With Family on New Year's Eve

No better place to be than with those I love most as one year passes into another.

'Twas a pretty traditional celebration for us this year. Well ... our appetizers are usually a degree fancier – and more plentiful. (O.k, the miniature pigs-in-a-blanket are standard fare.) And with three of the four of us sporting medical instructions to reduce our weight in 2010, perhaps having only two fat-laden delicacies was just right.

A New York City midnight toast using 8 oz. Coke bottles is traditional for our family too. Imagine our angst when we still hadn't located any just days before Christmas. We're grateful to friends who - via Facebook and after my failed attempt to get assistance through Coca Cola's Altanta headquarters - helped some arrive via special delivery. With a day to spare!

We always use the New York City Times Square Celebration to guide our evening's activities with a second toast occurring at midnight central time. However, we have to rely on our own countdown for that one.

Oh, a family game and a family movie are part of the package too. This year it was Beatles Rock Band (sorry, no video of that) and Wayne's World.
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As I said in my last blog/vlog: I can't remember beginning a new year with such a long list of unresolved issues: unemployment (me), new employment (me), health coverage (Stross), surgical plans (Stross), KZOW (Mark), Youth Gathering aftermath (our family) and more. Skye seems the only one who can boast a sense of balance right now, for his life truly seems uncomplicated. And as long as Mark and I responsibly work to resolve Stross' and our issues, both our sons will get to remain in an uncomplicated place.

But everything is connected isn't it? Even one issue resolved unsatisfactorily or left unresolved can throw off the others. So, the best strategy appears to be this: maintain an optimistic outlook while diligently giving the best of ourselves to the process of resolution.

Here's to a less complicated year in 2010 - for all of us.

Can you hear the little Coke bottles clinking?

Amen. May it indeed be so!

How to Know You're Home

It's finals week, and college students are eager to take exams, if for no other reason than to go home. Freshmen may return in January having discovered something a bit surprising–even unsettling. They may discover they now have two homes: one where the people they think of as immediate family reside and one where they live daily with new friends.

I discovered that phenomena sometime during my freshman year at Wartburg College. I felt at home with Mom, Dad and Jill; and I felt equally at home on campus. In fact the closer I got to graduation, my definition of "home" got quite broad–broad enough for me to feel at home with Mark (whom I married five days after earning my college degree) whenever and wherever we were together. In fact, we had no dwelling to share as our own for about the first month of married life. Truly, if we were together, we were home.

I've had few occasions to ponder the meaning of home since. In nearly 24 years of marriage, Mark and I have spent only a few nights apart and only two nights together while apart from our children. On that weekend outing 12 years ago, it took us nearly a day to feel comfortable without Stross or Skye–especially in a location that wasn't our home.

Well, last week I discovered something delightful: Home is also a way of being.

I hope you enjoy listening to what happened when I, a worst-case scenario planner, spent the first overnight of my married life in the home of my childhood without my husband and children along, and how my parents aided my plan to travel to a speaking engagement just after a nighttime snowfall but before a 24-hour blizzard.



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Best of luck to all you taking finals. May you fully enjoy every minute back home–wherever that may be and whatever that may mean.
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