Sunday, November 24

Today is Irene’s (mother-in-law) 88th birthday and tomorrow Maggie’s (first grandchild) 6th birthday.  We are having a huge birthday celebration at our house serving a Thanksgiving dinner, with all the most delicious foods, since this year for Thanksgiving all of our married children will be with their in-laws.  Joe, Alex and I will be heading up to Park City to stay at our condo.  This may be our last season at the condo.  It will be rented for an entire year starting in February.  I have mixed feelings about this, happy that it will be rented because it brings in a lovely, steady income but also sad that the dream of the condo as a mountain getaway is quickly fading.  We bought the condo in 1994 and hoped that it would become a ski-haven for our grandchildren.  I could picture Joe and I spending Friday nights up there, having the grandchildren sleepover and then on Saturday morning cooking a wonderful breakfast and off we would go to the ski hill.   We love the condo and location so much but it has been a huge expense to maintain and then quite a lot of work to rent, clean and manage.  So, since I won’t have to deal with a lot of that for a year, I am relieved.  If, in the distant future, it should sell, we would use that money to improve our home in Salt Lake which needs a make-over like nobody’s business.  I really would like to enjoy this new century and have a house and kitchen to match.  I very much would like to remodel our home so I have a place to entertain family and friends and I would so much like to express myself through my house.  My creative self wants to bloom and buy some really cool furnishings!  I am an HGTV addict and love the process of taking an existing home, that is basically ugly and not functioning well and making it something really beautiful and unique and of course, functional which means meeting all my needs!