The puzzle table...

In winter we bring up an old card table from the basement and off we go with the puzzles.  The girls and I love puzzles.  The boys....not so much.

At Christmas we do our holiday ones and then we bring out the 1000 piece puzzles for the rest of the winter.  It keeps us busy and the nice thing is you can work for a minute or an hour if you want.  Then when you're done....just walk away and come back later.  I love the picture  below where my daughter came in from church and didn't even get changed before she plopped down to work for a minute.

Puzzles, you either love them or hate them.

Merry Christmas...

Here's some photos of this morning's fun.  Our older son did ask to come over to open presents, but then left shortly after.  The rest of us had a great lunch of baked ham and all the fixin's to go with it.  Now, we're just relaxing, watch tv/movies and the girls are figuring out the violin, while our little one is playing with his new robot.

Merry Christmas from our house to yours...

Christmas Eve and a broken heart....

Tonight is Christmas Eve and sometimes things just don't go as planned.  Actually, that's our life.  

Our older son came over and went with us to the Christmas Eve church service.  It was so beautiful and very nice to have the entire family sitting together.  After that we snapped a quick family photo (with the camera placed precariously on a book on top of the lampshade...)

And that's where normal stopped for us.

Just a few hours later he was told to leave the house and I was left crying and worrying for the millionth time.  Remember....this never ends for us.  Ever.

It's hard to have the faith when so little progress seems to be being made.  Or when you take one step forward and 16 steps back.  Again and again hope fades as the light we're chasing gets further and further away.  It never ends.......

But tomorrow is Christmas. And the rest of my family deserves so much more than all of this. They deserve to be happy....we all do.

The Phase 10 showdown...

During this holiday season there's a serious showdown going on.  The Phase 10 showdown.

In our house we are a serious gaming family, but not the electronic kind.  I mean we like to do those as well...although mainly it's our little one that loves those.  But everyone else adores board and card games.  We have a ton of them.  The one that we have been playing over and over right now is the card game Phase 10.  It's so much fun.

The funny story about this game is that one year my Mother gave me this game for Christmas.  She also gave it to my husband the next Christmas, and one of my kids as a present for the Christmas after that.  We laughed about that one.  So all three sat unopened for the longest time....until this holiday season, when we opened one to take to a swim meet a week ago and the showdown begin.

Oh, how I love me a good showdown.

In the wee early hours....

This morning my husband, my oldest daughter and myself were up in the wee hours to do none other than that wretched exercise video called P90X.  Crazy freak of an instructor.

My husband and I have been eating better and losing weight for a few months...okay, well technically he's still losing weight.  Ugh!  That's a guy for you.  Me...I've stalled.  Anyway, I checked out from the library this exercise video series and we all thought we'd start this thing together.  In the wee hours.  Of the morning.  Before you have to then go about your day even though you really can't raise your arms any higher than your waist.  Today.

What....were.....we....thinking!?!

I'll tell you.  We weren't.

Funny thing is that our oldest daughter was happy to join in on the pain.  What college kid does that?!  Oh, how I love that one.  Our youngest daughter is suppose to join tomorrow.  She's NOT a morning person.  We'll see how she does.

Well, this better work.  Weight loss better come fast and furious.  Because if not, there's a piece of cake with my name written all over it.

Yay, she made it home!

I knew she would.  This girl surprises me all the time with her ability to rise to any challenge.  She did great!  Of course, she wasn't even home an hour before she was begging us to all go to see the movie "The Last Jedi" that night.  Didn't help that her sister had joined her in ganging up on us.  Figures...

So with a quick dinner and Grandmom and Granddad watching our little one, we quickly scrambled off to the movie theater.  Our oldest son was able to meet us at the theater and as I looked down the seating at my family all in one spot (well, almost all of them...) I realized how blessed I really am.  This is a moment we were all enjoying together.  It's been a long time since we've had that.  Oh, how I've missed it.  And I can't promise that it will happen again anytime soon.

But for that moment, it felt normal.  And I smiled.

A little piece of my heart is coming home....

This one is finally coming home tomorrow.  It's Christmas break.  This picture is basically the only thing I've been able to see for the past 5 months.  With the exception of a quick Thanksgiving weekend (where she flew to meet us while we visited family) and a couple of weekends ago when we drove down to see her.  That's it.

Don't get me wrong, at least we've had FaceTime.  And I am thankful for that.  But as a momma, it's not the same thing.  This one fills the room with her positive energy and laughing.  She's such a little nerd....and that only makes her that much cuter.  We have missed her so very much.

Tomorrow, she'll be driving for the first time 10 hours all by herself.  It's a good thing we'll be at a swim meet all day with the two little ones.  I'll need the distraction from worrying.  But she's coming home....with all the angels I can pray for.  She's coming home!