to make them to take when I get asked to make a meal for someone in the ward.  They can feed 4 or 14 with very little effort.  I add a pouch of Uncle Ben's Spanish Rice to mine.  Mmm.
5. Spaghetti.  My kids hate spaghetti noodles, so I make it with garden rotini noodles.  Mm.
6. Pizza.  Shane makes a mean pizza.  We like pepperoni, olives and pineapple.
7. Eggles.  This is something Shane invented.  Toast a bagel.  Top one side with provolone cheese and add a fried egg.  Oh, it's so good I could eat them every day.
8. Pasta salad and hamburgers.  We ate this dinner for most Sunday nights until it got cold.  I make a pasta salad with a sun-dried tomato dressing that is really good (if I do say so myself.)

7 babies I made blankets for:

1. Zach (born in 2009, but I didn't finish the blanket until 2010!)
2. Kaysen
3. Lucy
4. Mia
5. Elsie
6. Baby Johnson
7. Baby Figlioli (these last two were from my new ward and I can't remember the names of the babies! Ach, I am getting old.)

6 shows we watched a lot:

1. Mad Men.  We went through all three seasons this year.  I feel it is a guilty pleasure, because it isn't a very...upstanding show.  But the story line is amazingly good and the actors are so believable.  I'm hooked.
2. Phineas and Ferb.  Can I admit that I love these cartoon characters?  They are so good natured and don't have evil laughs like the characters on Cartoon Network. Does anyone else hate CN?
3. The finale of Lost.  Sorry, Britt: I loved it.  It was perfect, in my opinion.  There was such an elegance to the end.  The show was always so open to interpretation that I liked seeing what they would have done had they made it to LAX after all.
4. 30 Rock.  That Tina Fey is so smart.  Naughty, but very smart and hilarious.
5. Glee.  I have gotten addicted lately. 
6. The Office.  We have loved this one for a while now.

5 things I want to do better in 2011:

1. Do things for my kids the first time.  I put them off and then expect them to do what I ask the first time I ask it.  It smacks of hypocrisy and I want to weed it out.  This will be hard for me!!!  I also need to be more patient.  I respond too often with impatience.
2. Teach my kids about service.  The other day, we went around helping some neighbors clear driveways of snow.  Thomas came out with me and kept saying, this is awesome, helping people.  I realized I have done little to inspire service in my children.
3. Get back to running regularly.  Do some weight training or something to work away all this jiggle.
4. Make little steps around the house to make things go smoother.  I have been reading the FlyLady emails, and while I don't think I can do all of them (getting dressed right off the bat is just not going to happen!!) I like the idea of a lot of them.
5. Try to do things to make other's lives better and brighten their life.  Receiving notes in the mail always makes me happy so I'd like to do that for others more.

4 best days of 2010:

1. June 18-19.  Ragnar.  I know I have talked a lot about this, but I just had such a good time with it.  I am the team captain for our 2011 team, gulp.  I hope it goes okay.
2. September 27, when we pulled back into San Diego.  I loved returning to our beach vacation. And being able to share it with my niece, nephew, and great-nieces was just perfect.
3. July 10, when we put down our sod.  It was awesome to finally have a yard again!!
4. November 1, when we finally had real insurance (with dental!!) for the first time in 5 years. Sigh of relief.  So glad we have it.

3 songs I listened to a lot:

1. Beyonce, All the Single Ladies.  Not a song I would normally love, but I do.
2. Prince, Little Red Corvette.  It's old as the hills, but will always remind me of 2010.
3. Neal Diamond, America. I added this to my iPod before Ragnar and will always remember listening to it on my first leg.

2 things I'm looking forward for in 2011:

1. That we have 9am church.  It sucks waking everyone up, but I love having it be done and over by lunchtime.
2. Watching my new bulbs come up this spring.  I planted crocus, daffodils, and tons of tulips last fall. I can't wait for them to emerge!! It was hard to leave my bulbs from my old house.

1 thing I want to do more of:

1. Enjoying my boys.  Not getting so annoyed at their boyishness. This is my last year of having 2 kids under 10 years old. Soon I will have a tween; soon both my kids will be in all day school; soon they will be bigger than I ever imagined them being.  I have to enjoy them now.