Really, I think there are few things cuter

than my five year old, trying to wave the terrible towel above her head, hitting everything in sight, including her own head, while trying to sing "Pittsburgh's going to the Super Bowl" even though she gets almost every single word wrong. It's cute, I promise.

American Idol

Grace has cried twice tonight contemplating how much she would miss me if she did well enough on American Idol for the judges to send her on to Hollywood. I honestly don't even know where to begin talking her down.

"It's like reading your journal"

Not this layout. This one is just fine because it doesn't say anything at all.

Charlie was looking through some recent layouts last night and ended the evening sobbing in my lap because of the journaling he read on two of them. I don't think I do a lot of layouts with deep journaling; most of them are bland and boring and it's my biggest obstacle when scrapbooking. I don't have a lot of patience for trivial details and I don't tell stories very well. In fact, I'm taking 3 classes right now (the Sense & Sensibility workshop at Debbie's Hodge's site!) to try to overcome that problem.

But back to the tears. I guess I do a fair number of personal journal type layouts, I just don't post them publicly very often. I can remember one that I posted here about my issues with not being able to have another baby. But mostly I do the page, say what I need to say, feel better after I get it out and tuck them away and forget about them. I don't have a writing journal so I guess Charlie was right about the content of these pages.

So he read two of them, not very deep ones or on a sensitive topic - just ones where I reflected about changes he has gone through, changes we have gone through as a family - and the tears started. He has always struggled with getting older; for the most part he's not a kid that is eager to reach new milestones. He likes things to stay just like they are. He is still upset that we got rid of my old Subaru with the worn through carpet and sand in the joints and hole in the seat. He already worries about going away to college and not sleeping in his own bed. He didn't want us to paint the house a new color. So I might have guessed that pages about my feelings watching him get older wouldn't go over very well.

As I tucked him into bed, he told me that I could scrapbook about the fun stuff and the silly things we do but that he doesn't like the other kinds of pages. So maybe it's time I get a journal after all.

Resolutions

Resolutions don't start in our house until January 7th - the day after Justin's birthday. Last year I had a very long, ambitious list of things I resolved to do better and I did okay on some and not okay on most of them. Having such a long list of resolutions was probably not a great idea since my one little word for the year was "focus".

I've decided to approach it differently this year. I am going to continue to "focus" on losing weight and getting in shape; I still have a long way to go but I am very proud of what I did accomplish in 2008. As far as new resolutions, I am going to reprise one from last year - write - but with a twist.

I'm going with the photo-a-day approach to resolutions this year. So I'm going to incorporate things I already do with things I would like to do, or at least do better. And I'm going to try to be realistic about what can actually fit into a 24 hour period, week, month, etc. So without further ado... the list of resolutions for 2009

1. Photo-a-day. I think this is the only resolution I can reasonably commit to doing once a day.

2. Write one hour per week. And that may be a stretch. But writing everyday clearly was not practical so I'm going to try it this way.

3. Read one "good" book every two weeks. I do want to read all those classics, and my pile keeps growing. But practically I can't survive on a trashless reading list, I need some fluff and some new stuff in there too. That pile is also growing. (Rereading the Twilight series three times between November 21 and Christmas didn't help shrink the pile any.) So my goal is to finish one good book every two weeks and as long as I do that, I can squeeze some just for fun reading in there as well.

4. Layout a week. I really, really loved layout a day for the year that I did it. But my life is different now so one a week it is.

5. The just for fun one. Download one new itunes song a week; also with a twist. I'm going to expand my musical horizons - U2 and whiny boy songs are not permitted in my song-a-week playlist. It will be all new songs that I take the time to learn and savor; blues, jazz, classical.

So that's it! Nothing incredibly ambitious this year, just bumping up a notch things I already do.