The holidays are always so busy with family and going here and there. Throw in a few divorces and you multiply the number of stops. Look at my bonus kids for instance. They have 2 sides with their parents, that’s a given. When you add in my side you have my parents who are divorced therefore you have both sides and their respective spouses also. That makes for one heck of a Christmas for the kids. So needless to say it is one BIG happy family, well happy most of the time…haha.

This holiday season was a busy one for us as usual with a twist. This being the first holiday season since moving to TN we had the pleasure of making the trip back home, an 11 hour car ride, to see family. I was on IVs the whole time we were there so I had to pack all the IV supplies and arrange IV antibiotics and supplies to be sent out-of-state to where we were. Throw in all the other medicine and equipment, plus 2 dogs all of their stuff, a husband and a bonus son, a bag of clothes for each of us and you have one packed car. There was enough room for our son to sit in the back seat and that was it. The dogs are always up front with us, one in my lap the whole time and the other on the arm rest/console and roaming at times because he has doggie ADHD…haha. It was great getting to see everyone. This was my first trip back home since moving in July. I am a person who likes my space and my things. So being away from my home in TN for 2 weeks was hard. Yes it was great being around family but we were ready to be back home in our own bed, taking a shower in our own shower and just in our own space. It is amazing how fast a new place and even a new state can feel like home. We made our trek back home and got back into our normal routine. After doing this trip I told my husband that I think we need 2 days to recover from the drive and being away so long. I had 11 loads of laundry and we had to do grocery shopping to restock the fridge. Needless to say it was a busy Sunday and Monday after getting back.

This was our first Christmas without my grandma so there was a lot of back and forth on what to do and where to do it. A plan was made and it worked out great! Now we know how/what to do in the future. We stayed at my grandpa’s house while we were home which he loved because it meant company for him and 2 dogs to love on. My grandma’s birthday is the 25th of January, exactly 2 weeks before my birthday. This is the first birthday for both of us since she passed away. We were kind of birthday buddies with our birthdays being so close together. I will continue to make her proud and to celebrate life. I am one who loves birthdays because since I was born there has always been a “life expectancy” on my head, so to say. I don’t live by the life expectancy because that is a median age not a number to live by. Whenever I have passed up a life expectancy age, I wave good-bye to it and keep on pressing forward. I am not held by what some mathematical equation says. I choose to live life!!!!

Man I kind of went off on a tangent there but that is easy to do when it is something I am passionate about. More to come on a birthday post…haha.

Let me reel it back in to the purpose of this post. Holidays are busy, draining, great, lazy, fattening and much more. They can have a depressing tone to them also but they are what you make them. You have to turn the negative thoughts into positive ones, then you will be able to push through. No it is not easy to be positive when all you want to do is tell the world where it can go and/or sleep the days away. If all you can think of is the bad stuff that is going on in your life right now or at any given time force yourself to find at least one positive thing and focus on that. When you focus on the positive things you will see that finding more positive things becomes easier.

I hope you all had a great holiday season and that you have a great year ahead!

Until next time…