Settling into the New Year

I've mentioned before that I'm a firm believer in blogging without obligation but I seem to forget to remind you guys of that before I decide that I don't feel obligated to blog. :>)

We have returned from a four-day trip to visit my brother's family where Goose was surrounded by and doted upon by her four cousins. And Grandma. Who, if she was holding one two year old, had to be holding the other. RIGHT NOW! The littlest is about seven months younger than Goose, and the others are 10, 6, and 5, so she gets carried around a lot by them.

At one point, the 6 and 2 year olds were petting Goose as I was holding her. Petting her, like she was a nappy! Goose clearly didn't care for it, so I taught her to tell them "no thank you!" which lasted about 90 seconds before they started petting her again. Oh, that she will always be so loved by someone! Hee.

The same day we got home, Hubs's sister and her family arrived after a 24 hour trip from Alaska. This is the first time Goose has met her only boy cousin (he's almost 10 months old), so we've been trying to spend a bit of time with them. We're planning a little meet-and-greet shower-sort-of-thing for this weekend, so I've been busy working on that as well. Even though I did a mostly handmade Christmas, I still squeezed our budget pretty tightly so my contributions are leaning towards the things that take lots of time and love and not so much money. (I think I have pretty much a final update on the handmade Christmas post, so if you'd like to see how everything ended up, you can click through. Unless you're one of the two people with whom we've not yet had Christmas. Sorry, girls.)

I actually started on a Reading the Whole Internet post while I was there, and a resolutions post, but haven't made the time to finish either since returning home. And right now, there is an enormous stack of dishes on the counter and I'm not dressed yet for the day, so those posts are going to have to wait a bit longer. Also? It's supposed to get crazy cold and yucky out again. So, we won't be going anywhere if we can help it, which will hopefully translate into a few posts getting written. But I make no promises, and I don't feel too obligated. :>)

Hope everyone is having a good start to the new year!