A New Year and Another Item Off the List

This is how I greeted 2010. On the beach, with my husband and my boys, watching the sunrise. How can this year be anything but good?

Sure, sure, there's plenty left out of that picturesque scene. I skipped over the 11+ hours of travel time the day before, which made it impossible to stay up past 8 p.m. on New Year's Eve, which (combined with the time difference) caused us (and really, I mean my children) to be up before 5 a.m. on New Year's Day, while everyone else in the world slept off the revelry of the night before. We actually stood outside Starbucks until it opened...at 6 a.m.

But none of that matters. It was a perfect way to start the year. Perfect.

Maybe it was even more perfect because I was able to completely blow off New Year's Eve as an event, since the event was really getting my family to Hawaii. Most years I tell myself that I'm not going to make a big deal about NYE, only to find myself in panic mode after Christmas, thinking that my fate as lamest person alive will be sealed if I don't quickly find something sparkly to do on Dec. 31.

I am now a big fan of traveling on New Year's Eve and making the big event the starting of a new year somewhere fabulous. Who knows if I'll keep up this tradition, but I still recommend it.

So Happy New Year to you. I hope you've been able to greet 2010 with a sense of excitement, hope, gratitude, or something similar. It's going to be a good year.

And for those who are wondering, Hawaii was amazing. It's hard to convey the magic of the trip by simply telling you that when we weren't on the beach, we were either eating or up in our hotel room, where my husband and I refereed a gazillion rounds of bed jumping, a game that involves our boys jumping back and forth between the two beds until one of them either crashes into the wall or misjudges the distance and lands on the floor. Good times.

In addition to all of that action, we did get to take a submarine into the ocean and see 16 kinds of fish and a sea turtle. We also took a road trip to the rainforest, where we not only hiked, but stumbled upon one of the sets for the new season of LOST (awesome!). We also trekked up to the North Shore and watched tiny kids surfing fearlessly, which caused me to realize that I am even more overprotective than I thought. Oh, and we had the legendary Matsumoto shave ice, which was bigger than our heads.

I have lots of commentary I could make on the pros and cons of staying in a luxury hotel, but again, those are pretty minor given how great it felt to spend a week in a tropical paradise with the people I love. (Not to mention that it was below zero here in Minnesota nearly the entire time we were gone.)

Hawaii is amazing. I only wish it were slightly closer and less expensive, but then I suppose that's part of why it's so amazing.

So cross off #4 on my 40 by 40 list! What's next? Well, I'd like to think that I will complete #21 this year, but I suspect that it might be easier to plan a two-week trip to Key West over Christmas, during which I eat key lime pie, read Ulysses and get a tattoo. We shall see.