Fortune-telling will not be my new career

I have this silly little tradition of writing down predictions for the new year, shoving them in my stocking, and forgetting about them until we pull out the Christmas decorations at the end of the year. It's fun to see if you are right or not. (And it has nothing to do with goals or resolutions.) I've also started having our children do a version. Obviously, they can't make predictions. But it's fun to see how their ability to handle a crayon changes over a year.

Like I said, it's fun to see if you are right or not. One reason I like this little game is because I'm pretty good at it. (I did respectably well last year.) Those of you who know me very well have long known that I am Little Miss Know-It-All, and there is nothing Know-It-Alls loves more than being reminded that they do indeed know it all. Ah, how I love pulling that list out of my stocking and saying to myself, "Right again!"

Well, let's just say I didn't get that feeling of satisfaction this year. But I did get to laugh my head off at how unbelievably WRONG I was:

Alisa's Predictions for 2009:

Jan. 5, 2009

1. Greg will not deploy in 2009, but he will be getting ready (WRONG! The man is deployed to Honduras for a year!)
2. We will live in San Antonio (WRONG! I did get the state right though.)
3. We will have a baby girl in the fall--November (WRONG! Thank goodness. This would not have been a good November to welcome a baby into our home...rather, into my parents' home.)
4. We will own a house (WRONG! If only I'd written, "We will not rent," then I would be right!)
5. We will have a Toyota Sienna--white--and will have said good-bye to our Forester (WRONG! Where did this come from??? I guess it's related to #3. We did say good-bye to our Forester though. But only temporarily. It's in a vehicle storage facility in South Carolina until Greg gets back.)
6. David will learn to swim and ride his bike (WRONG! Well, maybe I was right because he did learn how to swim this summer...but then he forgot 2 weeks later. He also can ride his bike, but he doesn't know it. He definitely prefers the training wheels. Oh well.)
7. Mary will still be obsessed with food and accessories. (Right. FINALLY. Mary is the Queen Grazer, and you need only see her sporting her favorite Christmas presents to know that she still loves accessories.)
8. The move will be hard on David--but he'll easily play with new friends and will enjoy preschool. (Right, technically. The move was hard on him, no doubt. He has friends and likes school. But I know what I was picturing when it came to new friends and preschool...and his life doesn't quite fit the picture I had. But those are thoughts and reflections for another blogging day.)
9. Mary won't talk a lot but she'll be a signing machine (Wrong? I don't know if I'm right or wrong. She's certainly talking more, and she's been dropping the sign language accordingly. But she's definitely not as verbal as other children her age.)

Wow. I didn't do so hot this year. The year I predicted was our life through the door. But we went through the window. And at the time I wrote this I didn't know about the window. So here I am, the mother of two (not three) children, living with my parents, husband overseas, and still driving a station wagon (which I can report that I am very happy about).

So, I did redeem myself a little bit by writing the following at the bottom of my list of 2009 predictions:

What's crazy is that this list might be TOTALLY WRONG! Even the minivan thing [I must have really had minivans on the brain that day. NOT a normal occurrence for me, really]--I sense that everything we think about this year may turn out completely DIFFERENT...

Interesting. Maybe I still am Little Miss Know-It-All. I just didn't know I knew it all.