The Best Worst Christmas

Well here we are at the end of 2019, time for one final blog post for this year.  Shall we all let out a collective sigh of relief that 2020 is upon us?  Deep breath in....and let it all out.

Okay, let's begin.  I'll start with the ugliness and get that out of the way so that we can end on a happy note.

Twas 5 days before Christmas and those SOB's at Curtis Instruments decided to let Ed go from his job.  We have uprooted our family, left a paid in full mortgage in Colorado, left friends and family to move to California all for Curtis Instruments.  When they hired Ed last year it was so that he could implement a software called Altium.  About half way through the year the man that hired Ed retired and this new boss couldn't seem to pull it together enough to get that software implemented.  Which left Ed twiddling his thumbs trying to look busy while having nothing to do.  But just to prove what a bag of dicks this new boss was, he decided the perfect time to let him go would be the Friday before Christmas.  Am I bitter?  Oh hell ya!  I'm not even going to try to hide it.  I can only hope that a-hole was visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future on Christmas Eve.  And as a firm believer in Karma I'm sure there is a special treat waiting for him in his future.

Luckily we didn't put Christmas on credit and already had all the shopping done, other than our Christmas dinner.

The first order of business was to tell the kids without freaking the kids out.  We met Ed for lunch and let them know.  For almost 2 hours they didn't believe us, I'm not sure when it finally clicked with them, but when it did they seemed to be okay.  Much better than the 2 of us were doing.  However I'm going to chalk that up to excellent parenting or acting (is there a difference?).  We remained calm and cool and kept telling them that everything was going to be okay, so I guess that kept them calm and cool.

If you're creative enough you can make being thrifty a fun game for the kids.  For instance we went grocery shopping for our Christmas dinner and challenged the twins to find the cheapest ham they could in the gigantic ham bin at Safeway.  (Despite the government lifting a ton of regulations on pork to allow organ meat and other undesirable things into your pork recently, we took a chance because it was cheap, see article here if you really want to be horrified).  We bought asparagus, baking potatoes for twice baked potatoes and came away with a very affordable dinner.  And if I could just take a moment to break my arm patting myself on the back, I slow roasted that ham for 6 hours and it was hands down the best ham I'm ever had.  Ed also found that he could get a 10 lb bag of potatoes for cheap and keeps buying them.  So in the future look for my cookbook '482 ways to cook a potato' (jk).

I've always been so proud of how smart and clever my twins are.  I should've known that sooner or later that would bite me in the ass.  On Christmas Eve my daughter informs me that she has a plan to catch Santa.  She has set up the video on her phone to record the tree all night.  She has found a plug in so it won't run out of battery and the perfect viewing spot so that you can't get within 5 ft of the tree without being caught on camera.  This was quite the conundrum for Santa!  There was no way to get the gifts under the tree!  So Santa figured he would just leave the gifts by the fireplace instead of the tree.  But it was all for not, turns out she's got so much crap on her phone it only recorded for 20 minutes then ran out of space.

Despite the bad news, the fear of the unknown and pretty much just walking around in a daze our Christmas was wonderful.  If I dare to say, maybe even one of our better ones, and here is why.  Most Christmas's are spent in a wild flurry, at least for me.  There is the preparing dinner or getting ready to go somewhere for the dinner.  Tearing the kids away from their new toys so they can get ready for company or head out somewhere, that pressure wasn't there.  We did a virtual Christmas with Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Rick so we were still able to somewhat be with our family.  After presents I put the ham in the oven and took a nice long nap, (since I was up really late, see above), I was tired!  When I awoke I put the glaze on the ham, fixed the taters and we had a great dinner.

Now for the real reason I think this Christmas was one of our better ones.  The job loss has forced me to take a hard look at the true meaning of being grateful.  It puts things into perspective.  The kids got some nice presents, Ed and I bought each other small stuff, but it was the realization that we really don't need anything.  There is nothing that could be put under that tree that was more important than our little family being together and healthy.  We have a roof over our head, food in our fridge and watching the kids on their new hover boards is all the entertainment one could hope for.  Our kids are grateful for what they get, they are smart and loving and I'm just so darn proud of them.

And that is the best Christmas present I could ever hope for.

So Happy New Year to all and may 2020 bring you so much happiness that you smile all year long, so much love that your heart overflows and a bucketful of gratitude for everything you already have in your life.