When we made this video a year ago, we didn’t know we’d just spent our last Christmas in that house.

So much has happened since last Christmas! A year ago, I could never have guessed that we would leave Virginia for a big adventure in Southern California—much less that the kids and I would spend three months separated from Scott. Last December, we were anticipating Rilla’s arrival in the spring, and that was about as far ahead as my mind was leaping.

I began 2005 with this resolution (inspired by a Robert Frost poem): "To keep hold of the important things, stopping to restack the load as often as necessary." I have to smile now, thinking of how often that load needed restacking as we packed up our house and made our way across the country—leaving a trail of baby socks and hard goodbyes in our wake.

Despite the difficulty of parting with dearly loved friends, I can look
back and see that this has been a year of abundant blessings for my
little clan. In January, we savored Ordinary Time, the occasional bump and bruise notwithstanding. February we worked on habits and indulged in berries. In March—oh, in March I was very pregnant and overwhelmed with the joy of watching Wonderboy learn to speak.

April brought us this treasure and this incredible milestone. In May, I began to blog for ClubMom in between diaper changes and picture books. In June, our caterpillars got clobbered, our favorite family got bigger, and Scott got a job offer.

July was a whirlwind: Rilla’s baptism and Rose’s First Communion, Scott’s departure, my reintroduction to laundry. In August we missed Scott like crazy and squeezed in visits with some dear East Coast friends.

September was all about packing, oh, the horror of packing. Speaking of horror, we discovered the startling truth about the Pillsbury Doughboy. And then in October, all the butterflies of the Blue Ridge came to bid us goodbye, and our odyssey began.

Has it really only been ten weeks since we left Virginia? It seems so faraway…and yet in other respects it seems impossible to believe we’ve been here in California for two months already. I still feel like we just walked in the door. But here it is Christmas Eve, and the colored lights are shining beneath the palm trees. Merry, merry Christmas to our friends both old and new, and that includes our blog friends, whose kind comments and thoughtful posts gave us such joy this year. We wish you all great joy and abundant blessings, too.