Still in post-Christmas week mode.

We're still not doing that much. We're all taking Cold-Eeze to try and prevent ourselves from getting the youngest's cold. He's better today, no fever, thankfully. We all hate the Cold-Eeze losenges. They taste awful. My daughter was trying to describe the flavor today with one in her mouth and said "Holwible". We did clean a bit and take the Christmas tree down. The living room seems much more spacious without it. My youngest son has been making hot ham sandwiches for which he puts the ham into the microwave, making it pop and sizzle. He has named this sandwich Ham-A-La-Bang-Bang. Overall, it's been a good week, despite the illness and the broken van. I do wish we knew what we were going to do about the van. That worries me a bit since we can't afford anything else. I may be 'grounded' for a while. That might be kinda holwible.

Two things we got for Christmas that we didn't want.

One was a flu-like illness that my youngest son has and the rest of us are really hoping not to get. The other is a broken down van. Blah. I guess we have to stay home for a few days. I hope that my son gets better before New Years because we are planning to attend a party. (We can drive my husbands car!)

On the work front, I haven't really started looking for anything. I did get an email a few minutes ago about jobs so I'm kind of looking. A little. Kind of browsing. It just seems like too much effort. Since Christmas everything has seemed like too much effort. I think it would be better for tax purposes to wait until after the new year, so that's a good excuse not too look too hard, isn't it?

I'm really in the back of my mind starting to think about the new school schedules. You know me, I don't want to do the same exact thing since it's a new year. I like to change things up. I want some kind of new math program for my youngest 2 kids and I want to really start preparing my oldest son to take another CLEP test and get college credit. Of course I always want to write the perfect school/life schedule that will get us educated, groomed, organized and where we are supposed to be on time, but that never works out. Still, I keep trying. Hope springs eternal.

A little bit of our normal today.

That's what we are hoping for. No parties although we love parties. No unlimited screen time although the kids love that. We'll work a little at getting the house in order since it looks like a hurricane hit a toy/video game store and then hit our living room. Other than that, we're just going to take it easy today. I might start my job hunting because that is my after-christmas priority but I also may leave that for a couple of days.

I know my going gluten free may not be that interesting to anyone but it is to me so, so I'm going to say a little bit about it. I think it may need to be a permanent change for me. I'm feeling so much better, less aching, less fatigue. Yesterday I went from church to baking, to a party, to work without needing a nap and without feeling particularly tired. This is a tremendous change from just a few months ago. We planned our party attendance to that I would get home an hour before my shift started, with the assumption that I'd need a nap, as usual, but I didn't. This is huge people. Huge. My brother gave me an assortment of gluten-free products for Christmas (very thoughtful!) and I used one of the products yesterday, of course not in the way it was intended. It was a pancake mix and I wasn't craving pancakes, I was craving biscuits, so I made up a little of the batter and baked it into biscuits. They were actually good! My first experience with gluten-free bread from the store was so horrible, I wouldn't even feed it to the dogs, so this is very encouraging. I can imagine making some decent chicken and dumplings now, maybe even chicken pot pie and ooh, ooh, pizza crust! You know what I said about not missing bread, well I kind of do at the moment. There's also several pasta dishes and some brownie mix in the basket, so I'm going to enjoy experimenting with those too.

I now need to decide what to spend my Christmas money on because I did get a little of that. That's always a fun way to spend a post-holiday day. ;-0

Better day.

Today was definitely a better day. We had a family party with my husband's family. I really love my husband's family, so I don't have any in-law or out-law jokes to make. We just got home a little while ago and I'm getting ready to work. It was really good to get to visit with everyone, hold the babies, eat the chocolate and it even snowed a little while we were there, making it really seem like Christmas. :-)

Today's thoughts.

I went to the visitation before the funeral today. I didn't stay for the funeral for a few reasons. One was that my back was/is killing me. Another is that I have to work (really a lot today!). Also, and probably the most important, is I don't handle funerals well. I guess nobody does. I'm feeling kind of vulnerable right now for a couple of reasons. One is that it is that time of the month and I've recently went off my antidepressant because I was not feeling depressed. I've read a book on cognitive therapy which helped with that and I think maybe getting off the gluten has helped with the depression, so I don't think I'm depressed, but I do feel a little bit down at the moment. There's the after-Christmas slump, the after-Christmas fatigue, the fact that my aunt died after months of terrible suffering and it all leads up to my not feeling like I could do it today. I would have stayed if I felt that my presence mattered a lot to the family, but there was such a huge crowd, I didn't think they'd even notice if I slipped out. So, right or wrong, I did. I feel a little bit bad about it. I'm going to try and get a bunch of work done today and also try to get in a little bit of rest and maybe once I'm not as tired, my back will stop hurting and maybe then I'll get some of my good humor back. Tomorrow is another day and hopefully a better one. I'll try and think of ways that I can reach out to my uncle and cousins in the coming weeks, to let them know how much I do care about their loss.

Christmas.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Ours was nice, until my husband and I had to go back to work tonight. That kind of made reality hit a little too soon, but it's okay really. It was a good Christmas. One thing that was funny was that the kids realized today that all the work their Dad's been doing on computers in the living room in the last month was to build computers for them, so now the 2 youngest have their very own (inexpensive) computers. Oldest son already had one from a couple of Christmases ago. Another funny thing was my daughter wearing a Snoopy Christmas T-shirt and bermuda shorts on Christmas Eve to my parent's house. She thinks 49 degrees is warm, apparently. My daughter made me a Christmas card and I'm going to try and attach pictures of it, it was so cute.

Here's a funny scene from our Upwords game, me versus Mom and she had all vowels except one and I had all consonants except one, pretty typical really

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Everyone seemed pleased with their gifts and my youngest son said it might have been the best Christmas ever. (I'd like to point out that I typed this on Christmas night which was when my husband and I both had to go back to work, but it wouldn't actually publish until the 26th).

100% done.

I got 100% of things on my list done today and 100% of my Christmas shopping is done, just, as Hank the Cowdog would say, in the nickering of time. Of course it helps that my list only had 6 things on it and all of them were pretty easy, clean, color hair, books to library, pick up some things at Walmart, return Freshwater Fred and see the Squeekwel. Uh oh. We didn't actually go to the movie because it was sold out. Do you think that should count against me? Probably. Okay, so I got almost everything done. We could have went to a different movie, but the younger kids didn't want to use up their new movie gift cards on movies they didn't really, really want to see. The older boy and me didn't really want to see the Squeakwel and we were both thinking about attending other movies at the same time (while the younger ones were with their friends) but it didn't matter to us. We ended up going to Grandma and Granddad's and taking their gifts over to their house so we got an errand done that wasn't even on the list. That should be a bonus or something! Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I hope to be able to relax and enjoy it.

(The picture is from the Blurry Scenes From Our Christmas Tree series and that is a baby sock snowman. Unfortunately, bad mom that I am, I'm not sure which kids baby socks those are!)

Eve, Eve.

Today's the day my kids traditionally exchange presents with each other, so they made sure to get that done as soon as they woke up.  Good to check things off early.  We're trying to get a few things done, the house straightened up, books to the library, Freshwater Fred package mailed back and a couple of things purchased.  Then we need to go through all the lists and make sure we have a present for everyone that we're supposed to have a present for.  My husband and I are both working every night but Christmas Eve itself so that adds and interesting level to the festivities.  We've also got a big family party this weekend and also a funeral, sadly.  My aunt, who has been suffering from cancer for 14 months passed away yesterday.  It was not unexpected, but it is sad.  I really feel for her family so much.