Personally, Christmas isn’t my favorite time of year. Too many commitments, too much mayhem, too many pine needles. And in our family it’s always a little extra hectic because Addison’s birthday is the day after Christmas. But it is truly priceless to see the innocent joy on your kids’ faces when they are completely overjoyed, and Christmas produces a lot of those moments.
Our main present to the kids this year was the announcement that we are taking them to Disney World in May. Missy put together a cool scavenger hunt that helped them piece together the clues. They were even more excited than I anticipated, although Maddux is already scared of the airplane and Hawk seemed to think we were leaving immediately.
We always try to make Addie’s birthday a completely separate event from Christmas. This year we pretty much let her dictate how we spent the whole day. She chose a “girls only” visit to the movies for Frozen 2, which made me very sad — NOT. Then we drove all the way to Lawton for her favorite restaurant, the hibachi place Kudo. It was great as always.
A couple days after that, we watched OU get embarrassed by LSU. Of course, you want to see it be more competitive than that, but we knew this Sooner squad was outmanned even before the suspensions and injuries. That’s why, a couple blogs ago, I wrote that my dream scenario was for OU to win out in the regular season but miss the playoff so they had a chance to win a major bowl game.
Honestly, they probably weren’t going to beat Georgia or whoever else they might have played in one of those things so I guess they might as well be able to say they made the playoffs for the fourth time in five years. It’s an impressive accomplishment no matter what the haters say. The program is in great shape. Let’s cool the jets on all this negative talk.
As I look back on 2019, my personal highlights were getting to see the Cubs play in three different states (Spring Training in Arizona with Chad, in Texas with James and in Chicago with Randy). Turning 40 was also kind of a big deal, and I got to celebrate that in a big way with my friends here and also in Mexico with my beautiful wife Missy.
Now we’re visiting Missy’s sister just outside of Austin, Texas. This is where we were exactly a year ago, and I’m sitting in the same room where I wrote my first blog on this new platform. My New Year’s resolution for 2019 was to get back into writing by doing one blog per week. Mission accomplished! I’ve truly enjoyed it and will keep up the blog.
However, I am planning to scale back just a bit. Sometimes I felt like I had to throw something together just to meet my goal and it wasn’t always my best work. Also, I basically abandoned my guitar for the year and I’d like to get back into that. So my goal for 2020 is to do at least two blogs every month and also play guitar at least twice a month. I also have work and personal financial goals I’ll be striving for this year.
I want to give a heartfelt thank you to everyone who gave me feedback on any of the blogs I wrote this year. I don’t think I could have stayed with my goal if not for you. The encouragement was very encouraging (yes, I’m quite the wordsmith).
When I take stock of my life, I can’t believe how much cool stuff I’ve been able to do. That pales in comparison with the quality of people I get to call my family and friends. Y’all are the best. Have a Happy New Year. See you on the other side.
Matt Franklin's Lucky Life Stories 