We are sitting at the Holly Springs, NC Public Library right now.  I am drinking a cup of coffee (free because we had enough stamps on our card) and Lorena is reading magazines while Kelly and Christian look for books.  What a great way to end the year.  Yesterday, we took Warren downtown to the North Carolina Museum of History.  We had never been there before.  It is really quite good.  We did not see it all, so we have a good excuse to go back.  After that we went to Barnes and Noble by the Crossroads Mall.  I guess we tend to be a bookish family.  No one ever objects when we decide to go to a library or a bookstore.  Sometimes Lorena goes shopping while the kids and I read, but mostly she sits and reads with us.

We decided to try to go to Mexico for Christmas next year.  Our family in Monterrey sent us a bunch of pictures–all the cousins are just the age when Christmas is the most fun.  So this year we have two Mexico trips planned.  One for Kelly’s quinceñera and one for Christmas.  We hope a bunch of them make plans to visit us in North Carolina, too.  We decided, also, to try to get together with more of our homeschool friends.  We are going on a trip to Tennessee with four homeschool families from this part of the world over the MLK three day weekend.  We want to get together with the Larsons and a few others again this year, too.

We truly enjoy taking the time during the holidays to reflect on what we want to do over the next year.  We have talked about diet/health, homeschool/college, hobbies/projects, and a lot of other stuff.  We have uncompleted projects we want to complete, the first being the radio assembly project Christian and I plan to start today.  We have CLEP/ACT tests to take.  We have to decide which language to study next.  We are thinking either Russian or French.  This is a very fun time that we enjoy very much.