I managed to actually accomplish a few of my goals for this past year…some I just had to let go as completely unrealistic. One of my goals was to help my brother…to open my home and family to him and provide him a safe place to recover and restart his life. I was really naïve about my brother and his needs. He didn’t really want to be with us and had no intention to cease engaging in his self-destructive lifestyle. My brother was constantly trying to drive a wedge between me and my husband…I started to feel like I was having to choose between my family and my brother. I guess my choice didn’t go exactly as my brother planned. On the positive side of it all our marriage endured this  crisis and was forged stronger. In fact everything that happened this year resulted in a stronger bond with my husband…which makes this year fantastic!

I rarely look at my stats page. I did not even know it existed until I joined the review team and they wanted to know my “numbers”. After turning in my numbers I was pretty sure they were going to turn down my application. They let me in anyway and I’m glad they took a chance my tiny blog. I had a great year with the team and am a bit sad to see my time with them is over. Just for fun I looked over my stats page today and thought I’d share some of the fun.

The “search term” stat is my favorite. I am always amazed by the terms that bring readers over here. The most used term that landed folks on my blog was “Christmas around the world study unit”. Last year I shared our Christmas Around the World unit study based on the Epcot World Showcase at Walt Disney World. That was a lot of fun…maybe I should add to that next year…

The second most popular term was “how to build Lego Stonehenge”. We built that for our first astronomy lesson and it took us a few hours to complete. The next two search terms tied and were for Christian Light Education reviews and Beautiful Feet Books curriculum reviews.

Here are a few of my favorite search terms…”Nuns then and now”…I’ve never really wrote about that topic. I used to be a postulant in a Passionist Monastery but haven’t really written much about my experiences…so that individual left my blog a bit disappointed. Here is a YouTube video of my community. The next search term was “how does plastic wrap keep an apple from spoiling”….well, that person left disappointed too. I did individually wrap the apples I bought in October in plastic bags for storage and they are still very fresh. We’ve eaten about a third of the apples I stored whole and every single one of them remains fresh…so far. Sorry but I really do not know why it works. I had nothing for this person looking for information on “husband refuses to try homemade yogurt”. My husband doesn’t eat my homemade yogurt either…or store bought for that matter.

I did, however, actually write about the next two search terms: “Beatersville 2013 gallery” and “trash can repurposed”. We went to Beatersville and had a blast looking at all of the amazing cars and people…it is kinda like Dragoncon for car people. We also repurposed our old beaten up trash can into a container garden for potatoes. The trash can worked quite well and the potatoes were very good.

Here are my top five posts…excluding the About page and the Home page.

1. Curriculum Crush: Beautiful Feet Books

2. Christmas Around the World unit study

3. Why I Use Christian Light Education

4. Lego Stonehenge

5. Christopher Columbus

Well, so long 2013! I’m not making any resolutions this year…just going to try to keep it simple and “walk the talk” as the saying goes.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures this year”

Boots did not like the bunnies in the house
getting ready to open gifts
casino
Cookies are tasty
12 days of Christmas
12 days of Christmas gift
rainbow at Cindy’s
Poetry Bunny
snowy morning
his favorite is math
I added the bamboo stitch for February
Littlest loved the game
Sparkles at UK game
Middle Boy watching the bunnies
Oldest and homemade loaf of bread
last week’s poetry breakfast
math quiz