Moving Day!

Not for me - but for my daughter!  So excited to have her only 8 houses away.  Already it's proven helpful. The grands stayed here with hubby and myself when the moving truck pulled up.  After a couple of hours I just popped in to see how she was doing. We chatted for a few minutes - I helped her fold wrapping paper from what she'd already unpacked then popped back to my house to get her trash bags and scissors and back again - it was as easy as running upstairs to another room and back.  I'm going to love it ! 

Another nice surprise for her is that she didn't care for the dark gray floors but it turns out that they go really well with her living room rug and furniture. It was a pleasant surprise, and while the flooring isn't her favorite, it's not so unpleasant now! 

the house isn't their dream home, but there wasn't much available now in their price point and as much as we love having them under our roof, they didn't want to wait months more for the perfect house - As it is, we've all been together four months now- Amazing how fast time goes by!  and it's not an ugly house or anything like that, already, moving about looking at all the options they're thinking of simple fixes to make the house more of what they want. It will be fun fixing it up to suit them.  

There was another fun perk - she realized the kitchen, though about the same size, has less cabinet space because almost all the bottom cabinets are drawers not shelves. Now at first that might seem problematic, but her major complaint about her old kitchen is it didn't have enough drawers so she's actually quite excited to see how the kitchen will work with more drawers than cabinets. 

Of course I can hardly wait to spend more time with the new baby when it comes. For anyone who hadn't figure it out yet, I ADORE babies. Just love them. I stop in the street and coo at stranger's babies and always make them smile. I figure the little ones know I really do love them.  And while I spent a good amount of time visiting with my grandbabies, at least once a month is great for long distance grandparenting, but seeing the new baby on a weekly not monthly basis is going to be a blast! 

On a different topic, I'm trying really hard to start dropping some of those twelve annoying pounds I gained since returning from summer vacation. I didn't realize how much a change in daily schedule and habits affects our eating and weight. I've only got three weeks to drop ten pounds - or close to it so that my clothes will fit on our Antarctic trip.  I've just gotten a prescription for Trizep-something-or-other tablets. We'll see if that does us any good. Will keep you posted on that! 

For anyone wondering about the Honeysuckle series - I'm chugging along as best I can!  My editor needs it by Christmas so I have to really push while fitting in all our family traditions - I think we've pretty much decided that it's going to be simple this year - VERY simple- especially with my daughter moving and everything so chaotic here with two families under one roof - that we'll do our traditional Christmas Eve dinner and gifts but on Christmas day instead of me cooking another meal and cleaning up from the day before and setting up again - we're just going to order Pizza (or Chinese- whatever can be ordered) and watch christmas movies - and probably return to an old tradition we haven't done since my kids were little decades ago - Drive around to look at Christmas lights!   I think it will be fun.  Next year we'll put baking Christmas cookies onto the itinerary again! 

Do you have any holiday traditions? Would love for you to post them here to share!