Blessed Holiday

 Christmas 2024 is all but a wrap. Sarah and Catherine, Emily, and Erin all came home for the holiday. What a treat for this old KY Lady to be all of us together with my girls for a holiday - that was the best present of any. I like to leave decorations up until after New Year’s Day. It seems that people who get things decorated early are ever so speedy to get them all put away again. 

Auntie Em 💖

Reading new books in the new tent

Catherine "learning" music from her mommy

More learning music

so many candy canes

Auntie Erin plays on and off with the lights

Candyland - Catherine knows colors and can count.  The concept of board game is not quite there yet. 

We visited the park to see the lights. Catherine gets a ride.

Catherine loves hot chocolate.

Erin is engaged – she and Tanner made the commitment about a week before Christmas. There is another wedding to be planned, although Emily has most of her planning completed. Emily is a go-get-‘em type of person…can’t say that she inherited that gene from me. I’m a how-much-longer-can-I-procrastinate type of person, mostly.

Showing off those beautiful rocks

Sarah’s baby belly is getting bigger and rounder (my excitement is growing as well). The baby is due in early April. The plan is that I will stay with Miss Catherine during the birth and hang around until Sarah can manage a baby and toddler without help. Catherine will have to learn to share her parents’ attention…as all children with siblings do. I remember all too well when Sarah realized what it meant to have two newborn babies in the house – she was eight years old when Erin and Emily were born. I was busy with one baby (or perhaps both…it’s all such a blur) when Sarah said ever so sadly to me, “You’re just never going to have time to do anything with me again.” I admitted to her that it was going to be a long while, probably. It made me feel guilty and sad, but there was no point in lying about it.

Someone starts his physical therapy tomorrow (to recover from his rotator cuff surgery earlier this month). He survived it, but it’s been pretty rough for him so far. He will return to work next week if he can drive. I’ll take him to a vacant parking lot this weekend so he can experiment with how it will be to drive with only his right arm.

Someone will be recovering, and I will be busy getting courses ready to open for Spring semester at college #2. College #1 has a session in progress…I’m still working that job but thinking about leaving that position this year. The student population has changed a lot since they merged with two other college systems. Not only that, they keep asking me to do more tasks as part of my job with absolutely no increase in pay. It’s to the point that it feels like charity work for the amount of time I’m required to put in. For college #1, I need to create a course for teaching the basics of Python. I’m looking forward to this one, but it’s stressful figuring out how to plan things out. As an experienced IT person and coder, it’s hard for me to gage how quickly or slowly an inexperienced and average person will learn their first coding language (not to mention, I’ve never taught a coding language). I will have to rely on the publisher’s recommendations for this first iteration of the course.  

With the start of January begins the dreariest season.  Don’t get me wrong, I love some aspects of winter. But for me, winter is just the time of anticipating the more desirable seasons. My focus (so as to distract from the dark dreariness) will be getting more fit and getting this house in better shape. Lord knows that me and this house are in great need of vast improvements. Fortunately, the weather can be delightfully variable in the Ohio River valley. Even in the bleakest winter, we can occasionally get sunny days with weather in the 50s.  Hope springs eternal for those days.

Erin loving on our zoo (they don't mind the cold)