In late 2009, friends Pam Godwin (left) and Karen Amster-Young (right) felt a little stuck. They wondered when they'd stopped exploring new ways to fill their soul, stomach and sense of self. With a shared feeling of restlessness, they decided to change things up.

So one night, three cocktails deep, the two fortysomethings made a pledge to try something new, fun, challenging, or ridiculous every week for a year -- and document the ups and downs along the way. The52Weeks blog was born.

With four of her five children now grown, singer Amy Grant says her family's holiday traditions have evolved. "We have traditions, but they change every year," she tells Good Housekeeping. "Children grow up, so now we're just a bunch of adults enjoying one another's company. Christmas is a kind of journey. You can have ideas, and you can plan for it, but it kind of takes on a life of its own."

So it is for many families with grown children.

For birdwatchers like me, one of the highlights of the holiday season is the National Audubon Society's annual Christmas Bird Count. It's a chance for experienced birders to monitor the health of their local avian community, but it's also an opportunity for would-be birdwatchers to get a taste of a fascinating hobby while participating in one of the world's oldest "crowd science" efforts.

In this 112-year-old tradition -- started as an alternative to Christmas bird-shooting competitions -- groups of bird lovers head out one day between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5 to record the number of species and the number of birds they see. Last year more than 60,000 people tallied more than 61 million birds, according to the Audubon Society.

This week's World AIDS Day ceremony in Washington featured President Obama and Bono, and the theme was "The beginning of the end of AIDS."

The event highlighted the remarkable progress in fighting the HIV epidemic -- the rate of new infections worldwide has declined by 20 percent since 1997, and more people are living longer with HIV than ever before. It's likely that by 2017 -- and perhaps as soon as 2015 -- more than half of all Americans living with HIV will be 50 or older, Daniel Tietz, executive director of the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America, writes at the Huffington Post.

As the holiday season arrives, SecondAct asked some people we've written about what they're grateful for this Thanksgiving and at this time in their lives.

Here's what they shared:

1. Jeff Yeager, author of The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches.
"I'm thankful I'm still around. Good health means a lot. When I give really young people advice, it's, 'Take care of your health as best as you can.'The important stuff in your life doesn't involve money and shopping and price tags... Some things are more important than stuff. It sounds kind of obvious, but it's true. The older you get, the less any of this matters. Live in the moment. I value experience more than stuff."

A Southern California entrepreneur and his family, who set out on a three-year sailing journey this summer, have docked in Puerto Rico while waiting for hurricane season to pass.

Scott Leonard, CEO of a wealth-management firm in Redondo Beach, says the family planned to reach the southern Caribbean, out of the hurricane track, by September. He's found, though, that sailing from place to place can take longer than expected.

Love it or hate it, Facebook is changing.

The world's largest online social network recently announced a major overhaul that includes changing the way members organize and view their personal information and that of their friends.

Martina Navratilova played tennis so long -- until she was 49 -- that by the end of her pro career, she says she was older than almost everyone on the circuit, including players, trainers, and even players' mothers.

After Navratilova turned 50, she became a nutrition and fitness ambassador for AARP, the advocacy group for people 50 and older. Just like that, she went from being the oldest in the group to the youngest. And that's what surprised her most about life after 50. "I'm young again," she says.

It seems like a month can't pass without a new option popping up for downloading, listening to or sharing music on your computer and smartphone.

Some, such as Amazon's CloudDrive, Google's Music Beta and Apple's yet-to-be-released iCloud service, act like electronic lockers for storing digitized music online and downloading it to internet-enabled devices. Others, such as Pandora and Storify, are more akin to radio stations that let you listen to individual songs or entire albums and share what you like with other subscribers.

Now that a contentious Congress finally has agreed to raise the federal debt ceiling and avoid a bond default that might have plunged the U.S. and global economies into chaos, we can turn our attention to some other momentous news: President Barack Obama turns 50 on Thursday. 

It looked for a while as if the latest baby boomer president (Bill Clinton and his successor George W. Bush, both born in 1946, preceded him) might have to postpone festivities because of a possible fiscal meltdown. But the clinching of a last-second deal has now freed Obama to return to Chicago today for a celebratory gala and concert that will feature jazz musician Herbie Hancock and singer Jennifer Hudson. (There's also a $35,800-a-plate political fundraising dinner before the party.)