Holiday fun

I hope everyone had a Mery Christmas and we will all have a Happy New Year. The girls and I went on a road trip for Christmas. Two days in the car, 1200 miles and what a blast. We spent the week seeing lights, checking out life size dinosaurs (they loved it!), crashed a party, met some of the coolest people, snagged some of their coolest parting gifts, stayed with a long time friend and the kids also got to go swimming.

The party was at a client from work and now I have faces to go with voices. When you've worked somwhere for almost 20 years, you get to know a lot of your customers, but only by the sound of their voice. I've talked to these people for a long time and imgined what I thought they might look like... One lady, was much like I had imagined. One of the salesmen was close to what I had imagined and the owner? I admit I was off. All really nice folks and they included me and the kids in their party and gift exchange. The girls rocked some awesome stuff to bring home and they are proud of their loot.

On the way back One of the girls got sick and upchucked breakfast... all over the back seat of the rental car. If you're in my area and ent a car, don't get this one, LOL! It just added to the whole 'road trip' experience. It's quite the adventure traveling with kids! The other one had already had the stomach bug and had barfed on the kitchen floor the first night we were there. Awesome.

One of the things we did to pass time and make the trip more interesting was to come up with a game- Roadkill Bingo. Yes it is a bit morbid, but with all of the animal carcasses laying on the side of the road or in the median, that's pretty morbid too when you think about it. The girls decided that spotting 5 of something it was a Bingo! The first thing to hit Bingo was what we called "Mystery Meat". You could see it was a carcass of some kind, but what it was, is anybody's guess. This category won by a landslide for obvious reasons. Next to hit Bingo and with good measure was skunks, then deer, raccoons and coyotes. There were also a few animals we seen 1 o 2 of, snakes and possums and one category that thankfully we didn't see any at all- bears.

We also stopped in a major city along the way and I was able to catch up with an old friend and his family that I haven't seen in years. The kids are grown, they've graduated or will be soon, the dog is still a big bundle of energy and life is good for them which is what we all want, right?

So with 2015 wrappiing up and 2016 on it's way, We'll see what the new year has in store. It should be fun and interesting. There's been plenty of chnges going on so far.

Trudging on

The idea of shutting the blogs down, didn't just strike me out of the blue. It has sort of been a long time in the making. I have posted about things I'm working on with the horses and things we needed to work on, things we've accomplished and things I've wondered about. Some of the posts, I wasn't too sure about technique since I hadn't ever done it before, but in doing my research, found ways to accomplish whatever it was and learned "How To" in the process. WIN!

If anyone reads into some of the things I have posted, there have been some major changes in my life over the past 2.5 years. My marriage is over, it was a sham from the start. The kids and I moved out, horses were shipped off to new homes and life is still going on. It's just heading in a new and different direction. Are things settled? Not quite, not yet. Will they be soon? Time and the courts will tell...

For some of the things I've been thru, there were times I couldn't tell anyone about what was going on. In light of this, I withdrew from a lot of people, places and tried not to withdraw from life itself. It was hard. I knew there would be means to the end, I just had no idea when it would come. There were many times, too many tears to count, a lot of sleepless nights followed by throwing up in the morning. But I had to be strong to get thru this. I am strong. All of this was only making me stronger in some ways, while teaching me to embrace what I may have once thought were my weaknesses. It's all come full circle.

I have changed. I have learned things about myself and others. I have learned what is important to me and what I can let go of. The things I have lost or let go of, are simply that. Just things. For now the kids and I are all ok. The twins recently turned 7 and my daughter will be 22 this month and we are close, though not as close as we were in the past. Some things are collateral damage. Some of that I can live with. The rest? I will adapt.