Starting a New Year

I haven't posted in a couple of days because we've been so busy around the house.  We always take down all the Christmas decorations and clean the house on New Year's day.  Then the next day my husband and I clean and organize our basement storage room as we put all the Christmas boxes back in under the fall/Halloween and spring/Easter boxes.  It's always a little emotional for me, which I realize is utterly ridiculous, but it's an involuntary response.  I think every year when we put the holiday paraphernalia away, I realize that another holiday season as a nuclear family of four has passed, and they're starting to be numbered now.  So I'm always tired from staying up late the night before, grumpy about putting the holiday decorations away and getting ready for work, and sad because my kids aren't so little any longer.  It is always good to get the house back to normal though.

My kids said goodbye to the old year by playing on the frozen creek behind our house.

Today we took the kids to the Nature and Science museum for our final family hoorah of the holiday season before we all return to work and school on Monday.  The view of downtown from the atrium is really beautiful.  Luckily we got a picture before it started snowing again.  The photo is from my phone camera, so it's not spectacular, but you still get an idea of what downtown Denver looks like from the east with the mountains in the background.

We're back home now watching the snow fall again.  We've had snow on the ground since Christmas evening, which is a little unusual for Denver.  Normally it snows, then the sun comes out and melts everything before it snows again.  But it's kind of nice and very wintry.  The one thing that I am looking forward to about next week is getting started on my weight loss again.  I decided not to bother until the holiday break is over, but then I'm going to get serious again.