It has been a year since I last blogged.  I need to budget my time better and I had a hard time with the blog because I thought I didn't have anything interesting to say or post.  However, I have decided that it is a way for me to share thoughts.  I need that. 

During the last year so many things have happened and I can't possibly talk about all of them.  But a few that have made a big impact on my life are:  we have four new grandchildren, my youngest daughter has gone on a mission, my third daughter and her family have moved to Nevada.  Change always happens.  You just have to get used to it.  If there is one thing I have learned as I have aged is that everyday there is a little change going on.  We sometimes have big changes to deal with and those take time to adjust but change is good and it took me a long time to realize that.  I also have learned that looking for the positive in what is changing is the best way to deal with it.  What is that Mary Poppins song - ummm - a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.  Well, a spoonful of positive thinking helps the change not be such a crisis in your life.  My biggest change came when I moved away from all familiar people, places and things for the first time.  Just married for about a year and moved from sheltered Utah to what we referred to as hippie California.  We didn't have cellphones so I couldn't call my family everyday.  We didn't have computers so no skyp, no email, basically not much regular communication.  There was the very slow mail.  But letter writing was wonderful because you could read it over and over again.  You could tell just by penmanship what that person was feeling.  I noticed little things like when my mom wrote to me if she was feeling ok or not.  So those things really helped.  Now I am so grateful for instant communication but I do miss the handwritten letters. 

So I hope that all my daughters read this and maybe write me a letter.  They do from time to time and I love it.  I also love all the text messages and emails, pictures that I get.  Like I said before I am so grateful for our communication access these days.  My mom would have been amazed at what was available.  She grew up with no phone, no car, and the closest post office 10 miles away.  The changes in her life were truly amazing.  But she used to say we needed to take time to notice the small things of life.  I hope I can do that most days.

What a year.

I realized that it has almost been a year since I wrote on my blog.  I have to say that so much happened last year and I am one of those older generation people who are new to blogging and everything technology related.  Even though I have worked on a computer since they filled an entire room and then there were things called key punches - cards that we put some sort of code on that the computer read.  So computers and I have had a long and lasting relationship - however the blogging (i would call it journaling) is still a new experience.

Since June of last year, two more grandchildren were born.  Seth came along on June 29th.  Seth came with some surprises.  He had heart surgery at the ripe old age of six days.  It was an adventure I am sure the family would not like to go through again.  Seth is healthy and happy and growing up.  He has the most beautiful eyes and happy smile.  We had welcomed Charlie to our family in February.  He came with a lot of personality from the start and has continued.  In September came our little princess, Audrey.  She too, gave us a scare and spent a few days in the NICU.  She is doing great and is a happy baby.  

Shortly after Audrey was born, Jeff and I took a long trip to Chicago to go to the Ryder Cup.  No, it is not actually a real cup - well the golfers get a silver cup of sorts if they win.  It is a big golf thing held every 4 years between the Americans and the Europeans.  Apparently it is a big deal that i had never heard about.  I don't know how Jeff talked me into this.  It was supposedly my 60th birthday present.  Yeah, not......I happen to hate golf.  But it was important to Jeff and he had to put his name in some lottery for the chance to get tickets and then he got them and there was all this happiness in the house for days when he got them.  Now, this trip involved traveling on an airplane for a long time.  I hate flying and airplanes.  So I wasn't going.  Jeff, being determined, cashed in all his points to get us first class tickets so that I could be more comfortable on the plane.  It turned out to be a nice trip and we saw Tiger Woods and a bunch of other golfers as well as Bill Murray and Michael Phelps.  We had fun but I was glad to get home.

The rest of the year was busy.  We had a surprise announcement of a new baby coming by Stephanie and Bob.  Then Thanksgiving, Brittany announced she was going on a mission. There is so much more that happened in 2012.  It actually turned out to be a very trying year but one of our best years.