Christmas Decor. Or Not.

We are well into 2016 and I am still processing how poorly I handled the decor part of our 2015 Christmas.  The celebration took place but I am still a little bothered by how unenthusiastic I was leading up to the merry part of the season.

Maybe it was observing and helping my sister prepare to be a part of our small hometown Christmas home tour that started my jolly holly ball rolling downhill.  Her garlands and boughs and Santa's and nativity sets and wreaths and trees and more trees and candles and (.....well, you get the picture) had to be placed well in advance of the tour that took place on December 5th. That meant we observed Thanksgiving at her house sitting under an upside down Christmas tree suspended over the dining room table (who DOES that!?) and being thankful we would not be around for the un-decorating in January.

When I returned home I briefly considered not decorating for Christmas. I came up with several good reasons to justify it. It's just the two of us, we don't really entertain, there's no good place for a tree, two of the three kids wouldn't even be here, we will be leaving for Florida in early January, the decorations I don't drag out of the garage I don't have to drag back into the garage. I was prepared to go minimal. Very minimal. Basically a poinsettia. Then a decision was made for part of my extended family to celebrate Christmas at our house. Namely my sister's family. Yes, the same sister of the extravagantly decorated Christmas tour house. Logistics dictated our home would be the better one for this year's celebration than the one screaming 'Tis the Season!

So, the shelf decorations came out of the garage, shrubs right outside doors and windows were lit up so that if you didn't look too closely you might think they were inside, three beautiful, fresh wreaths were purchased on Christmas Eve (they were running a procrastinator's special - $1.50 each!), and a poinsettia rounded out the decor. My sister assured me I didn't need to run out and purchase a tree since we were doing this so last minute. All was well. Until you want the picture perfect place to put gifts. Like under a lovely, decorated Christmas tree.

That explains the picture. While Mr. Y and I were in his home office celebrating Christmas with one son's family in a wireless way (thank goodness for Facetime), my sister and her family were plugging in my floor lamp and quickly pulling together beads and a topper to create a Christmas tree their way. It had a light, plenty of space underneath for packages, and with presents thrown around the base.......well, it still wasn't Pinterest worthy but it sufficed. (I recreated the gifts since no one bothered to take a picture at the time - it actually looked much better.)

This year I will rethink the Christmas decor. Obviously more effort needs to be made. I'm posting this to remind myself in eleven months to get a green light bulb for that floor lamp, and some tinsel to wrap on the pole, and for goodness sake it sure could use a tree skirt!

The Year of Recovery

Wow! That was some head cold. You take a little night time cold medicine in 2014 and wake up in 2016. What happened to 2015? Was it a year to just skip?  Maybe. Maybe not.

Leading up to the beginning of 2015 Mr Y. and I had decided to designate it as the Year of Recovery. The idea was we would use 2015 to recover from a couple of years of fast living in New York City, re-establish ourselves back into our smaller midwestern town, and get an idea of how we wanted the post retirement years to play out. Life has a way of throwing in an very different definition of a year of recovery.

It turned out our Year of Recovery would be from a variety of life events we could never have anticipated or dreamed up had we wished to. I eventually recovered from a couple of raging head colds in early 2015. Mr Y. started an amazing recovery from an April heart attack right after a quick stent was placed. Needless to say, the rest of the ailments were secondary. But every day we can tell our bodies are succumbing to the aging process. Some of them we can recover from, some we will deal with on an ongoing basis. By that definition every year from here on out is going to be a Year of Recovery.

We happily recovered from the shock of learning in August that we will be second time grandparents in February. We recovered from jet lag after a lovely trip to the Alaska home of a classmate this summer. The kinks in my back worked themselves out after moving a parent from her residence of 57 years to a spiffy apartment, even though the recovery took a couple of weeks longer than it would have even a couple of years ago. We recovered from the sticker shock of how much it would take to have someone else do a little landscaping for us, but that was probably nothing compared to the chiropractor bills had we elected to do it ourselves. We did end up recovering and re-establishing friendships that had been on a two year hiatus and we are working out a post retirement lifestyle that suits us.

We haven't decided a theme for the year 2016. After last year it seems like tempting fate to try and control what the year might be like. Whatever the year brings we will work on having healthy hearts, happy hearts, grateful hearts, and peaceful hearts.

Maybe we will just call it The Year of Unanticipated Happenings.