The Sewing Mom

As I sit here looking at my calendar, I find it so hard to believe that today is the last and final day of 2007.  Where or where has this year gone?

My year began with a lot of stress as it was almost exactly a year ago that my husband and I were deciding whether or not to relocate to Texas.  It was definitely not something I wanted to do, I had a job myself, one that I actually liked, working with people I enjoyed being around.  And, I had friends, not something that’s easy to come by when you’re in your 40’s.  Also, for my daughter’s sake, I didn’t want to move.  I had moved about every 2 years as a child and I didn’t want that for her.

My husband on the other hand was not so happy in Illinois.  He didn’t like the winters and was never fond of where we were living.  He worked from his home office and didn’t get out much other than when he travelled on business.  In the end, it was the job he had long been hoping for and the promise of a brighter financial future that brought me to agree to move.

He began his new job the end of January and we made the move in April, almost two months sooner than I had anticipated. While it seems like it took a while, the period from St. Patrick’s Day (when we put our house on the market) to Easter (when we bought our new house) went by in a blur.  We had planned to spend our Spring break in the Dallas area house-hunting, not realizing when we made our plans that our house would sell in less than a days time and that we would be pressured into buying a new house so quickly.

On our 4th day of house hunting, feeling downright depressed about what we’d been seeing, we found what we thought was the perfect house.  We made the offer, negotiated back and forth (it was something like [tag]Deal or No Deal[/tag], and closed the deal, moving in only 11 days after we first saw it.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful house, it’s just that the previous owners beat it to death and had covered up all the bruises.  It will take a long time for me to get it fixed, a lot of holes, and damage.

It was difficult leaving Illinois too, because it was Spring Break.  Most of my friends and my daughter’s friends were out of town on vacation.  When they left, we didn’t realize we would no longer be there when they got back, so we hadn’t told any of them good-bye.  This still grates on me, I feel [tag]lost[/tag] without them and feel like I was running out on them.  I even had to resign from my job in the school district on voice mail because my boss was not in the office.

In May, my daughter started at her new school.  She wanted to meet some kids.  It was a good idea, but it’s not easy as anyone who has ever moved can tell you.  Luckily, she found the girl living behind us and they had so much in common it was incredible.  They became fast friends and were together frequently.  That is until the girl and her family relocated to Pennsylvania.  That was very sad.

In July we got our puppy, Plinko.  We spent the end of the summer training the dog and enjoying our swimming pool and trying to do home repairs on our own.  School started the end of August and my daughter has been doing very well there.  She is in band and also takes guitar lessons as well as being on the [tag]Destination Imagination[/tag] Team.   We are waiting to see if she will get back into softball, a sport she loved while we were in Illinois.

For me, I decided to use the time to volunteer more at my daughter’s school rather than going back to work.  I considered going back to some sort of retail job, but working part time, the pay is so low around here that I didn’t feel it was worth it.  Fortunately for me, my sister gave me her opinion and got me into blogging. This has been a good thing for me, although my husband might have something to say about the time I spend on the computer!

In September, my husband and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary, hard to believe! What did we do? Nothing as I recall! Sometimes, it’s just better that way, rather than trying to squeeze something in, we just enjoy relaxing together. (besides, he had the day wrong)

We have just celebrated our first Christmas here and tonight is New Year’s Eve. We will be going out for dinner and then home to celebrate in our own quiet way. Our daughter has all ready made her confetti to shower around the family room when the ball drops in New York and I’m sure she has a couple of games lined up for the three of us to play. This has become our family tradition!

For the New Year, I am working towards getting more damage repair done around our home. I also hope to learn more about blogging and increasing my readership.

For the few readers I do have, I wish you all a very Happy New Year and may God bless you all.