Day 63! Christmas Was Amazing

It is so hard to believe that it is already January 2nd, 2019. Sixty Three days into retirement. It seems like just yesterday that I retired but so much water has gone under the bridge thus far. Or in our case, living in a cold weather climate, so much ice has frozen under the bridge since I retired. Today however is a beautiful day. I remember telling some of my team a few years ago that we always have a January thaw. We are into one of those now. It is mid afternoon and the temperature is 7 degrees celsius or 45 degrees fahrenheit. It is great to be able to open house windows in January. It is supposed to get colder again in a few days, in the meantime we will take any warm weather that we can get.

I have had lots of feed back from people saying that they like reading my BLOG. I appreciate that very much because I know nothing about writing a BLOG but I do have passion to write. An internet search reveals passion is one of the most important things you need to have in order to write a BLOG. Besides this BLOG is for my friends and I. The grammar will not be perfect and I am sure I will have many spelling mistakes. I will never have hundreds of followers and I sure won’t make any money from this BLOG. But it will be the writings of a self proclaimed work-a-holic that retired in his mid fifties. Besides I am now in good company. Coach Mark Richt who I have always respected announced his retirement from coaching football this past weekend. If you want to read some great information take time to look him up on the internet.

Christmas Eve Roxanne and I had the opportunity to read the story about the birth of Christ at our evening church service. I so enjoy the candle light service. Then we came home and watched It’s a Wonderful Life. We did stop on the way home at my favorite restaurant (for those who don’t know, McDonald’s) to get some food to eat while watching the movie.

Christmas was amazing this year, Roxanne and I had so much fun preparing, hosting and celebrating. It was great that she had a few days off which allowed us to spend extra time together. I cherish every moment that I can spend with Roxanne.

With all the extra time I had, since I am not working it gave me more time to think. I spent lots of time thinking about Christmas when I was younger. One of the things that I always enjoyed was the family aspect of Christmas. I always appreciated so much that many generations would visit and be in the same house for Christmas. There were never enough beds for everyone, but no one ever complained about sleeping on the floor. It wasn’t just for Christmas Day it was for a few days. We would get up early, stay up late, play games, eat, skate, eat, etc. etc. We as younger kids would offer to shovel the snow and even wash dishes. It truly was a family event. Wonderful memories that I will always cherish.

As wonderful as Christmas is, and everyone knows I love Christmas, I really miss that aspect of Christmas. Since Roxanne and I don’t have any kids it is very unlikely that we will ever celebrate in that manner again……..For those of you that still do that…..good for you….keep it up… One day you will look back and realize how important it was.

On Christmas Day Roxanne and I had a blast. We were up at 7 to start cooking. The cranberry salad from Southern Living was a hit, and this year we did the mashed potatoes in a slow cooker. The turkey turned out amazing and today for lunch I finally finished the left overs. We appreciated having part of her family over and after they left we watched a few movies to end the day. It was so great to celebrate the birth of Jesus with my AMAZING wife and her family.

The New Year is now upon us and the big question is. How is Gord going to do in January? Good question! November and December had me looking forward to Christmas which gave me a distraction from not being at work. I ask myself the same question, how am I going to do in January? Will I miss work, and continue to miss the people and all the great things that happened everyday. Only time will tell. I do know that we were at Ikea on Monday and today 46 boxes were delivered so I know that part of the month will be spent on working on “Roxanne’s Closet”. More pictures at a later date.

As always thanks so much for taking the time to read and I want to wish all of you the most amazing year that you have ever had. May 2019 be a very special year for you and all your loved ones. We will be praying for you!