I have a few of them. I don’t take resolutions very seriously, but I might as well try to set some reasonable goals that might actually be achievable. So here goes.

1. In six more months I’ll be embarking on the life of a stay at home mom. I know it’s going to be fun and overwhelming and lots of hard work, but I am confident and think it will be a wonderful experience. My one major concern is losing what I have with Matt. If you haven’t figured it out yet, he’s my everything, and there is nothing I enjoy more than spending quality time with him. It really does fuel me. I know that our time  together will be harder to schedule, but I really want to commit to leaving energy and time for just us – even if it’s just five minutes a day.
2. Now that we have a backyard our time outside has actually shrunk because we don’t need to harness Berlin up and take her on a walk. I miss the hour that we used to spend outside every day, and I want to bring that back. Of course, the weather is pretty crummy now, but come spring and summer, you better see me outside more or else.
3. I’m going to start my very first garden this year! I’m likely to screw it up royally, but I’m going to try my hand at developing a green thumb. If nothing else, I aim to have really good fresh cucumbers.
4. Baking. I hate baking. I hate measuring things and being accurate. I’m a cook who loves to throw a bunch of things into my saute pan and come out with something completely unplanned. So I hate baking. But I’m going to try to bake something once a month.
5. Stay on top of our doctors visits. I need to find a good PCP for us and a pediatrician for Little Friend. Plus we could both use a trip to the eye doctor, and a dentist that is a little closer to our house.

A short list, but I think quite manageable. Do you have any good resolutions this year?

We’re back from a wonderful Christmas trip to the East Coast which was equal parts fun and equal parts relaxing. Now Matt’s back to work, and I’m actually starting to feel a bit more human which is motivating me to get this house in order and finally hang up some curtains. While I was a tad bit sick during our travels, a switch has flipped and now I am ravenous all the time and able to move around for more than five minutes without needing a nap. I’m not quite ready to say that pregnancy is great, but this part isn’t as bad as that last part was.

I’m going to do that thing that all bloggers do at this time of year. And I’m sure you’re sick of reading posts like this, but be grateful that I have officially stopped writing Christmas letters to include in my Christmas cards. You no longer have to suffer through that, so you can suck it up and deal with one teensy little post about my 2009.

• At the beginning of the year I emotionally strong-armed Matt into buying a new car. While it was one of the best purchases we’ve ever made, we have both agreed that I am never allowed to emotionally strong-arm again. Female manipulation is the world’s worst character trait, so let it be said that the 2008 Nissan Versa was my last experience with it. Although, Honey, the baby really wants a Subaru Outback.
• I had to say goodbye to my last living Grandpa. I really do miss him very much. And now I’m watching as his wife fights cancer. It doesn’t make sense at all.
• We packed up our apartment in Taxachusetts and drove to the nation’s reddest state where Matt had gotten himself a nice new little job to pay the bills. I had never been to Tennessee before but decided before stepping foot across the state line that I would love it. And I do.
• I got pregnant and eight weeks later lost the very first thing I had ever loved as much as Matt. This experience changed me more than anything else I’ve experienced in my life. It might sound cliche, but there really isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think about that baby and miss it.
• We met some awesome friends in our new hometown of Nashville that helped to overcome some of the sadness of leaving really great friends in our old hometown.
• We vacationed with family in familiar and beautiful places.
• We bought our first house.
• We demolished the kitchen in our first house.
• We rebuilt the kitchen ourselves.
• We bought a lawnmower and I learned how to mow a lawn.
• I got pregnant again. My first trimester sucked so much that I truly hope my terrible memory kicks in and blots it out of my mind forever. But, I got to see its little self on an ultrasound and hear its little heartbeat – easily some of the most incredible moments of my life.
• I used a barf bag on an airplane.
• I joined a gym.

There were so many highs and lows in 2009 that I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I hope 2010 is a little less eventful. Although we’ll be bringing a baby into the world which is the opposite of uneventful. Plus the final season of LOST is coming up, and they have a lot of action to cram in. So never mind. I guess 2010 will be pretty eventful as well. We’d probably get bored without all the action. And Mom always said we weren’t allowed to use the word “bored.”

Happy New Year, y’all, from Matt, Priscilla, Little Friend, Mojo and Berlin… bless her heart.

It’s been a loooong time since I squeezed into a pair of pantyhose and cleaned myself up for a night on the town. I mean a LOOOOONG time. I can’t even quite remember our last date night. As of late our Friday and Saturday nights resemble running to Home Depot to pick up that one little gadget we need to repair that one thing we’ve been dying to check off the to-do list, and installing whatever that little gadget might be. Or, in the case of last Friday night, a trip to the gym where we walked on the treadmill while watching a free movie.

But tonight starts a long string of date nights for the next two weeks. We’re headed out to hear the Grammy award winning Nashville Symphony performing Handel’s Messiah. I think this will be the third time I’ve gone to hear the Messiah, the previous trips were evenings spent as a little kid getting all gussied up in a taffeta Christmas dress, driving into Boston as a family and having dinner at a nice restaurant before going to hear the symphony.

Tonight will take a heck of a lot more work than the Messiahs of my childhood. I bought a pair of maternity pantyhose that are currently glaring at me from across the room. And I have a new version of the pregnant woman’s Little Black Dress that luckily requires less squeezing than is typical. I still haven’t unpacked my jewelry, so I anticipate a frenetic last-minute search through boxes in the basement for a pair of earrings. I also expect to BAWL during the “Hallalujah Chorus” because I am a Hormonal Christmas Mess.

But tonight is just the kick-off. Tomorrow night is Matt’s office holiday party. Then we have a fun New Years bash to attend where I have been enlisted as the designated driver, a position I am more than disgruntled about accepting. To all of these celebrations I intend to wear painfully high heels because the one plus of being the pregnant woman in the crowd is that nobody makes you stand for very long. If I can’t have champagne, at least give me a seat.

So cheers to the holidays and the obligatory holiday parties. Because I need to wear something other than a hoodie at least a few days a year.

I’m wishing that I hadn’t already purchased all of my neices and nephew’s Christmas gifts, because I just found out about the greatest new children’s book EVER. My dear friend, Ginette, has just published her first children’s book entitled My Mommy is a Mermaid and you can pick up the hardcover here.

I took a look through the preview, and the illustrations are just gorgeous. Great work, Ginette, and I can’t wait to read it for myself!

It is 1pm and I have eaten nothing but chocolate chip cookies today. If things weren’t crazy enough, they’re going to get even crazier this next week. We have one more full week before we pack up and head off to the East Coast for our Christmas vacation. We’ll be spending a few days before Christmas in New Jersey, then taking the train up to Boston on Christmas Eve (NYC and Boston on Christmas Eve! Does it get any better than that?) and then flying home from NH a few days after Christmas.

This means I need to finish all of my Christmas shopping, my Christmas cards, do all of the wrapping, go to various and sundry Christmas parties, hit Handel’s Messiah, visit my BFF in Louisville, put together a gingerbread house and eat it, bake Christmas cookies and eat them, and pack up clothes and breakable gifts for extensive traveling – all within the course of a week. I also could use a haircut. Oh, and check in with the midwives office to see if they have the swine flu vaccine yet. And maybe buy a few more maternity clothes?

But the light at the end of the tunnel is a snowy New Hamsphire. And a belly full of my mom’s Christmas cookies which put all other Christmas cookies to shame. And fires in the fireplaces at night. And staying up late with my sisters to talk about everything under the sun. And nieces and nephews in footed pajamas. And snow angels. And caroling. And grandmothers.

And in the middle of the night when I get up to pee and I realize that I’m hungry, I’ll tiptoe downstairs into my mom’s kitchen and I’ll pull out some leftovers from the fridge. Or steam two lobster tails that my dad has received in the inevitable Omaha Steaks corporate Christmas gift. Two because I’ll wake up my sister to eat one – we’re both pregnant and due a month apart – the only people who could get away with eating the prized Omaha Steak lobster tails. Although it’s been a bad economy – the lobster tails might not arrive. PLEASE SEND THE LOBSTER TAILS! TWO PREGNANT WOMEN’S LIVES DEPEND ON THEM!

There will be many conversations around the living room – all going at the same time and escalating at the same time until we wake up a napping baby because of our volume. And it will all be my fault because someone (most likely my brother-in-law) will have me so politically riled that I will shout out something dreadful like “I WOULD HAVE TAKEN THE MORMON!!!” And perhaps that’s what I look forward to the most? The great conversations about politics and religion where our minds are constantly being sharpened.

In the afternoon the guys will all go into the music room and sit by the tree reading through their new stack of books that they have received as Christmas gifts. It will be completely silent in there except for the swishing of pages being turned in unison. And the girls will muse in the kitchen about how we always wind up asking for practical household items that our husbands will also benefit from, while they still get to be kids and ask for books and cds that they want. There will be much eye rolling and then the conversation will turn towards whether or not a Boppy pillow is really a necessity.

I’m living for this Christmas break, not just to visit home, but also to finally spend some time with Matt who’s been working like a madman. And it will all be made even more perfect by the fact that my parents home is not a construction zone. We can put the hammers and reciprocal saws in the rear of our memory for a little while and enjoy not having to remember when was the last time we took the dog out to pee?

Does it make sense now, why I love Christmas so much? Why the lights and snow and tradition are so important to me? I grew up in New Hampshire, the place where Christmas is perfect.

My Thanksgiving memories are all wrapped around my maternal grandmother’s dining room table. Each year that we were with that side of the family, we’d have the world’s most amazing feast. I plan on making this exact menu the next time I host my own Thanksgiving dinner.

• We’d always start off the meal with fruit cup, really a great way to begin
• A big ole honkin turkey roasted by my grandmother and carved by my grandfather
• Homemade turkey gravy
• Mashed potatoes
• Green bean casserole
• Corn casserole
• Pureed turnips
• Sliced yams
• Mashed squash
• Creamed baby onions
• Rolls
• Stuffing
• Jellied salad
• Cauliflower casserole
• Cranberry sauce – sometimes two kinds
• I’d always have a glass of milk and a glass of cider
• Grammie’s homemade pumpkin pie, apple pie, and pecan pie
• And then we’d finish off the meal sitting around the table cracking nuts

Tomorrow for our Thanksgiving meal with friends, I’ll be making a turkey and a sourdough stuffing with sausage and pears – a little bit different from the stuffing Grammie used to make. But I’m going to make her turnips the same exact way.

For me it’s turnips – what’s that one dish that MAKES Thanksgiving for you?