Happy New Year Coffee and Chaos readers! I hope that your New Year is filled with contentment and happiness.

My family celebrated our out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new with a family game night and watching the Times Square Ball drop (which drops at 11 p.m. Texas time and got us to bed an hour earlier – that is a parenting win in my book). We made a few New Year’s Resolutions and both upheld and broke a few New Year’s traditions.

I did a load of laundry on New Year’s Day and a friend of mine about lost her mind. She said that you’re not supposed to do laundry on January 1st because you’ll wash away all of your luck and you’ll have twice as much laundry to do all year long. I had a good laugh about that. I have kids; the only thing that makes laundry worse around here is skipping a day. If my laundry actually multiplied, I’d be doing enough laundry to keep the state of Texas in clean towels for a week and I am not completely sure that I would notice. I told her I was OK taking my chances.

We didn’t make black eyed peas and my husband, who is from Arkansas, has cautioned that I may not want to advertise this in an article for a Southern newspaper. I told him I was OK taking my chances as well because fortunately all of my Midwesterner habits have been accepted and smiled upon so far and I liked my odds.

We opened the door which is said to let the old year with all of its troubles out and the new year with plenty of good luck in. Can’t hurt right? To be honest, we opened the door to send the littles and their noisemakers outside because they were driving me and the dogs crazy. A benefit to living in the country, you can send the kids outside to make noise and the only they will disturb is the wildlife. (You can also feed the horse in your pajama bottoms with little chance of getting spotted by neighbors and I can’t tell you what a tremendous benefit that is.)

We did make a few New Year’s Resolutions. I stayed away from that pesky weight loss resolution. At 47 years old I know better than to fall for that crap. There are too many tacos in my 2022 for me to set my sights on weight loss.

One goal for 2022 is to learn Spanish. There are too many folks in our special needs parenting community who struggle to make meaningful connections with other parents and so I thought I might be able to be part of the solution to that. Other 2022 goals include to go hunting more (the husband … can you see my eyeballs rolling at this one?), to master multiplication tables (the 3rd grader), to win the UIL Art Contest (the 4th grader), to make it to summer vacation (the 9th grader), and to reach a specific level of savings in the bank (the 11th grader).

As a mom, I have all of the other usual annual goals as well … to avoid ER trips with all kids and their playmates, to manage to remember all spirit days at school, to remember picture day at school, to avoid being the last mom in the car pick up line (at least on Fridays, for some reason the teachers are far less tolerant of late pickups on Fridays), to try to curse less (at least in front of the kids), and to exude patience when helping with the spelling lists. The odds are greater for a couple of these than they are for the others.

Whatever 2022 plans, goals, or visions you have, I hope you are successful beyond measure. If you ate fish, pork, or noodles, Google claims you will be. If you’re like me, you’ll salt the margarita and take your chances.