Oh joy, the holidays

Ah! It's that time of the year again. As much as I would love to say the holidays are my favorite time of the year (and in some ways it can be) lets be honest, the holidays bring on a whole new level of stress that we get to avoid the rest of the year. I really need to break down the positives and negatives.

Let's get the bad out of the way first. My biggest complaint is the financial strain the holidays bring. Halloween costumes, pumpkin patches, Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas gifts, Christmas cards, Christmas related events. All these are added expenses that just don't exist the other 9 months of the year. I grew up with a single dad and 2 brothers and 2 sisters so needless to say, we didn't have a lot of money. We were what you would call POOR. Being poor growing up my dad taught me the difference between a want and a need. It's hard for me to spend a ton of money on things I don't really need, but on the other hand I want my boys to experience things I never got to, which brings me to the next bad point about the holidays; stress. The stress of cooking large meals and playing hostess (something I've never mastered) brings on a whole other batch of problems that I also don't have to deal with the rest of the year. One day when I'm a millionaire (come on lotto!) I'm going to hire planners to take care of all the stressful planning, maids to do the stressful cooking and personal shoppers to spend the money for me. Yup, when I'm a millionaire.....

So now that I'm done being Debbie Downer, I have a ton to look forward to this year. Last year since it was our first year in TX, we spent the holidays alone. My husbands mom was with us for x-mas, but she comes with her own slew of stresses that I just don't have time to get into. This year my sister and my brother are local so we'll be doing all the events with them, and my BB (bottom b****, more on that term later) will be here with her family for Thanksgiving (I need a solo blog post just to express my excitement about this!) and my dad will be flying from CA for Christmas. This move was really tough for me, so knowing that family is coming and going to be around thrills me to no end. It's very important to me that my boys keep familiar with family and feel the love on such important events.

So with Halloween approaching, this holiday season is about to get started and I'm actually kinda looking forward to all the stresses and financial woes its going to bring!! Well kinda......

Every story starts somewhere....

I'm not sure why now I've chosen this time in my life to start blogging. I don't know if it's because of all the changes that have happened this past year, the fact that I'm getting older, or because I always have a million different things going on in my head at once that I need a way to get them all out. What ever the reason is, blogging seems to be a good solution.Before I start rambling on about my every day, in the off chance someone who doesn't know me personally comes across this they should have a little back story so they are somewhat up to speed....

I was born and raised in sunny Southern California. I was lucky enough to call California home for the first 26 years of my life. I met Mike when I was 16 and we've been together ever since, did the marriage and kids thing and we were living in CA up until last year. We just knew CA wasn't going to bring us everything in this life that we wanted, so in June 2011 we packed up, jumped in a u-haul (think Beverly hillbilly's) and set up shop in Round Rock, TX. Just a couple months ago I was able to convince my older sister and youngest brother that CA wasn't going to fulfill their hopes and dreams either and they packed up hillbilly style and joined my clan here in TX. 

So as of today I've been in TX for over a year and I'm still adjusting. I have some goals in mind that I want to achieve by the 2 year mark like get out of our freaking apartment and give my 2 boys some running room before our downstairs neighbors freak out. My husband wants into a better career as do I. All this will come in time as long as we keep putting in the hard work. 

So there is the back story. It hasn't always been easy and there have been many times I've wanted to throw in the towel, but I wasn't raised to be a quitter, so I just keep trucking along. Wish there was someone out there who could of warned me that being an adult was completely over-rated......