A Difficult Holiday

As you can tell, I have not had a post for a while, and once again it's because life has took a turn on me and my family. Last weekend, the weekend before Christmas, my aunt passed away. I was away with one of my friends at a wedding when I got the news from my mother. I was shocked, because it came totally out of left field. So once I composed myself, I continued to push through and be happy throughout the wedding festivities, but as soon as I got in the car it was on to planning getting me with my mom's side of the family.

I was quickly on a plane with the thousands of people trying to get home for cheerful reasons.

It was hard to see my mom go through the events that took place the next three days, but I am so thankful I got to be with her as a support, especially with my dad unable to get up to the upper west coast and my husband being gone with the deployment.

We then said our tearful goodbyes and headed back to Texas {I convinced my mom to just fly back with me and accompany me on my drive home}. So we then had a quick 24 hour turn around for me to unpack, then repack, and have a half day of work, then load up the dogs and drive back to Arizona for Christmas. No worries, I am still out of breath from the whole experience.

To make the trip even more interesting we got stuck in New Mexico for an extra day due to a massive snow storm that shut down I-10. Yeah, not so fun with two dogs, an emotional mother, and one tiny hotel room. We made due with what we could and finally made it back home one hour before our annual Christmas Eve party.

Needless to say we were both emotionally and physically drained.

The party was a success, even though it was more low key than years past, and it was great to be back in the desert after a year long hiatus.

As for Christmas morning, I received a great gift, a phone call from my husband saying he was going to open the gifts we send him with us as we opened ours. It made my day, and made my mom cry {happy tears}. The dogs even got in on the action, making wrapping paper confetti.

All in all it was a good Christmas and really got back to the heart of things with the recent death in our family. It made all of us even more thankful for the time we have together and those little moments that make everything brighter.

To all of you, I hope your holidays were full of cheer, laughter and light!

Jars

To begin with, that blah feeling I had last week has vanished. Ok, maybe not vanish, but it has for sure gone and hide for a while. I am not sure if it's the fact I get to go back to home for Christmas, finished our holiday note, started my marathon training so my endorphins are up, the fact I got to talk to my husband for 15 minutes this week, or a combination of all of these things, I am happy.

As many of you know when deployment hits it is your job to do everything on your own. I am a smart and independent woman, and have been able to handle everything that has come my way except one thing...jars. Yep, no matter what I do and at least once a week I can't open a jar. Tonight, it was salsa while I was trying to make dinner.

I used all the tricks. That round rubber thing that helps your grip, fail. Tapping on the side of it with a knife, fail {my mom taught me that one}. As well as a few other things things that were all fails.

It has happened to me a few times before and as lame as this sounds it's been my best option. I go next door to the sweet older {late 50's/early 60's} and ask him to help me out. If that fails, and trust me I wish this was a joke, I take it to work with me and have one of the guys I work with to open for me.

Lucky for me tonight, my neighbors were home and he was able to get it open so I had a great dinner.

My goal by the end of the deployment, open any jar without help.

Sigh

This past week I have just been in a mood. I am not sure if it's work related, family situations, Christmas coming up, or the deployment finally catching up with me, but I am just blah. Not to mention, I am struggling with myself.

Hopefully I can figure it out soon.