It’s all put away–the lights, the stockings, the tree, all the festive tchatchkes (I won’t tell you how long it took me to figure out how to spell that word. hard to google something you can’t spell.)

And, the clean house that would normally make me stand back and admire proudly seems utterly depressing. Would it be appropriate for me to cry about school starting again like my 10 year old did last night?

Can’t seem to get rid of my favorite Christmas card of the year — the one where my 6 year old calls his dad by his first name and then wrote out a radio station jingle for the whole message of the card. Yeah, that one’s a keeper.

In fact, we so enjoyed the readings every night at dinner that we’re keeping on keeping on with it. I did my best to cheer up the grouchy troops and started right in on the first reading tonight at dinner from Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing. It looks awesome, and I’m thinking we could all use some thoughts to make our hearts sing in this clean house. Who else is in?

They actually did it. They wanted to stay up until midnight. We said yes, winking at each other and taking bets on how long they’d all last. No later than 10:30 for sure.

12:06. Every last one of ’em stayed up til 12:06 which meant we too stayed up which hasn’t always been the case (yeah, we party hard here).

The excitement was clearly overwhelming here.

At 11:55, Ashlyn said, “I don’t get this whole ball drop thing.”

Get it or not, it dropped like it has for zillions of years. (Okay, whatever, zillions is close enough.)

We hollered a bit, gave some kisses, watched the crazies on tv for a couple minutes, and then told the kids at 12:04 it was time for bed.

Which is when Drew said, “Wait, when are we going to watch a ball drop?”

Goodbye, 2012.

Looking forward to a year of newness–a new journey to embark as a family and new mercies upon mercies.