It Was Like Christmas Morning! This weekend started out pretty awesome! We were running all over trying to get everything done before Christmas. You have no idea how much stress and pressure I put on myself to get everything finished. Now, looking back, it really was insane! LOL! Anyway, then as I was cleaning up around the house, I noticed an envelope on the kitchen counter. I thought, "I wonder what that is?" Then I took the card out. It said it was from Santa. How cute! We haven't had our tree up yet, so when I saw the card it kind of reminded me of Christmas morning. I went and showed it to David and told him I thought it was from Santa. He acted so unsure. LOL! He just couldn't believe it was real. To make a long story short, we went down to look and sure enough, the post office in town was decorated with a Christmas tree and balloons with this on them: It's kind of funky but I liked it! So I said that I would take a picture and send it in. Then I got to looking on the internet and found that it had been going around for a few years. So, a few years ago, some old school buddy of mine was down in Florida and a friend was out with them. They took a picture of him and they put it on a blank postcard to leave at a certain place in Florida. In all of my travels I've never seen this place, but it said on the back that it was near the sign that is by the highway and turns into Florida. I live right off of that highway! LOL! That's how we found it. I still have the postcard but I never wrote down where it was because I always forgot and usually I just throw them away anyway. My friend was actually in the same town I lived in for about a year but we never crossed paths. It was awesome to think I had a postcard that someone had put there to leave a clue as to where to leave this thing. It really was like finding a needle in a haystack! We went there and sure enough, there were tons of kids and dogs there, which made us all feel so bad about leaving such a cool thing like that where everyone could see it. But then we found the card and were able to find the tree. That was pretty awesome! I found the tree about a quarter of a mile up the road. To get there, you have to go past the place where you turn left for the highway and go all the way to the right. My husband thought he was lost. There was a really old store that was built in a T shape that looked like a schoolhouse on one side of the street. It's been abandoned for years. It wasn't there when we were kids, but it's right behind the house we live in now. Anyway, when we finally got up to where it was supposed to be, we thought it was huge! I knew we were close to it when the smell of fresh sawdust and sap started to drift in the air. They had done something awesome with this tree! I'm just totally blown away by it! It took the whole Christmas season to make this tree, I believe. Now that's love for Christmas! Thanks again for making it a great Christmas, David! I just love knowing that David and I are both going to be old one day. I like to think I will still have a sparkle in my eyes and that I can still hold a good conversation with him. He said that one of the signs that he is getting older is that he sees more things that he doesn't want to see. What do you think he meant? I'll have to try to find out someday. ;) Sunday, December 5, 2010 Yesterday was a rough day for me, unfortunately. I just feel like I've been completely exhausted. I'm starting to have a hard time to get anything done around the house, which is kind of pathetic. We worked very hard to get this place ready for the holidays and then after the weekend we were exhausted. However, I had a really good time and we accomplished all of the things we needed to get done. David and I had a really hard time coming to the conclusion that we did the right thing with what we wanted to do. We ended up on different pages, but hey, you can't have everything in life! All I can say is that we both went through a difficult time and we came out better people for it. It was good for me to learn to accept David's lifestyle and understand that what he chose to do with his life and my life was going to be a difficult situation for us. I love him and he loves me and we were making each other miserable with the way we were living our lives. Just being with him made me appreciate our life so much more than I ever have. Even though the relationship we have is new, it feels like something we have had for a very long time. We have grown up together and have gone through a lot of experiences together. I wish we had grown up together a lot sooner, because it would have made it easier for us. There were certain events in our lives that could have been prevented. Had we just talked about how our relationship should be, maybe we would have found the right words and had enough strength to overcome the struggles we would have had. We would still be trying to find the answers to those questions that could have prevented us from each other. We aren't perfect and this was not a fairy tale romance, so we both did something stupid and made some bad decisions. The fact is that we both had to make those decisions and it had to happen the way it did for us. Who knows where we would be right now if one of us had made a different choice at a different time. It might not have lasted. It took me several months to forgive myself for making one of the stupidest decisions of my life. My God! I was ready to leave the house and run away from him so fast I wasn't even aware of it. Now I couldn't imagine my life without David. We have been through a lot of crazy shit together and somehow managed to stick it out together, even though it didn't look like that was going to happen at all. He is the reason that I have been able to learn about love in the past few years and why I've had the strength to move forward with it. I've come a long way with him and I am forever grateful for him. He gives me so much love and even though we have our issues, he has never stopped loving me. I hope and pray that I never lose that love for him! He is everything! Monday, November 29, 2010 I just thought this letter was appropriate to share. When it was our time, we chose to not have any children because of the way our lives were going. When our relationship broke up, I went back to him for three years and during that time I was pretty selfish. I didn't know if I had to come back or not. I knew if I had to come back, I would probably have to bring up children again. Now we were going back to each other because we were both going through the same circumstances. We wanted the same things for our relationship and so we both started to become a little more selfish than we were when we first got together. Our relationship had hit a rough patch and we were both having problems with it. We wanted to be together, so we thought that we should figure out a way to make it work. Then we realized how much we wanted each other! We went back to each other and decided to just give it another chance. Even though we both did have some things that needed to be worked out, I really had a lot of stuff to work through. When we were together, we had a great time, but when we broke up, I felt like I was in a dark place. I started to feel really desperate because I knew there was only so much I could do for the relationship and so I was trying to give it everything. So, we moved back in together. I started to have panic attacks when I was thinking about the future. I didn't think I could do this anymore. I didn't want my life to end up like David's mother and brother's life. I didn't want my relationship to die this way and so I just did the things I could to hold it together. Well, it's been about six months since I moved back in and I'm finally a bit more stable. Although there have been times when I was a lot more unstable than I thought. He is going through some really bad stuff that has totally thrown me into a bad place. The last time he went through this it got really bad, so I was prepared for this. The thing I did the last time I went through this was get another job and get some friends. This time was very hard, but I kept thinking that it would pass and that things would be better. I did the things that I always do when things start to get weird for me. I started to plan again and did the things I have learned to do when things get really crazy for me. It really does get better and I know for sure that it will eventually get better. I'm just hoping to be around to see it. I know that if I just accept him and our relationship the way it is, things will change for the better. I have to remind myself that this is just a cycle and that he is going through this part of his life right now too. His relationship with his ex-girlfriend came back into his