I didn’t write as much, or as well as I wanted to in 2011. I fell out of routine at times and there were a lot of gaps in between postings. Even so, I somehow managed to maintain a somewhat regular schedule of blogging, even if that meant I sometimes only wrote once in a week.
One of my goals for this year is to write more and write with more quality. One thing I’ve never lost sight of is how much I enjoy writing, so I’m looking forward to a less chaotic year than last and giving it a better effort.
Even though I felt as if my writing lost a step in the past year, I still managed to write a total of 199 posts, and that’s not bad. WordPress was kind enough to provide a year-end summary, and they tell me that my blog was viewed about 25,000 times in 2011. Also not bad! The year-end summary told me who commented most often on the stuff I wrote. And since half the fun of blogging is meeting and interacting with the friends you make online, I thought it only appropriate to express my gratitude to those who came back to visit time and again.
MJ at Emjayandthem’s Blog honored me with a fun award. I’m going to follow her lead and share it with my top commenters of 2011. So, without further adieu, I present to you, the First (possibly)-Annual These Are Days Reader-Appreciation Awards!
TA-DAAAAAA!
Thank You!
Here are the rules for this award:
- Award your top 6 bloggers who have commented the most.
- Be thankful. (I am!)
- You cannot award someone who has already been awarded (I’m not sure how I would know if you have been awarded before, so we might be breaking some rules here !) and also cannot give the award back to me.
- Don’t forget to tell the bloggers you’ve awarded.
- If you don’t want to pass on this award, that’s okay too.
- Agg79 – a world traveler, runner, Boy Scout-supporter and Golden Lab-lover who writes My Two Cents
- Kathy McCullough – a memoirist, an artist and woman of compassion who writes Reinventing the Event Horizon
- Rock Chef – a cyclist, guitarist, wonder-husband and dad; a war-gamer and author of a blog with the ever-changing name who writes Snap-Happy Rock Chef
- de-I - a man of extraordinary culinary skills, an avid hiker, a lovable goofball and my kidney-donor buddy who writes de-Intimidator
- Jeni Hill Ertmer - a woman with amazing embroidery skills, a love of her Swedish heritage, a passion for genealogy and a wonderful mother and grandmother who writes Down River Drivel
- Jules - a tough chick who recently married her best friend, is a do-it-herselfer, a baker of the most beautiful cupcakes and hater of spiders who writes Shenanigans of Jules
If you’ve got some spare time, please go check out the blogs of these wonderful writers. These are the people who had the most to say, but there are many others who join in the conversations here on a regular basis., Just check my newly created blogroll to see all of the blogs I try to keep up with! And there are some who don’t write but stop by to comment now and then too. (Shelly, Rosie!) Thank you to all of you who come here to read, comment, make me smile and offer support. Writing here wouldn’t be nearly as fun without you!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes our ceremony. See you again next year. Maybe. 
Gary of the always entertaining 
Another week has flown by and it’s Friday again already. Time to look back over the past seven days and count my blessings.
Speaking of friends, we had a couple of special ones staying with us this week. Brad’s girlfriend Heather, and her dog, Dacotah arrived on Monday. Brad finished up at his summer job early this week and he and Heather have been enjoying some down-time before they leave to return to school in North Dakota today. It was nice having them around. Heather is just a sweetheart and she fits right in and accepts all of our family craziness as if it were normal. She and Brad even cooked a taco dinner for everyone one night. 
And Dacotah was entertaining as always. There is still a lot of puppy in her and she’s fun to play with. She found a big stick in the back yard and entertained herself endlessly, refusing to let anyone take it and throw it for her and even wanting to bring it in the house, though we wouldn’t let her.
Of course, with the extra bodies in our not-so-large house, there was a need on my part for some space. Wednesday evening provided the perfect opportunity. Our summer bowling league came to its official end and we celebrated with a banquet. Our team didn’t break any records. In fact, it was quite the opposite. We came in 17th out of 18 teams. But we had fun and that’s all that really matters. We didn’t walk away entirely empty handed though. Dave earned a couple of patches and yours truly earned a bobble-head trophy! Never mind the fact that it was pretty much the booby prize since I won it for low series!
It was cool! Check this baby out! The top teams may have won big money, but everyone wanted to see my cool trophy.
