To Have a Life Again

Last weekend was a big weekend for us at the Holliday house. I graduated from nursing school and had my pinning ceremony. I took my last exam on Tuesday. I am very happy to be done, but unsure of what to do with myself. Each day, I do not think I have a lot to do and end up spending the whole day busy running errands or staying busy. It is so nice to have my evenings back and be able to cook dinner, watch TV, and just be with Chip. 

After completing my last exam Tuesday, I got an e-mail from The Med where I had applied and interviewed for a Labor & Delivery position. The nurse manager said they were going to offer me the job, but had to repost the position so I could reapply and then they could offer me the job. I am now waiting for them to repost so I can reapply. That is definitely an answer to prayer. God has worked it all out, and made me realize how in control he is. I have been applying for jobs since September with very few responses. The Med was the first place I interviewed and my dream job. I am very happy that it is going to work out, and I know that it will be a great mission field for me to encourage women here in Memphis. You would think that I would have learned to trust God a lot more by now since he did get me through the hardest year of my life, but I am only human and like to think I can do it all, but I can't and I will never be able to. I am so happy to start the next phase of my life with Chip (and not be in school anymore)!

The weekend Christmas was almost cancelled!

We came back from Jackson (my parents) on Saturday morning after Thanksgiving. On Sunday, we skipped church to try and get some stuff done around the house. We started with raking the leaves. Last year, it took two days and 18+ garbage bags. Since the tree fell on the house in January, we knew there would be a lot less leaves, but when we started raking I didn't think it would take any less time (maybe it was because of the full stomachs from Thanksgiving!) I asked Chip if he thought we could mow and bag the leaves and make it go faster---1 hour later, we were done!  We decided to move onto the Christmas decorations. We thought we would put some lights on the three arbor vitae trees (Chip calls them our Christmas trees) in the front yard. We went and bought more lights for outside and extension cords to plug each set of lights from each tree, then into the lit garland hanging over the porch. This was a brilliant idea. I had also bought more garland to wrap around the posts (last year we just put it across the top part of the porch). We got home and I had bought the wrong kind of garland (without lights) so I went back to Target to buy garland with lights. I came back home with the right garland while Chip was putting the lights on the trees. When I came home he said that the extension cords will not plug into the lights because they were 3-pronged outlets. I didn't mention that we have ONE outdoor outlet in the storage room in the carport. So, we decide the trees just weren't going to get lights and we started hanging the garland. I opened up the three boxes of garland and it is much thicker than what I bought last year. It would be too economical for Target to carry the same garland two years in a row.... Once the garland was up, it looked funny because some was thick and some was thin, so we pulled all the thick garland off and it was going back to Target. We decided we would do what we did last year because at this point we just wanted it to work! I believe Chip's words were "Christmas is cancelled this year!" ( I think he tells me that every year). The good thing was there were no fights, I think we felt so defeated by the lights that we couldn't argue about anything.

Yesterday, I took back all the garland and extension cords. I thought I would look at Lowe's and see what they had that could work for the lights on the trees because Chip really wanted lights on them. So, I bought two extension cords, a three-outlet adapter, and a two-to-three prong outlet adapter. I came back home and was going to get it all set up before Chip came home to surprise him. Everything worked except the two-three prong outlet adapter...it still wouldn't fit into the lights! Which was what would connect to the outlet in the storage room to give them electricity. But I was not giving up this time! I decided I would just use another extension cord and have two different extension cords in the one outlet in the storage room. It worked!!! We now have lights on all three trees and more extension cords than an electrician!! Chip got home and just laughed at what I had created. It's a good thing he loves me!

On Sunday (in all the craziness), Chip's cousin, Jackie asked us if we wanted to borrow her artificial tree this year because she wasn't going to be able to use it in her apartment. We always get a real tree, but are leaving on Dec. 26th to go visit my brother in Seattle so we don't want to leave a real tree up and I refuse to take it down on Christmas Day, so we thought why not? And most importantly, it was free. Monday we picked it up from her and took it out of the box on Tuesday night. It was folded up like an accordion. Putting it together was an interesting task. I believe at one point we had the bottom (which is much fuller) in the middle. It looked kind of funny. We finally got it together and put some extra colored lights on it along with some ornaments. The star wouldn't fit on top because it needs a good sturdy limb to hold it up, but I had a ribbon that worked well. I think it looks very good, even though the fresh pine smell is not there. I am thankful for the tree and it brings the Christmas cheer into the house.

Tomorrow the stockings will go onto the piano (our mantle). One day at a time.