I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! This year I went to Staten Island on Christmas Eve.  It was nice to spend the evening with my parents and grandmother.  Christmas Day was spent at Ray's parents' house with them, his two sisters, and brother-in-law.  The food was good and the atmosphere relaxing.  I can't complain, but I do have to confess that I came away disappointed.

Every year my mom asks me what I want for Christmas.  I try to keep things to a minimum and only ask for "necessities".  These are things which I could really use, but find it hard to find money in the budget for them.  I figure if she's asking for a list, then I'll get what I want on the list, right?  It never happens and this year was no exception.  In case you're wondering, my list included a space heater, a pair of slippers, a bathmat, and dunkin donuts coffee.  The coffee really wasn't necessary, but I figured I'd include a nice treat on there.  Out of that list I received four bags of dunkin donuts coffee.  I received other gifts too, but I was really looking forward to getting new slippers since my last ones got completely ruined and I've been supplementing by wearing two pairs of socks when I'm home.  The space heater would have been nice because I can only heat either the living room or the bedroom at one time.  Although it's doubtful that my landlady appreciates me using a space heater at all (in my opinion the heat should be more than 62 in my apartment, just saying), so maybe getting a second space heater would have created more tension between us.

It didn't help that for a week before Christmas the other teachers/t.a.'s were all talking about the elaborate presents they "needed" to get in order to be happy and that on Christmas day all I saw were pictures of people getting really nice gifts and texts from people about the great presents they received.  However, that's really not what Christmas is all about in the first place.  It's really about celebrating Christ's birth and being together with family.  Besides, after listening to a friend's story about how she cried Christmas Eve because she had too many family get togethers to go to and her family was upset with her, I realized that one of my many blessings was to have two families that don't fight over where I should be and that I could relax and be myself with both of them.  After I got home and assembled all of my presents I also realized that I received more gifts than I knew what to do with.

Today I went to Target and used my gift cards.  I got the bathmat I had been looking at (on sale!).  I didn't find any slippers that I wanted, but I was able to get two pairs of really nice warm winter boots on clearance.  As for the space heater, I still don't have any money in the budget for the one I'd like, but yesterday my heat stayed on at 70 the entire day.    Sometimes you just have to wait for what you'd like, and sometimes we get what we need - just not the way we expected it.