Off To A Beautiful Start

{New Year's Day sunset - no colour retouching -}

Jet Lag is no fun with kids. It was downright torture with an eleven week old and it is way easier with kids that are seven and nine, but it's always just hard.

All week we have been crashing by 5pm and then most of us are up and awake - wide awake - by 1 am. It makes for super productive mornings, but less so as the day goes on.

(Waaay less so. In fact one of the early bedtimes when the kids were brushing their teeth, exhaustion was running pretty high. One of my kids blurted out at the top of their frazzled lungs: "What you are doing right now is making me think very impolite things inside my head!" I have been giggling about that ever since. )

Yesterday I decided that this just had to change. My New Year's resolution was to stay awake until after 7pm.  We heard it was colder here where we live than in Anchorage Alaska and the usually bitter cold Mid-West. I thought cold = awake, let's try this out doors. What I didn't expect was how beautiful it was outside.

The turquoise sky and diamond stars were so pretty. The kids' cheeks were so cute and bright pink. Buddy and I got to run up hills together in the freezing air laughing and panting. The kids jumped on solid, crackling puddles and we examined incredible lacy designs on the frozen soccer field.

So after a breath-taking, gorgeous walk in the peach sunset with our family - we could even see all the way to Victoria Island and the snow-capped Canadian Cascade range were incredible! - I fulfilled my one and only New Year's resolution.

I made it to 7:05pm.

{An amazing P. S. : 

I had been cooking spaghetti sauce all day yesterday and was just beginning to boil the noodles 

and ladle our meal up when the phone rang. 

I thought about ignoring it because we were having a special family meal together, but answered it anyway. The man who was calling was ringing us on behalf of our local grocery store. The meat we were just about to eat in our bolognese sauce was being recalled due to e-coli contamination.  I just happened to be his next call. 

I am looking for God's jewels in my days this year, and I have been thanking him over and over since then for the timing of that call! 

May you see his jewels of love all over your New Year, too. In icy walks and his beautiful (perfect) timing. 

Happy, Beautiful New Year to you and yours! }