a better year?

I was a little p.o.'d at my husband yesterday, over something he said when we were preparing for our New Year's Eve celebration with the kids. John and I haven't gone out to celebrate the New Year in years, even before we had kids. I don't like being out on the road that particular night, and we kind of fell into a stay-at-home-and-party-by-ourselves-and-review-our-year routine. Sometimes we had friends join us, sometimes it was just the two of us.

This is how we celebrate the New Year now, with kids: We set the mantle clock ahead so that it chimes in at midnight when it's actually about 8pm. We serve the girls sparkling apple juice in fancy cups, make a racket with noisemakers and musical instruments when the clock chimes, then whisk them off to bed so that we can lounge on the sofa and watch old movies until just before midnight, when we tune into Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year show, set my camera on timer, sit in front of the TV with whatever we're drinking, and get our picture at midnight with the ball falling in the background. Last year, we had some technical difficulties with my then-new camera, so we taped the ball falling and recreated/captured the moment around 12:15am, once we figured out the timer thing.

Anyway, back to why I was annoyed last night with my otherwise perfect hubby: He said something about hoping 2007 was tons better than 2006, since 2006 really stunk (not his exact words, but pretty close). "2006 STUNK?," I said. "Don't say that in front of baby Jesse! He was born in 2006!" Of course 2006 was great because of Jesse, John said, but the rest of the year......THAT stunk.

Well, I don't agree. 2006 wasn't horrible. It was a great year. In addition to welcoming Jesse to the world, we continued watching our 3 beautiful girls grow. We cheered them on at their many many soccer and softball games, teared up (just me) over their ballet recitals. Emma started piano lessons, something I've been looking forward to since before any of our children were born. Leah thoroughly enjoyed her visit to the emergency room (really, she had fun even though no one would give her a ride in a wheelchair....besides, her toe was fine in spite of the paint can she had dropped on it). Frances discovered the pure joy of toddling up to her sister and kicking her in the shin.

We all did lots of great things in 2006, too many to list here. But the best thing, next to any of the kids' accomplishments, was discovering my breast cancer. I'm not kidding. Imagine if we hadn't discovered it until 2007! I don't like to think about that. We are very lucky we found it when we did.

2006 was a pretty good year. Only the last 3 months of it, just 1 quarter of the year, were spent with me in chemo. That's not a whole lot of year, if you think about it. And chemo wasn't as bad as I had expected (though I admit, it did have some cruel moments). Plus, chemo is doing its job on my cancer. So how can any of us complain about 2006? It didn't stink. It may have been a little trying, but in it we found a curable problem.

Naturally, I've forgiven John for his "2006 stinks" comment. It wasn't a biggie anyway. He made me think, which is always good. And he more than made up for it by letting me watch whatever I wanted on TV last night, bringing me snacks and drugs (Tylenol after dinner, Percocet just before bed.....the achey-ness hit me pretty hard last night), and humoring me when I said I wanted to stay up until midnight even though I could hardly move. He taped Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year show, since I was sleeping on the couch through it all. Sometime today we'll set up the camera and sit in front of the TV, recreating our midnight/Happy New Year photo opp. It will be a funny story for my scrapbook, and a great way to remember a good year.