Fall is Upon Us…

Oh my goodness its cold this morning!! NOAA.gov says it is 43 degrees out right now…brrrr! I’m not ready for fall! More accurately, I’m not ready for cold. I never am.

I’m going to take a break for the weekend from the Focusing on the Positive series I’ve been writing. I’ll start up again on Monday with L. Though I am happy I started the series, its making sure I write every day, its become more of an obligation, in some ways, than something I’m dong for the joy of it. Seeing as it is supposed to be a positive thing (and it is in some ways) I’m going to take the next couple of days away from it to see it again with excitement. Perhaps this will help me be able to write the Positive posts with more positive in it and less essay. We shall see. Either way, I will make it to Z in the series. I have set a goal.

Any who…

The mornings have been sooo cold lately. The sun is out, it gets gloriously warm during the day, but the nights and mornings are becoming increasingly cold. We have actually turned on the heat a few times. Where did Summer go?

I’ve started to see leaves changing colors as I am driving from cleaning job to cleaning job or on my way out to paint curbs. Fall can be so beautiful, though the trees haven’t reach the fireworks display in Earth tones stage, yet. I’m going to have to make sure I have batteries in stock for my camera. That is going to be fun!

With Fall, the holiday season is upon us. Growing up, it always meant getting together with family, seeing those I hadn’t seen in a long while. I don’t really have family out here so the holidays look an awful lot like most any other day, now. Sure, there are friends close by, but they also have family they go see. I try to set up getting together with family for the kids, but, after the number of deaths over the past 5 years, lots has changed and the dynamics are different from what they used to be.

Its kind of sad. The kids have always looked forward to seeing that side of the family during the holidays but they don’t seem as interested this year. I think that they may still be healing from the losses. As many deaths as there have been in that family in such a short time, I think it would be amazing if they were not still grieving in some form. The people who are gone are the ones my kids enjoyed seeing the most.

I, personally, haven’t really been celebrating the holidays over the past 5 or so years. Life got hectic, chaotic, when the economy crashed at the end of 2008 and we lost everything. Seeing as we have never really regained our feet, celebrating holidays just seemed like such an unattainable goal to achieve. How does one have Thanksgiving dinner in a travel trailer and RV? Where would I put a Christmas tree of any size? And holiday decorating? Well, that just looks tacky in our situation, in my opinion (Christmas lights on a travel trailer…no).

This year is the first year since we lost everything that we will have a steady income through the winter. This alone is a gift for me. Knowing that rent will be paid, phones will stay on, food will not be an issue, and I just might be able to buy my kids each a Christmas gift without using the gift card my mom sends every year (my Christmas gift) to do so… Yes, a glorious gift.

I also will be getting pumpkins this year to carve for Halloween/Samhain. This is something else I haven’t done since motorhome life started. I always made such a big deal about carving pumpkins when the kids were growing up. In our family, there has hardly ever been a pumpkin that had the traditional carving of mouth, nose, eyes. We have always gotten a book or two of pumpkin carving designs, or made designs ourselves, and the kids picked out the ones they wanted. The next day or two would be spent carving the pumpkins.

One year, we did a whole Halloween scene out of 10 pumpkins of varying sizes. I had grown pumpkins that year so we had plenty to choose from. My hands hurt for the next couple of days after the carving was done, but it was so worth it. The kids were around 11 and 5 at the time so it was incredibly wonderful to be able to do this for them. They are 23 and 17 now. My daughter has helped in the past with the carvings so she will be a great help with them this year. My son really hasn’t shown a lot of interest in carving pumpkins but maybe this time he will. Either way, whether I carve the pumpkins by myself or the kids help me, I will be carving pumpkins. I guess you could say the holiday excitement that I used to have is trying to make a comeback. Baby steps.

I still have no idea how I will handle Christmas, but I have time. I don’t know if we will have a tree or not. I’ll figure out something.

What do the holidays look like for you? What is your favorite part of the holiday season?