It's the end of the year . . .

 . . . thank goodness.

It was a tough year; I'm very glad that it's nearly over. I hope that the coming year will be a better one!  No resolutions for me; I intend to keep working on learning whatever I can, and doing my best to deal with whatever life sends me.  

We're seeing the old year out with an appetizer dinner; I've been making nibbles all afternoon. It's a fun tradition that we all enjoy; everyone gets to eat exactly what they want to eat, one bite at a time. No "eat all your veggies," from me tonight!

And I'll actually encourage everyone to eat lots and lots of dessert.

So how's the move going?

I'm sure I heard someone asking! We took time out for Christmas, and drove down south to visit family. What an amazing concept! We'd been in New York for so long, that we'd quite forgotten how much fun a family holiday can be. But now we're back, and yesterday I tackled the garage.

Yup, the place where everything that we didn't want to deal with went to hide.

I didn't get everything unpacked, but I did get it cleared out enough to set up our new exercise room in one of the bays. So now I have no excuse not to lose that last ten pounds, right?

Oopsie.

The more things change . . .

. . . the more we look for ways they remain the same. Although it is later than usual, our Christmas decorations are up. The tree is filled with all of our old favorites; the ones the kids made, the ones we bought over the years, the ones that decorated our little tree the Christmas we lived in London. The stockings are hung; the singing Christmas tree from Aunt Diana is ready to surprise visitors; and the same shepherds are watching their sheep as the wise men approach the stable in our nativity.

Everything is in a new place, but they are all good places. A few things have not been unpacked; they will wait for next year. We just didn't have time to find everything. But we have time to make cookies, and we have time to remember all the Christmases that we have spent together.

We will remember this year as the year we unpacked the Christmas ornaments before we unpacked anything else.

Free at last!

Well, okay, yes, I'm overstating this already with my title. But I have to admit, I'm really, really looking forward to lazing in bed. We moved two weeks before the kids' semester ended at their old schools, and we decided that it made more sense to have them finish out the year before changing schools. Sounds reasonable, right? But it meant hauling my sorry carcass out of bed before sunrise every day.

You see, they are in different schools, with different (and totally incompatible) start and stop times. So I ended up having to drive about 100 miles per day in order to get everyone where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there. But today is the last day of the semester, and the last day of mom's taxi service.

They'll be on winter break for the next two weeks, and then they will start school again.

Locally.

I'm free!

The worst part of moving . . .

. . . has to be cleaning out the old place. That's what was on my plate today, and I'm very glad that I won't have to do THAT again!!!!

Whew. What a day. I vacuumed and scrubbed every inch of that place. My son opened the drain on the hot tub, and he took care of cleaning up the outside while I did the inside. We worked like maniacs, and were finished by noon. So we packed up the car and drove home. Settling down on the couch for a well-deserved rest, I picked up the newspaper and read:

"It's really, really cold for California."

How cold? Cold enough. Possibly 27 overnight. Yeah, laughable by midwest and east coast standards, but it almost NEVER gets that cold here.

And all I can think about is that hot tub, draining at the rate of about 3 inches an hour. Yup, do the math; no WAY would that sucker be totally empty before the big freeze. And, of course, we had to turn the heat off in order to drain it, so I'm instantly imagining that thing freezing and cracking.

Not an option.

So my wonderful son drove back over there with me and we bailed it out. Good thing we did, because the drain hole is about 6" above the bottom; even if it had finished draining, it would have had enough water in the bottom to possibly cause damage when it froze. But it's dry now. And covered. And my darling husband has offered to take us out for pizza.

Why couldn't this have been a NORMAL cold night of 52° !?!?!