New Year’s Eve is a time for renewal, celebration and, yes, those dreaded resolutions that everyone is always talking about. In my house, it’s an extra special time because it’s also when my husband and I got married.

Our wedding was on Dec. 30, 1990. Before you start doing the math in your head the answer is that we tied the knot 25 years ago today, perhaps before many of you reading this were even born. I am what you might refer to as a “senior spouse,” having been married to my husband for his entire Army career.

Want to lose weight? Learn a new language? Keep a cleaner house? Write a novel?

What is your New Year's Resolution?

The easy part is deciding. The hard part is following through.

And let's be honest, we're not experts at keeping resolutions either. Last year our staff made lots of resolutions. The easiest, or so we thought: one writer vowed to move the Elf on the Shelf every night during December. The result?

Elf:2  Staff writer: 0

No goal, no matter how small, is as easy as we think.

My birthday is 10 days before Christmas.

I am routinely and firmly a member of the December Birthday Club, where people try to pass off one gift for two separate occasions, or where people just forget to even celebrate it, amid all the other holiday hustle and bustle.

By Tiffany Shedd

I grew up with lots of Christmas traditions that all revolved around being with family, so as an adult I had a certain expectation of what Christmas was and what went on. Christmas can be a hard time, especially when you are a military family, because you’re often far away from family.

So, you can either lament those Christmas pasts that you’re missing or you can start making traditions of your own that you can carry with you wherever you may end up during the holiday season.