Unfinished Business

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A Happy New Year to you! I took a rather long Christmas break (longer than anticipated, anyhow), but now I'm back! Yay! Aaaand I have some things to say -- things I wanted to say before Christmas, but was a little preoccupied with sanity-keeping.

So here, I'll dive right in.

Remember Giveaway Day? Was that crazy or what?! Did any of you check out the huge list over at Sew,Mama,Sew? Well, trust me, it was not small. I entered a few of the giveaways, myself (okay, I got all nutty and spent all day glued to my computer screen). The hope was that I would get lucky and somehow my name would get picked for one of them.

And, whaddya know!\
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The sweetest little birthday banner (or, in this case, a chair fort cover), and an adorable birthday hat, both sure to be in many birthday pictures to come. Both of these items were sent by Meg at UpCountryViews. (Meg even wrote a nifty tutorial on how to make a birthday hat of your very own! Go forth and check it out!)

As if that wasn't enough, I (that is, Bridget) also won an adorable little outfit from Mandy at MaKC Creations (picture to come). We certainly feel favored around here!

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Christmas was amazing -- full of wonder and glitter! We stayed up late the night before -- me setting out gifts, and Brian putting together any gifts that required assembly. Christmas morning we opened our stockings, and then sat down to a wonderful breakfast of crepes (made by Brian, of course!) before diving into the rest of our gifts. We feel very thankful.\
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Bridget's first birthday was a great success, too. She had many small and large guests show up for her party. Her MiMi (Brian's mom) even came -- all the way from Arkansas!

And the carrot in the photo? evidently that day she was more in the mood for carrot than cranberry muffin, cream cheese icing or not! Haha! What a funny, sweet little gal.

I can't help but get a little pensive over 2008 being gone. 2008 was the year of the baby for me. The snugly little bundle, the toothless grin, the sweet-smelling hair, the first everything, wobbly crawling, first words...ah, it was a good year.

But now! 2009! I'm already excited and a little frightened about this year. Already Bridget has made leaps and bounds. She is communicating a lot now -- with some words, but much of it is little signs that we've taught her. She's also making great strides physically. Not walking yet, but soon. And when she does, watch out world! This girl has places to be, things to do! What fun for me to get to be watching her as she has her adventures!

My craft shop, YourNest got off to a good start. It may not have been the roaring overnight success that I rather naively thought it would be, but that is actually kind of a blessing. I have had some wonderful orders from family and some sweet strangers, but otherwise most has been rather quiet on the front. I am in the process of figuring out some kind of once a week babysitting for Bridget, at which point I will look into more ways to market the shop, and search for creative ways to fill it up. I am very excited about the potential, and hopeful that it will be a fun creative outlet for me.

A big Thank You to all of you who read this blog and encourage me. You guys rock, and I appreciate you!