We hosted Thanksgiving and had 22 people to our house, all 20 that were invited were from out of town and we were so happy with the turnout. Unfortunately we had a somewhat comical series of events. My Mom came up the day before to help me with some last minute cleaning and prep for cooking and she stayed the night. The next morning we put up the Christmas decorations and started getting the food ready, my Dad and Step Mom came and started helping MO with the turkey. Right around then my Mom started feeling terribly sick. Thinking she was worn out from cleaning, cooking, decorating, I told her to go lay down as the rest of the guests wouldn't be there for an hour or so. She went to lay down and then I was told the turkey was too big for the deep fryer . This is an hr before we are supposed to be sitting down to dinner. So they keep messing with the turkey, then one of my aunts comes a little early to help out, she goes in the house then comes out and tells me I better go check on my Mom cause she is not doing good. I go check on her and she is in so much pain she can't even speak other then to say she needs to go to the hospital. I live in a teeny tiny (3000 residents) town and we only have one place to go with a one room ER. I get her out to the driveway just as 3 cars full of people are pulling up my driveway! I yell sorry we have to go and tell them to go inside and MO and Step Mom are now in charge of Thanksgiving. We go to the ER and after about 2 1/2hrs of tests and pain meds she is diagnosed with kidney stones. My Mom has had 3 children with no epidural and she said she would rather have another baby any day then go through that again! Luckily they were able to give her some excellent drugs so that she could be comfortable after that and we were able to go home and eat. Everyone else was done eating by the time we got back, I was happy they were able to get the turkey cooked and we were then able to enjoy some quality time with out family! It all ended up ok, but was an interesting hosting experience! My Mom had surgery today for the kidney stones so she can get back to normal.

My paychecks have been amazing with the OT and I am going to keep working 15hrs a week as long as I don't get burned out. MO has started coaching season for girls Bball so he is very busy as well. We had to pay $2500 worth of yearly insurance our 2 rental houses, so my OT is mostly going towards that right now so that we don't have to take so much out of savings to cover the bill.


I am so loving having a clean house and all the Christmas decorations up. I have about 30% of my presents done and I think will get another good chunk done this weekend.

Our weather has been nuts the past few days. In 3 days we got 20+ inches of snow and now that dang wind is blowing it everywhere! I haven't left the house in 6 days and plan to stay hunkered here at least till the weekend. So thankful we have a snowblower! MO has pulled more people out of the ditch then I can count and also had to pick up many of his employees to drive them to work. School was closed for 3 days, but is back in session today.

Hope everyone had a good holiday and is staying safe and warm!!