2011 Top Ten

How do we make sense of the years? News outlets are famous for their lists of important events. Although I suspect that doesn't begin to touch what a specific year may mean to us, I'm willing to offer up my list of the top ten events of 2011 for my own family:

• 1. Top of the top has to be the birth of a new grandson. Welcome, Vaughn Arthur Aylworth, born September 12, 2011.

• 2. Right up there behind Vaughn comes AylaPalooza IV. This biannual reunion has become a family tradition and treasure. This year we had extra family, but among our children, kids-in-law and grandkids, the only one missing was Austin, our oldest grandchild, who is serving a full-time mission in Chile. He's exempt because of his circumstance. Everyone else was there and we had a wonderful time.

• 3. Next for me is birthdays -- lots of birthdays for the wonderful people we enjoyed at AP IV. You all know who you are!

• 4. This was the year when I joined LDS Storymakers, attended the national conference, and became more involved with my writing than I've been in a while.

• 5. I also joined ANWA (American Night Writers; long story), attended their national conference, and got involved there as well.

• 6. Through very little fault of my own, I got elected to the Board of Directors of LDS Storymakers, and I've met some wonderful people who both inspire and help my writing.

• 7. I finished the manuscript for A SECRET FAMILY RECIPE, got it to my editors at Covenant, and had it approved for publication -- sometime in 2013.

• 8. Although I already mentioned birthdays, one stands out: I got to see my dad celebrate his 89th. This means he has outlived both his parents and all his older siblings, and he was there to enjoy my kids and grandkids at AylaPalooza, celebrating with us. You go, Dad!

• 9. I made the decision to write about Lorenzo di Medici, sketched out the basic plot for a story, and have spent the year doing online and book research. Next March I will go to Florence to do more in-person research. So cool!

• 10. Tied for tenth are a number of smaller items: little trips away with my honey, visits to see grandbabies, seeing friends' books do well in the market, watching my sweet old dog show affection to my sweet little granddaughter . . . I've a thousand such moments, all precious.

To everyone who made this year a little more special, to all of you who follow my ramblings, to all who read my books, THANK YOU. This has been quite a year -- and the next one can only be better.

My Gratitude Journal: Birthdays

Part of me (the part I see in the mirror, I think) would sincerely love to freeze time in place, have all the fun I'm having, but never grow any older. Come to think of it, I should have done that a few decades back!

But never mind that. It's one of the truisms of life that we either grow older or we don't. Princess Diana is one of those who will never grow any older. We will always remember her young and beautiful, looking like the queen she might have been. Given that's the only other option we have, I'm grateful for growing older. I'm grateful for birthdays.

As I passed mine this week, I thought of a man I knew years ago when the dh and I lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut. "Ron" had been a combat soldier in Vietnam and had lived through some harrowing scenes. As he approached his Halloween-time birthday, he told us, "Ever since 'Nam, I have promised myself that I'd celebrate every birthday as a gift I might never have had."

Ron had the right idea. We may not appreciate the wrinkles, the changing jawline, the once near-black hair that's now silver unless we cover it, but if we love our lives (and how could I not? I've been so blessed!), we have to appreciate every birthday we get.

As a kid, I never bemoaned my Christmas-time natal day. I came home from the hospital on Christmas Day and my dad has often claimed I was his best birthday present ever. As people around me put up decorations and glittery lights, I always felt they were celebrating with me, and everybody got into the season. When you think about it, some Pretty Important Folks celebrate their birthdays in the same week as I have mine, and that's worth celebrating, too.

This week I'm thankful for birthdays, for every one of them I've shared with the wonderful people I love, and for every one I may yet have in store. As we celebrate one important Birthday this weekend, I wish you all a very merry Christmas.

My Gratitude Journal: Holidays

This week I'm thankful for holidays. Actually, I'm thankful for them whenever they happen, but this week I decided to blog about it.

I'm thankful for this past Thanksgiving which saw 51 loved faces, all but one of them close relatives, all sharing our Thanksgiving dinner. I'm grateful for the week around the actual day, which turned into one of the best family reunions (we call them AylaPaloozas) we have ever had.

I'm grateful for all the people who made big sacrifices to join us, who contributed to the meals and the cooking, the costs and the fun, and who made the experience what it was for all of us. I'm grateful to my son, Adam, who somehow figured out how to host all 50+ of us and even prepared venison stew for the whole crowd.

I deeply appreciate my daughter's in-laws, the Wrights, who vacated their home so we could use it and then turned the keys over to our family. My daughter and her family stayed there, of course, but so did the dh and I and my aging parents had their own room and bathroom, a fact that enabled their trip to join us at AylaPalooza IV.

I'm grateful for the coming holiday as well, and for everything that Christmas means. This year the dh and I made a little pilgrimage of our own. The first shopping trip of the season was looking for an outdoor nativity scene that we can put on our front lawn to honor this holiday. We finally found one and we're looking forward to setting it up soon. I'm grateful for stores that still carry nativity scenes.

I'm thankful for the great year this has been with a new grandson born and the family all together, and as I look forward to another great one with another grandbaby due, I'm especially grateful for the people who go through this life with me and make it an enjoyable journey.

I'm grateful for holidays, and I'm grateful for all of you. May you enjoy the coming season and find the New Year blessed.

My Gratitude Journal: The DH

Okay, it's not news, but I appreciate my husband, and even though I've used this space to express my gratitude in the past, I plan to do it again today. I have reasons.

Yeah, he's a good guy and clever and fun and he takes out the garbage, but that's not what I'm especially pleased with today. Just now I am most grateful for the way he has supported my writing habit, especially lately.

A little over a year ago, when we had our first exposure to Florence and I fell in love with the whole town and its history, I knew I would have to return. I began to read and study with an eye toward going to Florence again someday, this time to research a novel I simply must write.

Enter Roger. "Why don't you plan a trip? You can go with your sister?" It didn't seem fair, my making a trip like that without him, but he insisted. Next spring my sis and I will be going to Florence to get first-hand answers to many of the questions the books just can't answer.

But then I thought about marketing the book I'll be writing. Although I've sold nine books now without an agent, a book of this size and scope is a little bit different matter. There's an agent I want to interview and she's going to be at a writers' conference in Arizona next spring, just a couple of weeks before my Florence trip.

Enter Roger. I now have conference registration, hotel reservations and plane tickets. I will be interviewing a top-notch agent a matter of days before I leave for Italy.

But I don't speak Italian, and when we were there, we ran into numbers of people who don't speak English, either. Enter the DH again, with a full Rosetta Stone Italian. Now all I have to do is make the time to get through all five levels of lessons. (In the last ten months, I'm through one level, so I'm a wee bit behind the curve. Yikes!)

He's sweet, he's kind, he looks great in a tux, and he's the most supportive spouse I could ask for when it comes to my writing habit.

Thanks, Honey. I love you.