This was the first Christmas that I spent in my house.
When you’re a bachelor, you find yourself having to travel each Christmas season.
That’s been the case since I have been out on my own. Each year, I would make the trek north to my parent’s house and their over active gas furnace. Those two people love them some heating. The older they’ve gotten the more they lean into the thermostat during the Winter. So I have to leave my perfect Winter weather down here to go up there to freezing temperatures only to sweat in my folks’ house. I love my parents and my sisters. It’s been fun watching my nieces and nephews grow up and become their own people more and more each year. But my sisters live in the same town and can go back to their own thermostat settings. That’s not the case for me as I sweat it out with that gas furnace cranking for a week. Well, we lost dad two years ago and that was really tough. He was sorely missed the following Christmas and it was pretty awful. So I bought my mom a ticket to fly down here for Christmas and my sisters joined her with their family. I have a pretty big place so I was able to accommodate all of them. But the best part was that I have zone controlled HVAC and I could be nice and cool in my own bedroom. Mom could crank the heating in her room and we sort of compromised in the rest of the house. It was actually a really great change and one that I hope we can continue to repeat.