Over the Christmas holidays we snuggled a lot, ate even more, played and watched movies.

It was wonderful to simply be!

We had no plans, just let the days come as they did.  Spontaneously, we had very good friends over for Christmas dinner, met up in town with university friends over all the way from the Netherlands and had a New Years Eve party with some other friends.  The days just naturally flowed.  It felt good!  (It was just like I wrote in the post some time ago about why it’s bad to put up the Christmas tree too early.)

Come January, we’ve hit the ground running with a trip to celebrate Opa’s 80th birthday in the Netherlands.

The days are cold and grey, but having had a little bit of hibernation we’re back, with gusto, in the routine of school, work, clubs, sports, housework, chores…

However, I’m determined not to let these obligations grind us down and let us sink into just another semester of “just” routine.

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions*, but quite like the idea of picking a word for the year. Working a lot with destination marketing companies, I figured I could take a leaf out of their books and instead of picking a word, pick a theme for the year.

*Also read on the Mum on the brink: Forget loosing weight as a a realistic New Year’s resolution

The theme for the year:

Laugh more!

We started this by going out on the freshly frozen over lakes for not just one day, but both days of the weekend.  Messing around outside definitely leaves all of us happier.

We sleep better.

We eat better.

And generally feel better.

This video just says it all: “Just live your life, as if each and every moment is blessed, each and every moment rejoicing…”  Cheesy, but such a good mantra.

After a fantastic weekend enjoying the ice – we also attempted to go ice sailing again, but the lack of wind meant we skated on the large mostly empty lake.

So amazing!

It reminded me of my childhood, when the Danube would freeze over at our weekend house.  I took an extension cord to our jetty,hooked up the radio and lights and had music blurring out while I had the ice all to myself.  Friends would come and join, but they preferred playing cards inside in the warm.  I just whizzed around and around, falling, getting up and moving to the music.

Maybe the kids will have fond memories of these weekends too.

Hugo has exclaimed a fair few times over the past weeks:

“This is the best day of my life!”

It makes my heart melt!

Fun isn’t just for weekends!

Not just sticking to weekends though: snow came on Tuesday.  The forecast was snow for the whole day, so I arranged to pick up kids from school and Max early from nursery.

Alas, the forecast was wrong!  There wasn’t enough snow to do much with it, but we did head out for a walk and checked out the sledging hill… breaking our button sledges as we tried them on the near barren slopes. Oops!

Our trusty super sliders had served us well, without taking up much space at all and I’ve just ordered some more (click on picture if you’re kids would like these)

On another note, holes in button sledges, sore bums and a 9 year old boy into fart jokes… I’ll leave it to your imagination… there was no shortage of laughter.

The snow conditions were a LOT better the following day.

The instructions to the kids- come straight home from school and we can head out to the slope. Things came up, so they got home an hour late, too late really to go anywhere but their swim training.

A snap decision on my part- let’s go quickly to the slope anyway.

The kids- mine and a borrowed one- had 3 slides down, got covered in fresh powdery snow, laughed, scream with glee and shock of cold snow getting in where it shouldn’t.

Stressful for me then getting them to training nearly on time, but those laughs made it so worth it!

The afternoon cemented in me that we really need to grab the opportunities and

Laugh more!

this year.  If we practice enough we can cement it into a habit.

How about you… what’s your word or theme for the year?

PIN for inspiration: