So ends……

Another Christmas season.

This one, for some reason, I am not sure why, was a very peaceful settled one for me.  I usually wallow in missing my mom, and get all melancholy, but for some reason, this year I did not. Wish I knew what I did, so I am sure I can repeat it next year!

I have been trying very very hard to make time for myself, and through out the year we have been making time to focus on time together as a family. I took this holiday season, one weekend at at time, did what we could, when we could, and didn’t force anything.

Decorating the tree

We did not get to travel on Thanksgiving, and as much as we missed  it and will not be missing NC on Thanksgiving again, I think it did help tremendously that we had one more weekend in which  to fit Christmas preparation.

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I had a little “help” – the packages weren't’ perfect but who cares!

For the first time in years, we did not travel on Christmas day. Because of the Saturday holiday we spent the entire weekend at Sir Fartsalot’s parents house in NY and had a nice, family and food filled weekend, with no stress and lots of video games and food. Other than racing home ahead of a major snow storm that required us to leave early, it was a terrific weekend. As usual, I took almost no pictures….just a few…..

My heart just bursts with happiness to look at these.

Santa did well again this year. With Sir Fartsalot’s overtime this year, and my new job we were able to do Christmas without dipping into the savings this  year. That might have had something to do with the “peaceful” feeling too! We nearly had K convinced that was just a universal remote, not a new tv for her room! It worked for about 5 minutes! It was no nice to be able to do this for her, considering the tv she originally bought for herself she purchased at a yard sale for $5. There were just a few moments where C needed to be reminded that the things he got were worth just as much as the tv, and were at the top of his list. So the rest of the day was filled with teenage boy shooting and light sabering his way through the xBox! 

even as teenagers, they leave quite an “aftermath” of paper in their wake! C is still just young enough to be excited and was counting down the hours til bed time and up Christmas morning earlier than this  teenage boy has been out of bed, except for school, in nearly a year- much to our dismay and groans at 7:15 am.

So, we log another holiday in the books, return to reality and work today, as well as start to look forward to the new year.