The holiday season kind of snuck up on us this year, mostly because we have been pretty darn busy all year long. I remember sitting down with Amy before last summer, saying that we should come up with a list of goals for the year. Some of the things that we decided that we wanted to do were:
- Visit my Aunt and Uncle's cottage in Meaford Ontario
- Have a couple of big blow out parties / bbq's for our friends and family
- Plan a big vacation (Japan or Hawaii)
- Organize the basement (it wasn't any where near a disaster, but still needed a bit of straightening)
- Fix up the lawn/landscaping
Looking back, I'll be damned if we didn't do all of those things. The one that I was really skeptical about was going to Japan, just because it involved taking so much time off of work, and is a pretty expensive trip). Not only did we pull that off, but we managed to stop in Hawaii for a few days on the way over!
We had numerous parties and get togethers over at our house this past year, including a few that had around 30 people or so. We ended the year with having people over at the house 3 nights in a row (poker night, UFC fight night, and a New Years Eve party).
I even got off of my ass and fixed up the lawn. By trial and error I started figuring out what to do, and it really shows, especially in comparrision to the yards of some of our neighbors (most of them are really nice, but there are a few that could use some work). I laid down all kinds of fertilizer and bug and weed killer and holy smokes - no more brown spots or holes. And our friend Pam even showed/helped how to mulch around the house and fix up the shrubs and such.
Usually at the end of the year things slow down a bit and I have at least a few days to relax, and it looked like that wasn't going to happen this year. I ended up being most of the week following Christmas (though I did manage to get a few hours in at the gym every day). However when Friday rolled around I had had enough, and made some time to relax.
I ended up getting 10 bazillion Christmas presents this year, mainly because everyone kept asking me what I wanted, and I couldn't think of anything, so I just went to Amazon and added a bunch of books to my wish list. My lovely wife basically went out and bought every single one of 'em, so I had a whole big stack of books to read. So over the long weekend I made some time for that, and of course some time for all of the parties we hosted.
All in all a great time, and all in all a great year. Looking forward to 2007.
