I wish each and every one of you a happy New Year in 2008! We will be spending New Year’s Eve with family and friends, eating all sorts of yummy food, visiting, and playing games. We’re supposed to take Rotel Dip and chips, Coke, and Sopapilla Cheesecake, so I had better go get busy in the kitchen. But before I start cooking, I want to say, “Blessings in 2008!”

I have been so busy this past week with Christmas and visiting with different relatives that I haven’t written much on my blog.  Hopefully, this next week will not be quite so hectic and I’ll be able to write more.  So… please bear with me and I should be back to writing on a daily basis real soon.  Also, our daughter and son-in-law gave me a digital camera for Christmas, and I’m so excited to have my very own camera and to not have to borrow our son’s anymore.  I plan to incorporate pictures into more posts starting in January. 

“The Party Starts Here.com!” has just about every kind of invitation you can think of, including your traditional kid’s party invitations as well as holiday invitations, first communion invitations, open house invitations, wedding invitations, and even pet party invitations. They also have photo cards, graduation announcements, thank you cards, and birth announcements.   They have cards for all occasions and also offer exclusive designs and custom designs.

For more than 19 years, Outer Banks has been a reliable source of vacation rentals.  They have been featured in the Washingtonian magazine and have had more than 6500 customers this year alone.  They represent only the finest rental beach homes and have rentals in Corolla, Duck, Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, Nags Head & Southern Shores where you can enjoy the beach and relax.  Sounds like a great place to retreat and get away from the stresses of this busy world.

Dear Readers, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Our family had a wonderful Christmas together. We had Christmas Eve dinner at M’s house. We were all together: my husband, our daughter & son-in-law & Baby J, our son, “M” who is our son-in-law’s mother, and his sister. Then we had dinner on Christmas Day at our house.

Last Christmas Eve, we found out the wonderful news about our daughter expecting a baby. And now this Christmas Eve, we talked about the awesome blessing and joy that four month old Baby J is bringing to our lives.

As I sat rocking my precious grandson to sleep, I thought about how over two thousand years ago Mary rocked her baby Jesus to sleep. One of my favorite Christmas songs says it this way, “Mary rocked her savior to sleep.” Mary must have had so many thoughts going through her head as she rocked her precious bundle of joy. She must have relived her encounter with the angel Gabriel who told her she would have a baby who would be the son of the Most High. She probably relived her visit with the shepherds who came and shared with her and with Joseph about the angels visit with them in the field where they were told “good news of great joy.” This young mother, Mary, had the most awesome experience that any mother could have…rocking and cuddling her precious baby who would bring good news and great joy to the whole world.

There is so much to see and do in Florida. We went on vacation to Orlando two different summers. Each summer we went to Disney World and Universal Studios. One summer we rented a car and drove to the east coast and visited the Kennedy Space Center and several of the beaches along the east coast. Then we drove to the west coast and went to a couple of beaches along there. If you are going to Florida, you might consider an Orlando rental home.

If you have to clean up broken glass, carefully pick up the large pieces, place in a paper sack so they won’t tear a plastic garbage bag, and then place in the garbage. You can use a vacuum cleaner attachment to pick up the smaller pieces. If there are tiny pieces of glass that you can’t see very easily, then wet a cotton ball or Q-Tip to pick up the smallest pieces.