What Wonders Await?

I know I'm a few days late, but Welcome, 2012!  Oh, what wonders wait in store for us this year?  How could you, with your sleek-sounding name that just trips off the tongue, you with your perfect "2" bookmarks on each end, possibly top those amazing moments and milestones of your predecessor, 2011? 

Tell ya what...you'd better try your darndest.  I have very high expectations here based on 2011's stellar performance.  And don't pull any of that end-of-the-world crap.  I'm not buyin' it.  Let's just re-set that Mayan calendar, shall we?

And not to sweep 2011 completely under the rug, I'd like to pay tribute to a year that surpassed all we could have hoped for, by leaps and bounds, a year of the joys of childhood, the maturity into a young lady (Samantha, not me...), the end of years of searching for lost family, the making of new friends, and so, so, so much more.

In the words of the perfectly-coiffed, impeccibly-dressed, gleaming-toothed, incredibly boooooring Steve Jones (host of the X-Factor, if you didn't know...), "And now, the results, in NO particular order..."

1.  Steve's long search comes to an end (or has it?), when he finds a first cousin and two siblings for whom he'd been looking for many, many years.

2.  Samantha graduates preschool and begins Kindergarten, in circumstances we could only describe as perfect.  Perfect placement, perfect teachers.  After so much fear and trepidation, I just can't say enough about the last 4 months!!

3.  Samantha starts reading!!  We'd been working on it bit by bit for a year, starting in 2010, but 3 weeks into Kindergarten, she proved she's her mother's daughter by bringing home a library book, sitting down with it, and reading it cover to cover.

4.  Samantha loses two teeth!  Right on time.  Mommy and Daddy weren't really ready for that, but Child took it all right in stride!

5.  Samantha turns 5.  Oh, that was a tough one...my little baby's growing up!!! 

6.  Samantha decides that she's going to take being a big girl very seriously, and, two weeks before her birthday, decides that pull-ups at night are a thing of the past.  Hooray! 

7.  We all take a real vacation including a long road trip south and the beach.  Samantha was an angel the whole time.  Gotta do that again soon...

8.  Steve and I celebrate our 20th anniversary.  Wow!

9.  We see the removal of Sammi's bedrail and the child-proof doorknob on her bedroom door, allowing her a whole new freedom, which she respects beautifully.  Did we really expect different?

10.  Samantha's fine motor skills really take off - she writes her name on just about everything (future tagger, perhaps?  I once dated a guy in Germany when I was 15 whose name was scrawled on nearly every flat surface of the city we in which we lived - he carried his markers around with him...), and shocked me two weeks ago by buttoning up her cardigan all. by. herself. 

See, I warned you they were in no particular order!  But they all made 2011 a really exciting, special and important year for us.  I feel like I've learned as much as Samantha in some respects, and recognize that minds stay young and healthy by being open to continually learning new things.  Maybe next year I'll be 23 again, right??

Hope you all have a very happy and healthy New Year!

Samantha with the new toy kangaroo sent to her by a new friend/lost family member in Australia