So its the end of the year, which is CRAZY! I feel like this year has flown by and I haven't even had a chance to take it all in. I feel like we were just settling into our house and now we've been there 11 months! Boy oh boy! I'm sure I'm sure I'll have a reflection post at the end of the year or beginning of January but for now I'll just tell the recent happenings.
I got my grades back from school and while I did not get on the Dean's List, I did get a 3.2... Which I think is good seeing as how I have been working about 25-30 hours per week, going to school at night, helping to homeschool the girls on my off days and keeping our house from falling apart. I know that I did not do any of this alone, I have the support and HUGE helping hand of my wonderful husband but I still feel very proud of myself! I think next semester I will do better but it was a challenge trying to juggle everything and getting reacquainted to the working/school life which I only have to do for one semester and then I am done with school! What a relief that will be!
I really love my job, I don't think there has been a day that I didn't want to come in (except for today). I love learning new things and writing motions and just being in the legal world! I didn't want to come in today because I thought I had the day off but my boss informed me yesterday evening that he needs me to come in today... Which was a bummer because I had many plans of baking and putting up our real tree that we chopped down but such is life I guess!
I can't believe we are celebrating our second Christmas with kids. It is so weird! I love buying them new things and this year we really took a practical approach to their presents rather than getting them a bunch of toys and junk because they don't even hardly play with the stuff they have! We got them a lot of clothes because they had a little incident that made them lose a lot of their brand new school clothes (they were doing laundry that I was unaware of, left a giant load in the washer for 2 days and it got moldy so I had to throw it away... two large garbage bags full of clothes!). They have TONS of clothes so it wasn't much of a loss but they did lose most of their new jeans which sucks because we spent a lot of money on that stuff. So for Christmas they are getting clothes, lots of clothes. We got them a few other little things, each of them an MP3 player and a Kindle to share... Oh ya and a dog! They made out like bandits if you ask me! We're all excited for Christmas and for everyone to open their gifts from us. We had to scale back the budget this year because rights as we were getting ready to go shopping, our water heater broke so we had to replace that and our small, growing emergency budget didn't cover all of the expenses of it so we had to dip into Christmas money. That's okay though, we were able to do great things! We also got to get our shopping done super early and 98% of our present are wrapped and ready to go :-D
We are hosting Christmas Dinner which is pretty exciting! All presents will have been exchanged so there will be no wrapping paper mess to clean (fantastic!). My grandma and grandpa are doing the turkey, stuffing and a dessert. My mom is taking care of the mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. We are taking care of the rest which leaves me mainly to do appetizers and desserts (my specialty) so I'm excited about that one! It will just be dinner and maybe watching a Christmas movie or something like that.
Christmas has been great so far... I have not had any complaints about the way things have gone, all in all I have had a great time filled with family and baking lol Christmas has always been a very busy time of the year but it is one of my favorites... I find myself more at peace and really focusing on why we celebrate rather than getting wrapped up (no pun intended) in the hustle and bustle of shopping and greed and focusing on what I get. Jesus is my personal savior, he is the reason why I am here and have everything that I have. Without his sacrifice of being born, knowing he would be killed for my sins is such an incredible thought! I am so humbled to think that he was so willing to make such a choice in life for ME! Yes, he made it for everyone but he made that choice with me in mind. I stop and think about this, I want to share this with everyone but for some reason, many people are not willing to listen during this time because they are so consumed by greed and perfection and busy schedules... If they would only take a second and pause to think about what Jesus being born really means and what Christmas really is all about they would find peace, comfort and happiness during this hectic time. I feel blessed to have been born one day after the Savior... to me that is fantastic!
If you are traveling during this time, I pray you arrive to your destination safely and share the message of Jesus Christ to someone during your travels. If you are not traveling, I pray you pause to remember why we are really celebrating and take that moment with your loved ones to remember these things.
