Where has the year gone?

I cannot believe it's almost 2012.  It doesn't seem possible.  I also can't believe how long it's been since I last posted anything.  My brother tells me that the blog misses me. Ha.
We had a wonderful Christmas filled with lots of time spent with family.  Our Thanksgiving was wonderful as well.  Hope all of yours were great too.  Very ready to start a new year!

So, I wrote a post last year talking about my New Year's resolutions.  The main one was to not stress as much, especially over the things I can't control.  Well, I'd like to report that for once in my life, I actually accomplished one of my resolutions!  And boy, it feels good saying that.

I really have taught myself how to not sweat the small things, and to trust that it will all work out, just like it always does.  I don't have any pointers as to how I did this, but it's all a mental thing, and it's constantly reminding yourself not to freak out everytime you get into a stressful situation, no matter how big or how small. I can honestly say that I feel so much happier now than I did a year ago.

Knowing that I can't top last year's resolution, I've decided not to come up with any New Year's resolutions for 2012.  Plus, to be honest, I've never really been one who cared much about resolutions in the first place.  Instead, I saw a quote somewhere a couple days ago and have decided that my goal for this year is to simply live my life by this quote....

"Just because God doesn't answer your prayers doesn't mean He's not listening.  He's just got something better in store for you." [source unknown]

How simple, yet how beautiful.

On to other exciting things - Matt and I are getting ready soon to head out of the country with my parents and brother to Mexico!  We'll be staying in Cancun and are so very excited.  It's been a good couple years since we've had a tropical vacation and are more than ready.  I will definitely put up a post with all our pictures.  Plus, we got a wonderful Christmas gift from my parents - a new Nikon D3100 SLR, so hopefully we'll have lots of beautiful pictures to share.

In other non-related news, we finished our kitchen cabinets remodel!  Thank goodness.  I won't go into too much boring detail, but the gist is that we painted them and added new hardware.  We (Matt) also installed a new ceiling fan.  We're loving it but of course see other things we would like to change in the future, like new countertops, new blinds for the windows, etc.  Would also be great to have new stainless steel appliances, but that's really not on the top of our list.  One of these days I'll get some pictures out here for you all to see.  I'm pretty sure a lot of you have already seen them, but this will be for all those who haven't.

Sorry for such a long post without any pictures.  How boring.  Hope everyone has a wonderful and safe New Year's!  Talk to you in 2012!