Twenty Eleven...

I am not a good resolution keeper, so I stopped attempting to keep them years ago.  I have been going to learn Italian for the past 12 years.  Nessuna tale fortuna!  (That’s no such luck in Italian...but I had to look it up.)  The point is, I have good intentions, but as the song goes, it’s hard to rely on them.  So I stopped pretending that I was going to do x, y and z in the New Year and just simply go where the wind would take me.  So far it hasn’t blown me in the direction I thought it would, and I hate being disappointed, so I no longer “plan” for anything.  Ok, well I try not to anyway.  Give a girl some props for trying.

I can look back and tell you my favorite things about last year.  Or perhaps I should call them my biggest moments of 2011 because some of them may not be my favorites, but definitely changed my life.  As much as I will try to get them in order, I highly doubt I will, but here goes.

February:
I barely remember the first half of 2011.  I can confidently tell you I was in “the great depression” after returning home from Hawaii for pretty much the first 6 months.  I had surgery on my foot the end of February.  Surgery was a success and for the most part it has done remarkably well since.  It occasionally feels like my foot is asleep, like ALL THE TIME, but it passes.

The end of February brought a new friend.  Without saying much, that has been a roller coaster of emotions for both of us.  I had my work cut out for me on this one, but I can look back now and be grateful for the challenges it presented because at the very least I have learned a lot about the things that are really worth complaining about.  I have a deep appreciation for parents.  I have a special appreciation for parents of special needs children.  I can promise those with perfectly healthy kids occasionally take that for granted. 

May/June/July:
Sometime in May my friend Angie B and I ended up at a grade school family kickball day and thought it would be amazing for ourselves to invite our friends to have an adult kickball game, so we did that in June.  It was insane.  Probably 2 of us that played were in any physical shape to be playing, but those of us that could drink beer did so just fine.  A lot of new friendships began that day and it is probably the last time I truly laughed that hard.   It was one of the highlights of my summer.

Memorial Weekend marked the beginning of my new found love of “River Sitting.”  It really is simply just that.  Sitting in the river in a chair.  I have lived on this river pretty much my whole life and never quite took advantage of it like I did this summer.  I owe a special thanks to Lori, Garrett, Kels balls and Ray for introducing me to such a spectacular event of nothingness the prior year before.  I truly enjoyed it more this year.  Plus I met some amazing new friends, or reconnected with some again that made it one of the best summers I have had in quite a while.  It is a wonderful thing to do nothing all day in the sun with good friends. 

I turned 39 again this summer.  It is always nice to have a birthday twice, in case you don’t like the first one around!  Seriously though, mom somehow convinced me I had the same birthday twice.  To be honest it wasn’t much different than the first time around.  I made a really big deal about my birthday this year, which got annoying after a while but that is because people do it to me all the time.  Pay backs truly are hell.

River Sitting took a dramatic turn when on the weekend of the 4^th of July, I got out of work early and spent pretty much 3 hours in the river alone (before other river guests arrived.)  Sometime after I got home (around 7PM) and put myself in bed, I broke my left hand.  To this day, this moment, I still have no recollection of how, but I will forever have a reminder of it.  I am pretty sure it needed surgery, but it is far too late now.  I will simply deal with a crooked hand.

July also brought Bella’s Sweet 16 trip to Chi-town to visit Rhetta…that was fun but not with a cast!

August-December:
The last four months have been somewhat uneventful.  More river sitting, some trips to Osage Beach to hang out at the Ozarks.  Labor Day Weekend escorting Nic around in my ‘Cadillac” that I couldn’t get wet or stuck or I had to buy it…and I liked it and all but not enough to buy it.

I started my Blog at the beginning of August.

RumChata entered my life and become bigger than it really is or should be but we sure have had a lot of fun with it!

December brought my whirlwind trip to Green Bay Wisconsin and Lambeau Field with a very dear friend I haven’t seen in eons. 

For anyone that really cares here were my favorites of 2011:

(Since it would not be fair to answer every single one of these questions with ADELE, let it just be known that for all questions where she could be the answer, she probably is, but for sake of creativity, I have forced myself to choose something else!)

Favorite Song: Give Me Everything- Pit Bull, Ne-Yo, Afrojack, & Nayer   http://youtu.be/EPo5wWmKEaI
Favorite Album: Adele 21
Favorite Gadget: IPhone 4S
Favorite Road-trip: Bears/Packer Game, December
Favorite Famous Person of 2011: Adele
Favorite Book: DEAR GOD I DON’T REMEMBER READING ONE!
Favorite New Endeavor:  My blog
Favorite Movie of 2011: The Adjustment Bureau
Favorite New TV Show: New Girl
Favorite Quote:  "I'm on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available. If you try it once, you will die."—Charlie Sheen, in an interview with ABC News, insisting he was not on drugs or alcohol during his weeks-long public meltdown that cost him his job on the TV show Two and a Half Men (ABC News)
Favorite Food/Beverage Find: RumChata

So…what was your favorite part of 2011 and are you ready to see it go?  I am ready for it to go if for no other reason than to be able to say “twenty twelve.”  It rolls off the tongue better.