My hubby has done a phenomenal job decorating the outside of the house making it look happy and bright. I love that he is into decorating for the holidays as much as I am! My niece and nephew, those sweet little munchkins, helped to decorate our tree and I finished making the rest of the house look festive. The whole place is looking very Hallmark Christmas Special around here.
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There will be no gifts under our tree this year. No stuffed stockings, or gift cards hanging in the tree. There just isn’t any money in the budget. Hahaha!! Budget! Oh my…..I had a great chuckle there….let me get myself together….whew!! All those money management people like Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey and others forget one little thing…..if you have nothing left over after paying the bills….YOU CANT SAVE!! Duh!! Anyways, that’s a whole other blog entry now isn’t it? At least it gave me a good teary eyed chuckle for a minute! Things have been tough around here for a while now. We have had our ups and downs over the years, like most people on the planet. However, this year has been especially taxing. I was diagnosed with CRPS in January and on top of a few months of not being able to work before that, as of March, I have been unemployed…….disabled without any disability income. I have filed the info to have someone contact me to begin the long process, but have yet to talk to anyone. One day……maybe….hopefully….ugh! Maybe they will come up with a cure first and then I won’t have to worry about it! Delusions are good sometimes. A cure would be a great Christmas Gift!! Better write Santa when I’m done with this article! 👍
Like I said, things have been tight around here. My hubby is lucky enough to have a great job and is bringing in an income. As someone who has always relied on myself only for paying the bills, this is a blessing and a curse. I’m beyond thankful he is able to cover most of the bills. The curse is my never-ending guilt because it’s not always enough. Independent to a t, it’s very difficult depending on someone else for anything. Crazy part is, when my husband was working part-time and going to school to get out of his dead-end job a couple of years ago, I was the main bread-winner. I made more than he did and I handled our budget. Hahaha, that’s right! We had one of those back then. We even had a little in the savings account. Imagine that! I never felt as if it was a scale we needed to keep level. We were just a family, contributing what we could and doing our best. Technically the situation is the same, but when I can’t afford to buy my own children any presents for Christmas, I can’t help but feel guilty. I have three great kids, and dammit they deserve to wake up Christmas morning and open presents like everyone else. My daughters are 20 and 18 and both are working part-time and going to school full-time. My son is 16 and this will be the last Christmas we have together where he is actually living at home with me.
My sweet buddy has had a rough go of life the last 6 years. He is ridiculously smart and funny and loving and had the bullying issue just been dealt with properly from the beginning, we might not be in the situation we are in now. Zero tolerance policy my ass. Depression on top of his ADD and OCD and ODD has consumed his life. My son expressed a want to his psychiatrist to have a fresh start in a new school as well as a wanting to grow a stronger relationship with his dad. Had this been brought up even a year ago, I would have met that request with a firm Hell No! My ex hasn’t had the best track record since our divorce. I always said, bad husband, great dad…until we got divorced, then he turned into a bad dad. Luckily, and finally, he has really been working hard to turn that around. My son wants the opportunity to build a strong relationship with his father as well as try to have a fresh start in a new school. As much as it tears my heart apart to let my son move in with his dad, who lives in another state almost an hour away, I know it’s the best thing for my son. He deserves to be happy, and if this gives him the chance to be himself, no bullying past following him along, then I have to let him try to find it. So, Friday he will get out of school early, and I will be taking him to tour his new school and spending the Christmas break moving him in with his dad and step-mom. It’s very difficult when your kids move out after they graduate high school (even when sometimes they come back) but you know when that is going to happen and you have time to prepare yourself. This time, I got jipped out of a year and a half of emotional preparation! Though we have been discussing this as an option for a couple of months, the decision was just made a week ago. I’m still on the emotional roller coaster. He is, after all, my baby. Sometimes being a good parent really sucks! Needless to say, with this being the last Christmas that I will have all three of my children under the same roof, I was really hoping to be able to have a better Christmas. I never need anything fancy, but a couple of gifts each under the tree would have been nice. Did I mention parental guilt sucks?!!
We certainly aren’t in this boat alone. Too many people are in the same situation we are. We have been here before and come back from it. Course, this is the first year that there won’t be any presents under the tree at all. Cripes, this is the first year….EVER, that we haven’t been able to pay the mortgage this month. We have never even been late before. Never! Nothing like a little stress to add-on top of feeling like a worthless mother. My cousin is in the same type of situation. He got sick and ended up in the hospital for a couple of days. Members of our family got together and raised money and gifts for their family so they will have a nice Christmas. They even got presents and gift cards together for their grown children, one who has his own place and for his girlfriend too, as well as stuff for the two youngest boys who are still at home. They have 5 boys! Yeah…..wow! It all started with raising money to get my cousin a new recliner so he could actually get some rest after he got home from the hospital. Nothing worse than being in pain and not being able to sleep…..I live that situation every day of my life. I hate that I am not able to help with anything. I offered the services of my truck, only to find out that when my husband said the truck was put back together, he just meant so the pieces weren’t everywhere, not that it was fixed. Ugh! Guess it’s a good thing they didn’t need to use it. Just disappointing because my cousin is the kind of guy that would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. They, like us, came from nothing and don’t have much in the area of moneary goods. But if you need help, and he can help in any way, he will. I think that’s just how this family works. We all help each other because we know what it’s like to be without. I just wish I could contribute. I ended up in the hospital the week before he went in and then last week I ended up taking my middle daughter in to the ER. Thanks to the extra medical costs this month, there is nothing we can do to help ourselves, let alone anyone else. Yay…..more guilt.
Blah, blah, blah……..right? There is actually a light at the end of this story. Which is the whole point, so enough of the struggles and stresses. My middle daughter said that what she really wanted this year was to have a day or two where we make our own Christmas cookies, here, at our house, together. Sweet!!! I love to bake cookies. Great thing about cookies is…they are actually pretty cheap. Especially this time of year. You can get sugar and flour for 99 cents and a dozen eggs cost a couple bucks. I already have everything else I need for flavor changes in the cupboard from when I did a cupcake bar when my middle daughter graduated from high school last year. I’m also that crazy cookie person who will actually do test batches before committing to a double recipe. I must have a cookie that is moist (sorry Tay, lol, I know you hate that word) and stays that way even days later! I can’t stand when you bust your booty mixing and baking and decorating for days only to end up with a crunchy, dry crumbling mess of what once was a cookie and all the decorations ending up at the bottom of the bag or the dish. Talk about a waste of time and energy! I also research the heck out of the absolute best tasting cookie recipes. If you are going to gorge on the calories, they darn well better be worth it! I finally found the perfect sugar cookie recipe to make those awesome decorated kind of cookies. I also found a dark chocolate version you know I already tried!! Hahaha Like I said…tester batches! The best part of sugar cookies is the fun decorating process anyways, so I plan on having those baked and ready to go ahead of time. We have a very small house with a little kitchen and not a whole lot of extra room, so whatever I can get done ahead of time, the better. There might not be any presents under the tree, but there will be a whole lot of good times, laughter and guaranteed shenanigans with this cookie making business. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone ends up getting frosted. Bonus…..the extended family will reap the benefits when we bring the extra cookies to family Christmas dinner! You heard me family……..you will get to taste all the goodies we make!!!
Yummmmmmm!!
Come Christmas morning, all my kiddos will wake up together for the last time living under the same roof, and we will drink the hot chocolate my grandma used to make (and coffee too), have a nice breakfast, and hang out together watching A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th St and if we have time, It’s A Wonderful Life! We will snack on our yummy cookies……probably eat way more than we should……laugh and be silly and enjoy spending time together. Yeah, it would be great to be able to buy my kids a few things, after all they are really great kids who truly deserve to have a few presents under the tree. But…that’s not in the cards this year. What I can give them is fun times making cookies, and great memories spending time together being our normal goofy selves, knowing above all, I love them more than anything in the entire universe. You can’t wrap that up and put it under the tree, but it is definitely a gift that you keep in your heart, remembering year after year.
Filed under: Teens and Kids Tagged: Christmas, Cookies, family, Gifts, love, No presents, Teens and Kids 
