So many Festive Bloggers

 Well Pickles seemed to like the tree this year up on the trunk in the Dining room

 and then I started adding a few gifts as I got them made or bought

and this is how it looks now in spite of not having much Christmas spirit. I bought this 3 ft tree with lights at an auction for $5.00. It also had some ornaments with Roses on it and they are just not my thing so I put them on ebay and sold them for $4.00...Yippee..I have $1.00 invested in my tree and all my ornaments are from friends and ornie swaps.
My Christmas spirit started going in the toilet in October when my son's wife died. She was an alcoholic and we all knew it was going to happen...including her. My Son is still taking it pretty hard and even sent Christmas cards and signed her name along with his..
That just made me really worry about him more. All my friends and Family are about 250 miles North of here and I really need to go back by this coming spring...need to be near our old Doctors and stores..etc etc etc.
Then they rushed our landlord by ambulance last month and he was in the hospital about 2+ hours from here. I tried calling his family but they just didn't want to take 3 minutes to let us know how he was. Now we found out today that they moved him to the Hospital 12 miles from here and he has been there for a week and no one could take the time to let us know.  The only reason we found out was because we didn't take the rent ck up there on Wed and his 1 son called about it.
 Billy did mention to him that we would be here until they asked us to move...kind of feeling him out and he just laughed. He could have told him not to worry about that but he didn't, and we have the feeling that they will be asking us to move so they don't have to worry about maintance. We asked over a month ago to please send an electrician with some serious problems here..Nothing...
I am very ready to just go home as soon as the weather is better (maybe April) they get a lot more cold and snow up there than we get here.
Now another DIL Mother passed away on Dec 18th and it is hard on their family.
That is basically why I haven't been blogging much.
My Daughter (Nellie) will be coming down on Amtrack on Sunday and will go back home the 26th. It will be nice to spend Christmas with her but not a very long visit and will miss her AGAIN when she goes home. She is our only Daughter and has no Husband or kids so she does get extra :)
I have been very busy making a lot of gifts for Family and Friends but we have to ship it all and that is very expensive. I have been doing most of my shipping by U P S. When a pkg is 3 pounds or more it is cheaper and much faster than P O. It is insured and has tracking and if I ship a box up to family and friends up North...it is there the next day.
Once Christmas is over I will be concentrating on saving up to move. Billy turned 72 on Dec 20th and is just to much anymore for him to load and drive a U Haul so I will be looking into how much it will cost for someone to move us.
Then there is the problem of finding a place to move to that far away since we can't just hop in the car and go look around.
The other problem is we have 4 Dogs and now 3 cats (Keep the mice out) and I will NOT get rid of any of my family of pets because someone says they will rent us a house...but no dogs. It is not Dogs or Cats that can ruin a house...it is the humans that don't take care of them and would not be good renters even if they didn't have pets.
There is also the possibility of finding something for sale the way the housing market is right now. Just can't decide if we want to take on upkeep on a house or let someone else worry about it. We also MUST have a fence for our Dogs...no more dogs on a chain.

So that is about it from Central IL for this time.
I hope all my blogger friends have a Great Christmas with Family and Friends and a great 2013. I am just going to put my trust in the Lord to help us achieve our goal.