December Thoughts

This month is a time of reflection for me. It has been a year of health problems to deal with and to try to heal what we can. There have been new cousin's to email with in Norway and even one found living not far from us. This has been exciting. It isn't often you can add maybe 700 plus more cousins to your history. As a daughter laughingly commented, "Someday you will probably discover that I'm married to a cousin and didn't know it!" Well, I am pretty sure that didn't happen. A cousin let us use her beach house for a month while they were in Europe. What fun that was. My brother visited us and stayed a week. That was his first time to stay at our house. My niece was accepted at a prestigious woman's college in Mass. and is finishing her education at age 30. We were able to visit our son in California and see our grand-daughter dance and cheer during a weekend. We traveled with our daughter and family. A son and his family bought a new Scottie puppy for their Christmas this year. His name is Angus. I bought new ovens and got rid of my over 40 year old ones. What fun...things like that aren't easy to do on a fixed income. Inflation seems to be catching up too fast with our income now so not sure how the years ahead will be for us. If I knew then what I know now, I would probably still be working. So, here we are living in December in the North West and a big storm has thrown many people's life into cayause. We were lucky...no trees on top of our houses and we are living on a hill that keeps us from the flooding and no possibility of any mud slide either. So far, we have kept our power but in the past that has been off for over a week at a time...just lucky this time. I feel really bad for those who have lost everything and many carry no flood insurance...no way to start a Holiday season, is it?

I wonder what next year will bring us? One thing I'm knowing is that a grand son will appear in January and that is something to look forward to!