Life goes on

Ziggy's death kind of overshadowed everything else that has happened since the 23rd, but I don't want to let Christmas completely slide by.

As previously mentioned, my mom was here from California, and my daughter and her family were here from Ohio.

We were completely out of the old house by the 22nd, but the new house was a mess. I had to be at work every day, so my mom and daughter did the most wonderful thing for me and cleaned where possible, and tried to organize.

We ended up having a fairly quiet Christmas Eve, as Kristi and her family went down to the lake to stay with my ex-in-laws, so Christmas Eve was just me, Scott and my mom.

Christmas morning, we drove out to Scott's mom and delivered her present, and then drove on down to the lake, where we stayed for about 4 hours - missing out on breakfast AND dinner - kinda sucked, and then we had to drive home to meet Scott's step-son Travis and his family. The next morning, we picked Shannon up and then threw an impromptu BBQ with Scott's kids and my daughter and her family...it was a lot of fun. The Texas weather was being kind and we enjoyed 70 degree temps for our first official BBQ at our lake house :)

Kristi and her family left our house Monday night, and left Dallas Tuesday morning. My mom left Wednesday morning...ugh, had to leave the house at 5 am to get her to the airport - and at that, I had underestimated how long it would take and she almost missed her flight.

I loved having them all with me for the first time in many years!

Scott started our remodelling with our bedroom/office. He painted the office, all the trim in both rooms, laid carpet in both rooms and knocked out the wall between them (although not in that order). It took him longer than he thought, but it's 99% done right now and the other 1% will have to wait for our checking account to magically refill itself. It looks great, and the bedroom is much larger and brighter. We should be able to put our office together this weekend.

The livingroom is completely devoid of Christmas now, and is just waiting for the computer stuff to be moved to the office, then we can start deciding picture placement, etc.

After that, we will be painting Shannon's bedroom (our guest room) which is currently Pepto-pink, lavendar and candy apple green (arrrggghhhh!) and which will be painted a color called "Cool Water", which is a very slightly green-tinted blue.

Of note is the fact that Katie, our other Quaker Parrot, seems to realize that Ziggy is gone, and is taking the opportunity to start showing off her personality. She had learned many of his phrases, so it's a little eerie hearing them from her, but she's also bringing out sounds of her own and seems hungry to learn more. Maybe it took the "top dog" being gone for her to come out of her shell.

Well, I hope some of this made sense - I'm sicker than a dog and still at work, so I'm a little braindead. More later!