The holidays hit as they typically do, with me not planning nearly enough. What else is new?
Halloween approached and I only fleetingly considered taking the kids out, but had no real desire, so I didn't bother considering costumes. Ok, I really wanted to dress at least one of my kids as a pirate, but didn't really want to do the work, so I let it be a fleeting thought. Halloween morning, I was convinced (or was that guilted?) to take the kids out by one of my neighbors and spent the afternoon sewing a pirate costume for Noah and scrambling with items August already had to make him a train engineer for their first time trick-or-treating. It ended up being a great evening and the boys had a blast once they got a hang of the concept.
Our Thanksgiving plans seemed to change by the day. The in-laws were coming, then not, then they were, then not. We invited my brother and his family and they joined us. Preparations were in the works for one, then two Thanksgiving dinners. I bought two turkeys only to discover we had one in the freezer. Then we only ended up with one Thanksgiving dinner and my in-laws were unable to join us. Regardless, it was a wonderful meal. I was successful in my first attempt at cranberry sauce made with real fresh cranberries and my first time ever making pie - a fantastic pumpkin pie made from scratch all the way down to the homemade pumpkin purée. Yes, I'm bragging.Christmas came upon me before I knew it. It didn't help that I somehow missed the memo that my in-laws wanted to celebrate two weeks early when they came for a visit. How I missed that, I don't know, but I went with the flow and had their gift shipped to them since I ordered it while they were here visiting.
I thought Christmas day would be a nice calm day with just us. We had gone to visit my family last year and since Taran's parents had just been here to visit, we decided to stay put. The morning was great with cinnamon rolls for breakfast (this time I cheated with cinnamon rolls from a can) and Taran and the boys opening presents. It was lovely and picturesque until the power went out. Come to find out, there had been tornadoes in the area and the high winds knocked some trees down on power lines. So, there I was, Christmas night cooking by candle light and flashlight. That was an adventure. At the same time it was kind of nice having the "mood lighting" and I was slightly looking forward to another candlelit evening the next day. Taran went in search of a generator since our fridge and freezer were losing their cool (ok, that was a bad pun) and came home early from work the next day to get the van and run to pick it up along with other supplies. I had been out that morning obtaining candles, flashlights, and other supplies to help us get through the next several days as the electric company predicted our power would be out for the rest of the week. We got the generator up and running. We had minimum power for the most essential things including the fridge, the deep freeze, and some to outlets for charging our phones. I was ready to hunker down and relax in the less hectic lifestyle of electronic "needs." A few hours later, the power returned. In the end I think it was only about 30 hours that we were without power. Despite not really needing all the supplies we gathered, it's nice to know we now have them in case we should need them again. Not having a generator was one thing that worried me living in Houston with the occurrence of hurricanes here.
A week later, my brother and his family came to visit again. They came bearing gifts from my family in the Dallas area where they had gone for Christmas. We celebrated Christmas for a third time with presents all around and had a nice visit with them.
After the whirlwind, I finally have had the opportunity to realize it's January. A new year. I have projects to work on and books to read and more things I want to get done than I have time for. I'm not sure what this new year will bring, but I'm looking forward to getting things done. =)
