knitting librarian

My kids’ Christmas is going to be much smaller than they are used to—probably not gift-wise, but family-wise. My MIL is coming to visit in early December instead of Christmas. My dad is staying in Arizona due to financial issues—even though he’s had an offer of a free ticket from a friend and his daughter’s offered to buy him a ticket. I’m really sad that he’s going to be alone for the holidays. It just doesn’t seem fair that he’ll be out there by himself. He says that he just thinks it’s better “right now” and it’s “not entirely” because of the conflict with my brother…but really, if it’s even a little bit about that bonehead, I’m mad.

I searched for tickets for him online tonight and told him that I found them for about $300 and that it was the same amount as the check I received at a meeting today, so I’d be glad to get it for him. He declined. I don’t want to push him, but he’s just so far away and really only has about three friends out there, and I’ll bet most of them won’t be staying in town.

I’m so fortunate though that my loving husband had no problem with me offering to pay for a ticket AND he said that we will just send him one in the spring after the house is complete if he won’t come on his own at that point. I’m gonna miss my daddy though!

This is the sweater I’ve been working on for AJ. I’ll be at knitting group tonight and will likely forget to post, so I’m “pre-posting” via Wordpress and setting this to post on Monday morning. If I have an opportunity, I’ll post again, but for now, here’s my work from the weekend:

It seems like we’ve been going like crazy for a while. We decided that this weekend we were going to try and slow things down a bit. Usually we go to my folks and spend the day Sundays, but we gave that up this weekend. It was so worth it!

Friday was a three-hour workday for me. After, I had lunch with John and then went to check out some furniture at a nearby store. At 2pm I closed on the house we currently live in and then went to the bank to deposit our check and then headed back up to meet Mom and Vince who watched AJ for the day. He got his first report card and is proficient and satisfactory in all skills that were being graded so far. Friday night, we went to the first half of the local football game—got too late and too cold for the kids—and then came home and collapsed.

Saturday, John got up early and went to Walmart to get one of the PS3s they had for a normal price but you got a $100 gift card with it. He came home and crawled back in bed for about an hour before we got up and headed on a “quick” circuit to check furniture at two stores near the new house, to the mall to get Zoe’s ears pierced and for lunch at Arby’s, and then home to watch the football games. We only missed the first 15 minutes of John’s game so he was only a little upset. I really thought we’d make it, but we didn’t quite get home in time.

Today, I got up and made a yummy coffee cake for breakfast and knit on AJ’s sweater for a while. We watched some Scooby Doo movie, had lunch, Zoe and I napped, and then I got up and got some laundry going. I was going to empty the dishwasher while dinner cooked, but found that the plates were not cleaned properly so that is re-running now. It’s about time to get the kids in the tub and do a bit more knitting.

Up this week: Monday—two meetings after school and knitting group, Tuesday—Zoe to Nonna-Pop’s, beyond that, I’m not really sure what’s going on here.

I love Zoe’s earrings and think they make her look just a bit more feminine. Daddy did a good job picking earrings.

Today, we closed on the house I’ve owned for nearly 15 years. I bought it when I was 24 and single and earning about $25,000 a year.

It’s tiny. It’s too tiny for four people, but we didn’t have a lot of choice after 5 years of paying two mortgages (on the house here and the one in SC after John and I got married.) The best thing I can say about this place at this point in my life is owning it and not being able to sell it 8 years ago meant that when John was able to find a job here, we moved back this direction rather than risk being in SC with two mortgages and one job. (At the time, his company was laying people off, although he managed to avoid that fate.)

We moved back here with a one year old and it was small but it wasn’t terrible. Then we got a German Shepherd. Then we got a potty trained three year old and a pregnant me. Now there are four of us and it’s definitely crowded, but until the end of September, we were still paying off the loss we sold the SC house at so we wouldn’t have two mortgages for 10 years!

After a lot of hard work and big financial changes, we are building a house not far from my new place of work. It’s supposed to be finished no later than March 12th and possibly as early as January. We’ve even got a small hope that we might be in it near Christmas because so much has happened in the last few weeks. They’re ready to drywall next week!

So, between now and then, we’re renting from the buyer. He’s planning to use it as a rental property anyhow, so he’s glad to have it rented for now and he’ll begin doing improvements to make it more rentable in the coming months. It definitely needs carpeted and painted. He plans to re-roof, put in replacement windows, and vinyl siding soon from what he’s said. Those things won’t get more value out of the house for us, so it wasn’t worth the investment—especially with money we didn’t have at the time.

We really can’t wait to move! AJ said to us over and over tonight, “Won’t it be exciting to be in our new house?” It sure will!

I know no one ever thinks there’s enough time in the day to get what they need done done, and I’m no exception. I was just looking over my list of books I’ve read for the year and there’s such a huge difference between my time last spring when I was working in my old school and the time I have now that I’m leaving for work more than an hour earlier than I did last spring.

Between early morning meetings, kids that are more demanding (mostly because there are more kids…), my kids at home who need more attention—AJ needs help with schoolwork and Zoe is just perpetually active now, and being exhausted because I get up so much earlier now, I just don’t have time to read. I don’t get as much read at home in the evenings and I don’t get as much time to complete work at school. Don’t get me wrong, I love my new job and I love being able to spend more time with my children at home. I just miss reading as much as I used to do.

What things have you found your time shifting to lately?