Busy life: The Ups and the Downs.....

  I cannot believe it has been 18 days since I last found time to sit down and share life here. Amazingly busy between work and getting ready for the holidays is all I can offer as an excuse. I am still struggling with the long work hours and the need to get things done at home and balancing these with my weekends at the GF's house. To be honest there are so many days when I just feel so pulled in so many directions that I feel stretched to the breaking point. And other days when I am so weary that I feel as if  I cannot continue to keep on and want to admit defeat.
Then there are those days like yesterday and Christmas Eve when it all comes together in a magical way and all the hard work pays off.
I hope all of you had a wonderful and joyous and blessed  holiday. My favorite part was the hour I spent at Mass on Christmas Eve. The voices of the youth choir were like those of the angels. The feeling of joy and goodwill in the standing room only crowd were a balm to the soul. The sermon touched me in so many ways. How often we hear the story of the Christ child and yet have stopped listening to what it is saying to us. It certainly made me think and I do believe it will figure in my list of New Year's promises to myself.
The greatest gift my family received this month though was a new addition. My stepdaughter whose hubby is in the military welcomed a new son several weeks early at the beginning of December. Our gift was this newest little one coming home from the NICU on Christmas Eve!! Many prayers helped this little guy over a rough start and my stepdaughter's one wish , to have him home for Christmas, was granted. God is good. All the time.

Over the last busy weeks I have not only worked both school  jobs as well as the twice monthly cleaning job I also managed to clean house, keep up on laundry and dinners,  shop for gifts and decorate for the holidays:

 

 

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On Sunday the 15th we had a beautiful day of softly falling snow. It was almost like being in a snow globe. GF and I got into his pickup and headed out into the countryside to try a new-to-us tree farm for our Christmas trees. We couldn't have asked for more holiday-like weather. And it didn't take us long to find two terrific trees. I ended up with the Canaan fir that I preferred and after giving the tree a day for the branches to relax my college age daughter and youngest son and I decorated her up :

 

I also managed that day to bake a batch of Christmas cut out cookies. Unfortunately I was laid low in the energy department by catching a cold. Not surprising given the number of students at school who were also stricken and willing to spread the joy around.  This meant that I did not get any more baking done until last weekend when I went into 'deadline' mode and managed to get everything I wanted to bake finished! This cookie tray went with us yesterday to my oldest son's house for our celebration:

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GF and I also managed to finish up our shopping and stay in budget as well.

Our holiday celebrations are not quite over though. Tomorrow night we will go to my middle daughter's house for dinner and gift exchange with her, my SIL, and my two grandsons who live here in town. And we do have plans to go out to the casino with GF's brother and sister-in-law on New Year's Eve for the dinner buffet and some penny slots .

On a more practical note while I am off of work until January 6th I will be reviewing my last year's spending and tweaking my budget. I've spent two months pondering a possible move after youngest son graduates but have finally decided that although I am upside down in my mortgage due to the recession and the real estate crises of the last few years (the number of foreclosed homes in my area that are now rentals have really impacted my home's value) it is in my best interests to stay put. I weighed the advantages of being a homeowner with the risks, considered the advantages of renting versus the risks and home-owning came out on top. In the last 6 weeks we have had a couple of  minor disasters (a tree from our yard came down in a storm and landed on the power lines over the neighbor's yard taking out a section of fence and pulling the lines connected to the neighbor's house off the house (amazingly neither of us lost power, adult son living at home took care of repairing the fence temporarily and got rid of the tree himself and has offered to repair the neighbor's siding although since the house is occupied by renters and the owners are a group that has not contacted us that is still up in the air) and last weekend we had another horrible rainstorm that dumped so much water into the city's storm system that we had about 6 inches of water back up into our basement. Again. Second time this year. And this time it is draining very slowly, we still have about an inch on the side of the basement where the drains are located. The pilot on the hot water tank is out and we are just praying that once it dries out it will re-light. In the meantime I'm holding off on doing any grocery shopping in case a new hot water tank will need to be purchased. I don't even want to think about the possibility that my washer and dryer have been killed as well. The city came out in the midst of the storm only to tell college age daughter (who was the only one home at the time) that they couldn't snake the drain from the street to the basement because of a faulty t-joint. Of course that was nonsense since we replaced that joint only a few years ago and the reason they couldn't snake probably was the fact that the street was under water from curb to curb at the time they were there. Nowhere for that water to go. Son and I talked about having them come back out (there is no charge for the service) but finally decided he would borrow a power snake from a friend and do the job himself working from the basement drain towards the street. I will be spending a day or so washing down the floor and the appliances with bleach water as well as the few items on the floor at the time of the backup. Son was smart enough to grab his power tools and move them to the dining room when he saw the flood warnings on tv.

Life is messy is the lesson here. But I have worked very hard since my husband died to hang on to my home and I am not ready to give it up yet is the bottom line. The only thing left to do is look to the future, make a sensible savings and spending plan, and keep on keeping on.