Happy New Year

Another year, come and gone. Where does the time fly? It's hard to believe we've been living where we are for over 3 years now. It's almost the longest I've lived in any one place since I left the farm at 18. We never expected to be in this apartment for so long. We'd expected to be in our own house - or at least a bigger rental - within the first year. Life never turns out the way you expect, does it?

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and New Year's. Of course, there are still those waiting to celebrate Orthodox Christmas this month, and Chinese New Year is coming up soon. :-D

We stayed home for both Christmas and New Year's this time. Since moving away from our families, we no longer have lots of travelling with big dinners on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. We're kind of liking things quiet.

Our Christmas was a bit unusual this year, in that we got a couple of larger, more expensive, gifts for the girls. Usually, we spend about $200-$300 for gifts for all 4 of us, plus the grandparents send money for us to get gifts for the girls. This year, thanks to the generosity of grandparents, we replaced our old Xbox with an Xbox 360. That one is more for Youngest, as she likes gaming on the Xbox more. Plus, we got the remote for it, so it's also our dvd player now. That meant we could pass on our dvd player to the girls to replace the cheap one they had that broke. So they can watch movies on the little 13 in tv they've got in their room again. Since they helped pick the gift, we let them have it early.

The most fun Dh and I had was letting the girls guess what the 5 packages, 3 of them quite large, that made one gift was. We gave them hints. It folded. It used gas. It lit up. It rolled.

It was a drafting table set. If they need the space, they can lift the top a bit, fold in the legs, and let the top drop down. It came with a lamp. There was also a drafting chair, which has gas in the stem for raising/lowering the seat. And, of course, it has wheels. The girls - especially Eldest - really needed it. It was very hard for us to make them wait until Christmas for it.

Oh, and the reason it was 5 packages...

It actually came in 2 packages. One for the desk top, another for everything else. Neither of which fit in the trunk, we discovered. Dh and I managed to get the larger package into the back seat, then the thin table top box into the trunk, tying it down. When we got home, however, we couldn't get it out again. We'd been able to squish the box past the seat to put it in, but it couldn't get the angle to do it again to get it out. After struggling with the box for a while, we finally gave up and simply tore it apart and took it out piece by piece. The parts inside were in 4 smaller boxes, so I ended up with a total of 5 boxes to wrap. I had to find and buy larger wrapping paper to do it, but that's ok. I was running low in my stash.

My own Christmas gift from Dh is going to have to wait. Dh was going to get me a couch. Actually, I told him he was getting me a couch for Christmas. LOL Nothing new, of course. New ones are way too expensive. But we've been looking at couches at a clearance place, and we're planning to see what Goodwill or the Salvation Army might have.

Unfortunately, it's going to have to wait a bit longer. You see, on New Year's night, as we were waiting for midnight, we had out some celebratory snacks. I'd taken a bight of some glorious bread from the Italian grocery store, topped with baked brie with maple syrup and pecans. So delicious! The crust on the bread was quite chewy, and as I took my first bight and started to chew, I heard/felt a strange pop in my upper jaw.

I broke a tooth.

It cracked in half, lengthwise. The whole inside of the tooth is loose and wiggles around. I could probably pull that part out with my fingers, if I were into that sort of thing. This is one of those weird times where I'm glad I had a root canal done, though it's likely the root canal that made it weak enough to crack in the first place. The tooth doesn't have any nerves in it, so there's no pain there. Just tenderness in the gum area, though I have to make sure nothing I eat touches the tough, or it's a lot more than just tender! I called the dentist's office that's in our building, but the earliest they could take me in is Monday afternoon, so I'm extra glad it's not painful.

Anyhow, the funds that were supposed to get me a couch will now have to pay to have this tooth taken care of. I'm guessing it'll have to be pulled, and I'll be getting a false tooth to replace it - eventually. I'm afraid to find out what it's going to cost. :-/

Besides that, we had a great New Year's Night. Since we don't get tv, we just watched a movie while waiting. At midnight, we broke out a chilled bottle of sparkling apple juice - something else the girls found at the Italian grocery store - and toasted each other. We also discovered that we have a surprisingly good view of the downtown fireworks. That's where we would've been, had we gone out. We'd had enough of the cold from the last few years, though. Last year was particularly bitter, and this year was even colder. We'd talked about having a BBQ at midnight, but the door to the balcony was frozen shut, so that wasn't really an option.

Meanwhile, the girls have been really enjoying their gifts. The drafting table has absolutely inspired Eldest. She's been painting and drawing up a storm. Youngest had bought her a book that demonstrated techniques she's been experimenting with, and the results have been pretty spectacular. Youngest, meanwhile, is getting use out of it as well, though she's spending more time in the books she got as gifts.

We've still got the tree up, of course. Three Kings Day will be here soon, and then all the Christmas stuff comes down for another year. Until then, we'll probably be staying inside a lot and staying warm! It's been bitterly cold across the country, though we haven't had a lot of snow, like in other areas. That does make things a bit easier.