Family · Health · Perspective

I’m Back with Christmas Music

I’m Back!

Sitting at my desk at work, listening to “Silver and Gold” on pandora radio. I dabbled in Christmas music last week, but my office mates weren’t keen on it. They are Thanksgiving purists.

It was a h-e- double hockey sticks of a fall. I was sick for half of October and all of November. One IV dose and three oral antibiotics later and I’m feeling like a functional adult again! Meanwhile, I still have two kids, a job, and volunteer responsibilities. As is typical for me, I overdid life and my body rebelled. Memory and thoughts got fuzzy, hand and face were numb, you know all those weird MS things. My NP just hugged me while I cried at my last visit.

Time to look at life priorities again. Illness makes it obvious that something has to change. After five days of difficult conversations with my husband, we are back on the same page. No plan, but at least we are talking in the same direction about the load on my plate.

I’m not one to dwell on negative things. On to looking forward to Christmas! On Thanksgiving Day, since we previously celebrated with both sides of the family, the kids and I put up Christmas decorations. They ate nachos and wore Santa hats. It was glorious! We battled our unlit, pre-lit but not working artificial tree and then the 90% working set of white Christmas lights. I let my daughter put up the Nativity, but then reorganized it. She refused to place any people or animals off the creche. That was one crowded party!

Today after school, we begin work on the church Christmas program. Thank goodness this one calls for a whole jumble of angels. All the little girls want to be angels! Last year we had to pull out fairy wings from the dress-up box at the house to equip everybody.

IMG_6623

Winter is (mostly) here! Although it is sunny and 48 degrees F now, this is what it looked like last week. I enjoy a good white winter!

Happy December 3rd!

Much love — Jen

Family · Perspective

Perfect Morning

I named this post after the candle I have burning on my desk at work. It’s a delicious creamy coffee smell.

If I’m honest, I prefer the smell of coffee over the taste. Tea is more my thing.

As I write, our current real temperature is -6 Fahrenheit. Wind chill sits near -20F. This past weekend, we added another 4 inches of snow to the 7 inches we accumulated from the previous storm.

I’m thankful for the shop guys plowing and piling thru the 4ft frozen drift that blocked my east driveway this morning. The kids were also excited about the prospect of playing on this later in the week when we get a tad bit warmer. Still frozen… but in double positive digits.

My father-in-law refilled the bird feeder and threw out milo for the yard rabbits this morning. They’ve taken to chewing the bark off our lilacs. We’ve had snow cover for weeks and the wild creatures are getting hungry.

Basically, winter is still in full-swing. I speak for all us winter-loving people: “we are ready for spring!”