Christmas

It seems that with growing up, the magic of Christmas is compressed into a few hours over the course the 24th and 25th of December. When I was a child the entire season was filled with magic every day. Each day seemed to last forever while I waited for the longest night of the year to arrive where I would lie in bed twitching like a heroin addict in withdrawal waiting for my parents consent to rush down the hall and finally see the presents, the wonder the entire child calender sat upon.

Growing up we didn't have any money and tho I know now that all of our gifts came from the church, my parents tried to make things wonderful for us. I remember one year we didn't have enough money for even a tree. My mother got the idea to make one with Green garland and a Hula Hoop. Tho I may not remember what the other trees of my childhood Christmas's were.. I will never forget that one. My siblings and I would go around the house dragging our feet while holding hands and taking turns touching the tree to see who would get the bigger shock. It was one time in my childhood that I truly remember being happy. We may not have had power, but we had a tree and that was good enough for us.

I am really having a hard time getting into Christmas this year. Normally my house would have been decked out with lights and stockings, pumpkin rolls would have been baking, and Christmas music would have been blaring. It's so hard to get into the feel of Christmas this year, being away from home and away from those we love. For the first time in our marriage, we are on truly on our own and we don't like it. Even tho we didn't go see family all the time, it was at least always an option. Now there is no way we can drive to see in laws for the weekend and this saddens me a lot. Most people don't really like their inlaws, they just put up with them. But me.. I LOVE them! Every single one of them. I see how they are with each other as a family and find myself envious that mine is no where near that. I mean most of us get a long fine.. but we aren't so tight with each other. My mother and father in law do so much for our family, more then they ever have to and I really do appreciate them and am very thankful I have them in my life.

I need to find a way to get into the Christmas groove for my kids. They are so excited to open the gifts under the tree, they have been counting down the days. I am excited for that as well.. to see their faces when they get to open up the gifts they have been drooling over. To see the way they light up when I walk into their room and tell them that it is time to go downstairs. Maybe tonite.. I will bust out the Christmas Karaoke tracks with kids and enjoy their excitement with them.

Cheating

Today at lunch I got a call from my oldest sons teacher and was informed that he was caught cheating on a test.  He is a straight A student so I am not sure as to the reason he would feel the need to cheat. I was informed that because of this 0 on his test, that he would not really recover grade wise. That his A would now become an F for the quarter. For ONE test?? Anyone else think that is a bit extreme? I think they are putting way too much weight on the tests then they should. Which means that he will have a really hard time getting his grade back up to an A at all. I dont quite understand why he would feel the need to cheat, especially considering its in a subject that he knows! I dont know how to handle it yet, as I have never had to worry about him doing something like this. How would you handle it if it was your kid?

An update on EVERYTHING thats been going on in our life...

  I have been needing to start up a blog for quite awhile now and just couldn't decide on a name. But after having so much happen lately and not really having any outlet to vent and just letting it all build I finally decided I have to do something. 

  To catch everyone up that doesn't already know.. a few months ago my husbands work decided it was just going to stop paying its employee. So hubby got to stay home while looking for work, after finding that there was nothing in the area and that we would have to move (a VERY hard pill to swallow) we ended up in Fredericksburg Virginia. Some place I would have never thought I would end up. Hell... I don't think I had even heard of it until Shawn brought it up as an option. Our journey out here wasnt a pleasant one. After packing everything up and getting a bid from a moving company to move our stuff across the country and finding out after they loaded up and we were already half way here, that it was going to cost us an extra $1500 then they had quoted us. I am pretty sure that the sales person scammed us. So be warned, stay away from Slater Allied for moving. 

  After driving for around 32 hours we had to live in a hotel until we found a place to live. We ended up staying in the hotel for about a week. In one day we ended up looking at around 20 different houses to rent. I really wish this was an exaggeration... We kept looking for a place that was comparable to our home we owned back home. One problem... house styles are COMPLETELY different here and much much older. So we had to raise our price range to get into something that we could handle better. 

 We moved into a beautiful home with some of the greatest landlords you could ask for. They have become our friends, the only people really that we know here lol. Anyways we had to live in this house without any of our things for another week before moving company got here with it. It took them 2 weeks to get our stuff here! It sat in a storage unit in Utah for 10 of the 14 days it took them to get it here. 

  It really was a good thing that we left my ex our car to bring kids up, as they couldnt have handled the style of living we were doing for those 2 weeks. Getting my kids up here was quite the ordeal itself... We gave their dad the gas money and bought his plane ticket home and told him which way he needed to drive. In his usual fashion.. he went the total opposite of what we said (remember he is in OUR vehicle.. not his) He left later than he was supposed to, then went 600 miles out of the way to see a friend which used up gas and time... He kept driving stupid (we know this because we have the snap shot device on our vehicle from Progressive) So I called him and told him he needed to stop because it was making our rates jump up. In the 6 months we had the device we had 60 "hard stops", he managed to get 90 in 2 days! It increased our insurance by 12% After much irritation and stress my kids finally made it. My vehicle however and the contents in it were not so lucky to make it unharmed.. We have these little wiggle cars that we put in there instead of packing and he took them out and let them play on them, then ended up running them over... so they are worthless. There was food all over my Piano keyboard and the inside of the Pilot was a disaster. I know kids are going to make messes on a trip like that, but I am pretty sure they just threw everything everywhere like it was some sort of party. (Seriously.. there was confetti thrown everywhere)

  The windshield on hubbys car decided it was going to break, so we had to come up with the money to replace it before we ended up getting a ticket for it..

  Hubby started his new job and seemed to like it pretty well, until we found out that even tho they offer benefits... they dont really PAY for any of the benefits so our insurance was going to cost us $1500 a month! Thats a freaking house payment! How people can afford that is beyond me.  Shortly after finding that out I get info in the mail about COBRA from my previous job. It was only going to cost us $500 a month for that so it wasnt a huge deal. We signed up for that, then found out that starting Jan 1 2012 the cost for it was going to be increasing to 900 a month, but wasnt going to increase in coverage at all. So I started calling around getting quotes to just self insure. During this time I had found out that I was pregnant. We were so excited for it, it was something to really look forward to. But in looking for insurance I found out that no one wants to cover a pregnant lady. None of the plans would offer maternity at all if you got pregnant within the first 6 months of getting it. Being prego at all makes them not even want to touch you, like you have some sort of highly contagious disease. 

  Around week 7 of pregnancy I started to bleed. I called up the dr and they had me go in and do some blood work. In the mean time the bleeding got worse and came with cramping. I knew I was losing the baby. After trying to conceive for nearly a year and being so excited to have it finally take, it was quite disheartening to know that it was going to end. I am still quite sad over it, and havent really processed it all, have had too much going on to. I am not giving up, it just means I get to try again. 

  We are still trying to play catch up from the move financially.. which sucks since its right around the holidays. I was very fortunate to have had my sister come with her family for Thanksgiving, but Christmas will be just us, for the first time ever. 

  

  We were lucky to be able to rent out our home in Utah so that we werent having to pay for both rent and mortgage. Honestly there is no way that we could have. With having renters comes a whole other set of responsibilities.. ones we didnt think that we would need to fulfill right off the bat. When our rental agency deposited our rent into our account this month it was $170 short on what it was supposed to be. Without any warning or explanation as to why, so we emailed them demanding to know. Turns out, 3 weeks ago the shower upstairs wasnt getting any hot water so the renters called it into the emergency line and had a plumber come out and fix it and snake the drains for $71/hr. Now, there were 3 other bathrooms they could have used that had hot water, so not sure how it was an emergency and why we werent notified of it. So we got to move money around to come up with that extra $170. What a lovely Christmas surprise.  Add to that my hubbys car started having issues, which turned out only to be the battery, but it was still an added expense we hadnt expected. 

  Getting kids into school was different here too.. they require the children to have school physicals. So I had to find a dr that would see them to do it and pay for it out of pocket. Quotes I was getting from some offices were around $200 per kid! Who has $800 laying around just to get kids into school with? Luckily I found out that my insurance allowed for 1 well child visit a year and I was able to get them in with that. One drs office refused to see my kids because I didnt immunize them so I had to go through the process of getting all new waivers for them ect. Took me a week to get them into school with all the stuff they wanted here. 

  I think I am allergic to something here, but I am not sure what. I have tiny circle raised patches all over my body. They dont itch most of the time, they are just there. Never had that happen, dont have the money for a dr visit so just been taking baths with tea tree oil and hoping that it helps. 

  I miss home.. I miss my house, I miss my friends.. I miss working as sad as that is. I just have to learn to adjust to all the changes here.. its just really hard to do. Luckily I have an amazing husband that I can go snuggle with when I am feeling down the most. 

I Think I have everything all caught up.. if not... Oh well..