Saying Goodbye to Christmas 2016.

New board games.  This one is Splendor, which we all enjoy.

Christmas Eve gluten free sugar cookies. 

Our Christmas tree in our cozy (crowded especially at Christmas) living room. 

 My porch post snowman.

Rudolph on the front door.

We've already eaten the cookies and played the board games and soon we'll be taking down the decorations and starting 2017.  I hope that this year is full of good changes and not bad ones like last year.  2016 was hard on all of us, but we are okay right now.  We had a good Christmas and we've started making/hearing about wedding plans for our oldest son and his fiancee.  

A little late, but ...

I hope that each of you had a Merry Christmas!  We did.  I teared up a little when passing my Mom and Dad's house after leaving my mother-in-law's house, but at that point, I was so tired and I had had a good day, so the tears were minimal.  Also, I had prepared myself for it all week and was ready.  It's hard celebrating your first Christmas without either parent.  :-(  Add to that, my son and his fiancee not getting to be here and it was kind of hard to think about but at some point on Christmas Eve I decided to just enjoy what is and the four of us here lit candles, baked cookies, made chili and settled in for an evening of Christmas movies, church and new board games.  We ended up having a really good time.  We played board games again last night.  We've played 2 of the new ones and have 3 more new ones to go, so that's good.

I also got the Sims 4 for Christmas but I can't play it yet.  It needs, apparently, about 3 days worth of downloads and updates.  :-(  We're working on that now.

We've got another celebration tomorrow with my brother and his girlfriend and our favorite aunt so today we're getting ready for that.  

Christmas preparations and roof repair.

Here's a couple of better pictures of the roof, showing the damage.  We have a tarp on it now so we can take our time getting estimates and actually getting it repaired.   Christmas things this week included getting the shopping done (okay, I have one more thing to get today!), knitting and mailing a pair of socks (my daughter did this one), and attending the Christmas play and singing in the cantata at church and attending the Christmas celebration at the school my daughter teaches at.  It's Christmas eve and other than one small trip to town to get one thing, we're ready for the holiday.  Grief is making an appearance for me as this is my first Christmas parentless and my son's not coming home, but I guess I'll make it.  Such a difference a year has made in our lives.  

So ...

Saturday night, this happened.  We have 3 holes in our roof and 1 in our deck.  Fun times.  

Getting ready for Christmas.

We've got board games group today, which I like, so I'm glad we're doing it.  My daughter's school where she works is involved in getting ready for their Christmas program so she's going to go and help them rehearse this morning and then go to board games and then back to work for her regular shift and then she'll have half an hour until the Christmas program starts, so it's a super long busy day for her.  She's doing so well with this job, thriving in it and it's so nice to see.  :-)   Youngest son is enjoying his year off from doing school and trying to get some creative projects done and also trying to decide what to do about college.  He was accepted into University of the Cumberlands and got his acceptance letter this week, but now does not want to fill out the scholarship applications because they ask for personal narratives.  :-(  I'm not sure how we're going to get around that.  He may end up at community college because of it and really, that's fine.  It wasn't me that wanted him to go away to school in the first place, it was him.  I've done a little work for a transcription company this week.  The pay is abysmal but the work is not bad, I guess.  I am still looking for a job.  I'm not looking very forward to Christmas this year, since my mom has gone to heaven and my oldest son is not coming home, so I'm feeling kind of like this guy.

 So, anyway.  Here are some pictures from this week.

Crocheted Pokemon for one of the kid's friends.

This picture somehow got a weird, blurry picture of Cosmo's face also in it.  It's kind of freaky.  Really, he's cute.

See?

Little ceramic tree that was my moms.

Porch post snowman that I got at the Christmas bazaar.

Rudolph door decor I got at last years' bazaar. 

Cat on the roof.  This is Zelda.  

Stockings are hung.

Freckles who is according to my kids, the canine version of me  - she's middle aged, chubby, sometimes crabby, not the most patient of people and has an underbite which is what I had braces for back in the day.  :-)

Busy Week.

I'm amazed at how busy I've been keeping with no job, but of course, it's holiday season and I've been working on some things with my health.  Hopefully when I do get a job I'll be in good shape.  I've been saw a dietitian to help with weight loss and yesterday I saw a physical therapist to help with my knees.  I sprained my left knee really, really badly a long time ago and now that's come back to haunt me.  I am hopeful that I can get the muscles around it strengthened and so I will be able to avoid surgery.  I had surgery twice last fall and I really never want to do that again, if possible.  :-)

We're keeping busy with Christmas activities, doing things at church and with both of the 2 local homeschool groups we have been associated with over the years.  We had a Christmas party with the bigger of the 2 groups on Tuesday and there were 66 people there!  That's crazy that there are that many homeschoolers here but I think it's great.  As you know, I am largely in favor of homeschooling for most families.  :-)  The big kids group I was helping supervise played human foosball and board games while the little kids did Christmas crafts and watched Charlie Brown Christmas.  It was fun.   We'll be getting together with the other homeschool group next week.

We've been practicing for the Christmas cantata at church.  We love choral singing and it is very good for your health and its especially fun to sing Christmas music.  My daughter also got asked to help with the Christmas play so she's doing that.

We're still working 2 days a month at the little store where we sell our crafts.  We had to go up there yesterday and put our crafts back in --- we had taken some of them out for the Christmas bazaar.  Sales aren't fabulous this month, but we might make our table rent.  :-/   Nonetheless, my daughter enjoys doing it, so we are staying, I guess.  I whine about it every time we have to go and work.  :-P  We'll have to figure out how to work during Christmas break at the school she works at.

We have no idea when/if my oldest son and his fiancee (did you note how I slipped that in; they got ENGAGED!)  will be able to come up and visit for Christmas so we don't know when our Christmas celebration will be.   I'd be okay with going down and meeting them halfway but I am not sure how our money is holding out with all the Christmas shopping, so probably not.  

Speaking of Christmas shopping ... if you've been reading this blog for long, you know I whine and panic about it every year, but this year I haven't ;  I've just gotten it done.   I'm kind of excited about it.  

Now, switching gears again.

For a long time we were doing home improvements, using the visitors as an excuse to get a bunch of things done around the house and now that's all done.  I still have some cleaning I need to do in my bedroom, the master bathroom and the laundry room and I plan to do that, but now there's not as much of a sense of a deadline to get it done.  So, we are doing some other things; starting to think about maybe getting ready for Christmas, filling out college and scholarship applications and sending ACT test scores, singing in the choir for the Christmas cantata, a Christmas bazaar this weekend, Christmas shopping with my old homeschool group, a Christmas party with my new homeschool group, a board game day and the thing I seem to do most, putting the dogs in and out and in and out and in and out.  I keep busy.

Speaking of our dogs, my daughter painted this picture of Cosmo at her art class.

I may also have gotten a job last night, part time.  A company called me to transcribe documents for them and they are going to give me a chance.  Hopefully that will go well.  I am proud that my husband can support us without me working, but I need something to do and we need money for the extras and the unexpected (vacations and vet bills, basically).  So we'll see how that goes.

As I fill out the college applications, I am sitting here worrying how my son's dysgraphia will affect him at college.  I hope that he will be able to get accommodations.  I probably need to take him to get him tested to verify his dysgraphia so he'll have something official.  This extra year between high school and college makes this whole process easier, giving me time to get all of this done.  I'm thankful he stayed home this year for that reason and also because if his going away to college had happened 2 months after my mom passed away, I just don't think I could have taken it.  ;-/