I've had a number of people ask me what I did for New Year's Eve this year, and the truth is that I have absolutely no idea what I was doing at the moment the calendar changed from 2009 to 2010.  This is not, however, because I was asleep or drunk or anything like that.  It's because I was in an airplane racing across seven time zones to meet the dawn of the new day, the new year, and the new decade.  And though we left just before seven o'clock in the evening (Central Standard Time) and arrived in Europe at 10:35 the following morning (Central European Time), it was never announced when the hour struck -- because time is a very fluid concept in trans-Atlantic aviation... So I don't really know where I was, what I was doing, or precisely when 2010 began.  I suspect it was somewhere between Newfoundland and Greenland, while I was watching some crappy movie on the in-flight entertainment... but I guess we'll never really know.

What I do know is that we had a great couple of weeks in Ohio at Christmastime.  It didn't feel like we had nearly enough time -- but then again, it never does.  And as much as I could bemoan the shortness of the vacation, I have to admit that we actually managed to fit quite a bit into the time period.

We rode an antique train to the North Pole (surprisingly accessible from Connersville, Indiana!).

We enjoyed snowball fights and sledding and lots and lots of Christmas lights.

We baked cookies and went carrolling from house to house in the country.

My brothers and I made lefse (traditional Norwegian potato-based flatbread).

We played basketball and American football, and we watched basketball and American football on television.  My Dad, my son, and I got to go to our first professional basketball game together -- watching LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers trounce the Houston Rockets.

We re-enacted the biblical account of Jesus's birth on Christmas Day.

And we just spent a lot of good quality time together with family who don't often have the privilege of gathering together any more.

It was really everything we could have hoped for.  Of course, it wasn't without its stresses either -- driving in heavy snowfall, coordinating schedules with a lot of families who each have their own priorities, sharing one bathroom with 16 people (when the water heater went out for a couple of days!), and traveling through busy airports... But so is life.  We made the most of the experience, and for that I am very grateful.

Time passes so quickly, doesn't it?  Some of the family we only get to see in parking lots and every five Christmases.  Some members of the family are quite advanced in age (Marci's grandpa, for example, turns 93 later this month).  It's difficult to project life's trajectory.   And even with all other things being equal, there's nothing to say that someone won't get cancer or some other sickness (over the holidays, I happened to hear about two particularly tragic discoveries of cancer, plus a suicide and a teenage car crash).  It can be terrifying to think of all the possibilities that a new year could hold.

But we can only take it one day at a time.  One city at a time.  One conversation at a time.  There are a lot of anxieties for the coming year, but there is a lot of hope and opportunity as well.  It'll be interesting to see what 2010 will hold.  Happy New Year to all of you...