A New Year!

Happy belated new year. I am a few days late because my life has been upside down. I ended off 2009 with a bang, or rather a burn. We had a fire in our kitchen on the 30th of December. I was preparing a delicious dinner for my family. I had spent all morning cooking and pretending to be Martha Stewart while my children vegged out around the house. Later that day, to my horror, not only was the chicken cooking but so was my kitchen. The firefighters came and thankfully saved the day. They rescued the house - which apparently was a mere 5 minutes away from total destruction.

So the new year is off to a crazy start. However, we decided to make the best out of a bad situation. We had to move out for 4 days, for the cleaners to come in and begin the "disaster restoration". So we packed up the kids and stayed at a hotel. We tried to relax and deal with the situation. Yesterday we returned home to a giant mess. Thankfully, I had the help of my family, friends and my housekeeper and things looked much better by the end of the day. We still have tons left to do but I figure I need to take it one step at a time and one day at a time.

I have decided to make use of this fire as a time to reorganize my house. A fantastic cleaning company came and took EVERYTHING away for cleaning - clothes, linens, shoes. My new year's resolution is to go through everything and decide if it is really useful before putting it away again. Tina, our organizer, will be so proud of me. I am looking at this as an excellent opportunity to really get the house in shape again, because even though Tina organized us from top to bottom last year - I let certain things slide as I ran short on time. So all in all I am trying to cope with the upheaval the best way I know how and that is bit by bit. I am always telling people that it is okay to ask for help, well this is my time to ask for help. I am just so lucky that I have so many people I can count on and that I can turn to for that help.