Twenty Twelve.

I love love love turning my calendar page to a new month but there is something even more exciting about hanging a brand new calendar with twelve months of blank space ahead. I am genuinely excited about what 2012 might hold for us!

I actually do make goals for each year and while I didn't openly share mine last year, I'm proud to say made significant progress towards each one. The only one that I totally flaked on was "learn to make really good buffalo wings". Shoot! That one will get bumped to 2012 along with some others that I'm not going to jinx by sharing.

We had a great time on New Year's Eve. We got together with friends and ate decadent food and played hysterical games! I LOVE to laugh with friends! I made both of these recipes over the weekend and both were a hit and too yummy not to share. Blue Cheese Bacon Dip and Stuffed Mushrooms. You're welcome!

John and I started the new year off with a climb up the Manitou Incline.

We've never done this hike together so that was kinda fun. Climbing up was the easy part. Going down was HORRIBLE because most of Barr Trail looked like this--that's icepack not fluffy snow. I took my trax but left them in the car because I didn't want to carry them on the hike up. That was a stupid, stupid mistake. I fell once on the way down and it wasn't pretty! It usually takes me about 35-40 minutes to walk/jog back down but it took us 1.5 hours yesterday. Anyway, it was a fun albeit treacherous start to the new year!

Other than that, we've been eating, watching football, eating, playing games (we love Just Dance for the Wii!), eating, and I think today we're going to get out for one last hurrah before John goes back to work. We've LOVED having him home with us. It's going to be sad to send him off to work on Wednesday after twelve days of family togetherness.

I mentioned in my last post that I'd share my word from 2011.
My word was: SHIFT
It means a slight change in position, direction, or tendency.
I definitely saw a shift in priorities, relationships, finances, and parenting this year. On top of that, I picked up a part-time job that shifted the structure of my days a bit.

I also mentioned that we came up with a family slogan for the year of twenty-twelve. It's live! live! live!
John blogged about it here (and he says things much more poetically than I do) but basically, we want to live life and enjoy it to it's fullest this year. I think we're already off to a good start. Happy New Year!!!