Yes, I realize that it has been almost a month since my last post. I've been a bit busy, so please forgive me. Instead of trying to recap what we have been up to for the last month in individual posts, I am just going to put it all in one post.
December was a pretty good month. We were busy as usual, Daniel working, Olivia finishing up school for this year and then trying to get our stuff packed to head back to the Lou for the last two weeks of the year. We found out that at the end of the current preschool semester that Olivia's favorite teacher would be resigning from SLC due to family illness. Olivia was crushed when I told her as was I because her lead teacher leaves a bit to be desired. Hopefully the teacher hired to fill Mrs. Carr's spot will step up to the plate. Daniel was able to save a week of vacation time to take in December and his plant is on shut down the week between Christmas and New Year's, so his last day of work was December 16 and he goes back January 4. It is weird to have him home so much since usually he works 80+ hours a week and I barely see him except on Saturday and Sundays.
So since he had almost 3 weeks off, we headed back to the Lou on December 17. Our first stop was at The Lake of the Ozarks to spend a couple days with his mom and sister. Then on the 19th we headed to Centralia to spend the remainder of our holiday with my mom. She had to work most days, so we were able to carve out time to spend with our friends and family and not take away from our time with her. We utilized our time well and were able to see everyone that we had hoped. We have a wonderful Christmas with family. We decided to head back to Houston on December 29. Even though I loved spending time with our family and friends, I was so glad to be back home. We drove 3000 miles in two weeks so we were and still are pretty exhausted. On New Year's Eve, the weather was perfect, about 80 degrees so there was lots of activity going on. Apparently, fireworks are a HUGE deal down here. It is Monday, January 1 as I write this and people are still shooting off fireworks. On NYE night, we went down to our friends' Joe and Misty's house, they were having a block party. It was a fun time but it was cut short for me because Olivia was scared of all the loud fireworks going off all around so she begged me to bring her home. Daniel and Cameron stayed for a while and Daniel said it was a fun time. The kiddos were both in bed by 9:45ish and since it was such a nice night, Daniel and I decided to sit outside and watch all the fireworks shows. I have to say, our neighbors a couple doors down put on a television special worthy fireworks show and the best part was we didn't even have to leave our backyard. About 10:30, I was out in our driveway looking at some other fireworks and I saw our neighbor from across the street out. We started talking and ended up standing outside for a while talking. I haven't really gotten to talk to her much since we lived here as she has been receiving chemo for breast cancer but I really enjoyed our time in the driveway. After a while in the driveway, we all came to our backyard and were just sitting around drinking. We ended up doing that till 1:00 am. It was such a nice night. I hope that Lana and I can start hanging out more, she is a very nice person.
*On a side note, someone had the nerve to come in our garage and help themselves to our weed eater, edger and blower. The edger and blower were practically brand new. Since we don't know when this exactly happened, it was most likely sometime between Thanksgiving and when we left to go to St. Louis, we can't really file a police report. Since it more than likely going to cost about $600ish to replace all of the these things, we (I) hope Daniel can borrow our neighbors for a while as we won't be able to get new ones for a some time. Our best guess as to what happened to them is one of the many yard crews that cuts various lawns around ours, saw Daniel using it and decided it would be a nice addition to their arsenal of yard equipment. It really frosts our biscuits that someone would do that as we try to be good, honest people and teach our kids the same values and then something like this happens.
As a new year is upon us, I have quite a few "resolutions" swirling around in my head but am not ready to reveal them yet as I have some logistics to work through first. I know resolutions are supposed to be made before the New Year comes but I say better late than never.
I hope everyone had a joyous holiday season and a safe and happy New Year.
