Finally, some time off of work. I really needed this, so I could get some stuff done around the house. It feels real good to get Christmas out of the way and get life back to normal.
For some people, Christmas is a bad time of year. I don't mind Christmas, especially because it is the time of year we celebrate the birth of Christ. I just get tired of all the commercialism of it and everyone trying to find that perfect gift for someone else. Plus, this was our third Christmas without my mother-in-law. I still really miss her and the Christmas season reminds me of it even more. One thing I have really emphasized since my MIL passed away, is it is more important to me to spend good, quality, time with my family, than to worry about buying gifts for each other. This year, my brother-in-law had a stroke about two weeks before Christmas. About a week after his stroke, he had a heart attack. We really did not think he would be home at Christmas, but he was. He was extremely tired, but he was there.
Another thing I enjoy about Christmas is our tradition of taking breakfast items to the firefighters on Christmas morning. The organization I belong to, the Citizen's Fire Academy Alumni Association (CFAAA) delivers breakfast items to all Okla. City fire stations on Christmas morning. Our members adopt a station, find out how many firefighters will be at the station on Christmas morning and buy breakfast items for them. Then, on Christmas morning, we deliver the breakfast items to each fire station as a "thank you" for the service they provide 365 days a year, 24/7. Each member normally adopts one station, however, we were short on members this time around, so a few members adopted more than one station.
I adopted one station, but myself and the Vice-President of our organization, wound up delivering to seven different fire stations Christmas morning because other members backed out. Actually, myself, my daughter, the Vice-President and her husband, made all the deliveries. We started at 6:15 Christmas morning and finished around 9 am. Afterwards, we had Christmas at our house with my son, daughter and wife. Then, we went to my sister-in-law's house for Christmas and lunch. Finally, at around 2 pm, we headed up to north OKC to my sister's house and had Christmas there. Yes, it was a very long day.
For the last couple of days, I have been doing quite a bit of work around the house. I had promised my wife I would clear out the storage facility we have been renting for years and get all our stuff moved to the storage building in our back yard. We were getting tired of paying $64.00 a month for storage when we had a large storage building in our own backyard. Early Monday, I started hauling stuff back and forth......putting all the furniture and stuff in the rented storage and moving our personal stuff from that storage facility to our storage building. For now, my sister-in-law will be using the rented storage facility for her stuff and paying the monthly rental fee. I did lots of sorting, lots of throwing away....and gave lots of stuff to Goodwill. I spent 6 hours on Monday moving all the stuff and then spent four hours today, cleaning up the garage, throwing junk away and making more trips to Goodwill.
My back, legs, neck and arms are all sore. I did lots of hard labor, but it was all worth it. I got it all done. I even had time today to buy me a pair of new shoes and watch some TV. Tomorrow should be a pretty easy day. Looking forward to relaxing.
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