If there is one thing I absolutely want to focus on in the year 2009, it's this. To trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean into His understanding and not mine. As the title of my blog says - More of Him and less of me! My goals for this year are to take the time each day to spend time with the Lord in prayer and in reading His Word. Then I know that He will direct my paths.

Of the paths I hope that the Lord will lead me on is to pursue my writing and get the book done that I've been working on. I also would like to pursue more avenues for my writing. I'm also looking foward to doing more of my artwork this year and my quilting. I have a shameful amount of fabric that I've stashed away for about 20 years (gasp!!) now and it's about time to start making those quilts again. One of my projects will be this beautiful quilt called Harvest Sky that I'm going to do with an online friend. She was kind enough to ask me to do it with her and it's the boost (push?) I needed to get started quilting again. I'm excited to start working with my beautiful fabrics again.

Christmas was lovely at our home, although quiet. My dear sister and her husband didn't come because when I woke up Christmas morning, I checked with the weather band and they said we had a severe winter storm coming our way and if you didn't need to drive, don't do it. I was afraid to have her come if we were going to get such a vicious storm, so I called her and told her about the weather report. It was a very sad thing to have to do because I was so looking forward to seeing my sister and her husband - especially for Christmas! However, it wasn't worth the risk. Wouldn't you know it, though? No snow here - only a bit of rain. *sigh* But of course, we didn't know that at the time. I'm hoping we can spend Christmas together another time. My mother-in-law did come and it was so nice to have family for Christmas.

I have all my Christmas decorations put away. I wanted to get it done before we start back to our schooling next week. It didn't take us long at all to get everything packed away and back into storage. It was beautiful while decorated, but I'm really glad to have things back to normal again. I haven't gotten all my regular decorating done, but everything is cleared off and a clean slate waiting for me to finish.

I've been doing paperwork today and cleaning and organizing my desks for the new year. I work in our home office with my hubby and my desk had gotten woefully messy and unorganized because of the holidays. It's now completely cleared off and ready for the new week. I'm working on my other desk where I do my writing, now, and that should be done tomorrow easily. I've really been in a cleaning/organizing mood. It's not necessarily something I enjoy doing, but I do love the results!

I had a horrible thing happen the other day. My computer completely fizzled out and died! I knew it was coming because our computer tech had warned me this day was coming, but still, I was shocked when I went to turn it on and nothing happened. I went to WalMart and found an emachines computer that wasn't too expensive. I'm praying that it will work okay (there have been a couple of glitches, so I'm watching it closely - has anyone out there had any experience with the emachines?) and that I can get used to this new Vista program. I'm not entirely sold on it yet, but I need to work with it.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and blessed New Year in 2009!

                                          God bless you ~ Julie