*sigh* this is still taking a while, but moving forward (slowly!)

enthusiasticsaver

Great to have a new diary.  Good luck with all your aims for the next year.  

Well done on hosting.  As you say no doubt a few are put off by your family being larger than average but no excuse for your  siblings not hosting parents.  

Honeysucklelou2

Happy new diary Ohsh.

Had to smile at the hosting Christmas.  Same here! DD1’s fiancé’s family came for a food and games evening last week and being a large family too commented that it was nice to be  invited out.

EssexHebridean

Lovely to be able to issue the open invitation for the friends with less than wonderful home situations - bet they love being included in your celebrations too! Shame about rubbish siblings however ai suspect MrEH’s siblings may well regard him as a bit of a rubbish one so probably best I say nothing there…although in fairness to him the others are all (very) local to his M&D whereas we are very much not! 

crunchy_time

EssexHebridean said:

Lovely to be able to issue the open invitation for the friends with less than wonderful home situations - bet they love being included in your celebrations too! Shame about rubbish siblings however ai suspect MrEH’s siblings may well regard him as a bit of a rubbish one so probably best I say nothing there…although in fairness to him the others are all (very) local to his M&D whereas we are very much not! 

Agree! What a wonderful thing to do for the friends. 

Families can be tricky can’t they. I suspect I am the ‘rubbish’ one as well a) due to being the furthest away and b) due to being scapegoated and emotionally abused i emotionally keep my distance too.  Im not going to put any pressure on my kids when they are adults to feel they have to host me to make me happy. I’d rather be by myself volunteering of something.

xxx

LookingForPeace

Happy New Diary (and Year!) - subscribed  I'm sure you know we're all behind you! 

savingholmes

Good to have a fresh start. Happy new diary. Subscribed.

Humdinger1

Subscribed and looking forward to another splendid year! Love Humdinger xx 

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Thanks Lucielle, ES, HSL2, EH, Crunchy, LFP, SH and HD

The rest of Christmas has been lovely and chilled, back to work tomorrow sadly!

I've managed to stay away from the sales and we've had a quiet few days with not much money spent   Most of our DDs go out tomorrow and I'll see where we are, but all looking on track.

In other news, I decided to do dry January after all.  Obviously only 2 days in, but so far so good.  DH is joining me, he's quite competitive (if a rad grumpy) about it, so that'll keep me motivated.  Our food shop was much cheaper for the week without any alcohol, I should probably do one of the demotivator sums, but the answer would probably be very depressing!

While I'm doing DJ, I'm going to count calories and try and shift a few of the pounds that have been hanging around.
I got on the scales this morning and have put on 4lb which puts my BMI at 24, so I now have 14lb to lose.  Sad times.  I'd imagine it'll be easier to shift when I'm not drinking empty calories   I'll do a weekly weigh in and share on here.  Riveting  

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Day 3 of dry January complete, it’s going fine.  

I’ve also given up a well known fizzy drink that I used to drink 2 cans of a day. I thought I’d get caffeine withdrawal headaches, but I haven’t, so that’s great.
Still not spent anything not in the budget.
Have just remembered we don’t pay council tax in Feb or March, so that’ll be £500+ extra in the pot 

EssexHebridean

Ooh - yes - I'd forgotten the "free" council tax months! Water rates are the same for us too - so that will be a nice little savings bonus to be had! 

Well done on Dry January! Are you finding you're not missing it, or have the triggers not been there yet?