# 3

continuing my holiday stories:
when I was a kid, with 12 kids in the family on good Christmas' we considered it a very good holiday if we got a piece or 2 of fruit, & my mom always got a pack of life savers and split them up between all of us kids (except the babies of course and with 12 kids, there was always a baby or 2)...& she tried very hard to make at least one kind of cookie for us...she wa...s legendary for her angel food cakes with coffee frosting...but see, we did not know any difference, that was a great Christmas to us, even if all we got to eat that day was a bowl of oatmeal, we still considered it "magical." can you even imagine now days of being married to an alcoholic, who did not like to work and have 12 kids-we almost always had our utilities turned off for nonpayment, but we thought it special to eat our little bowl of oatmeal by candle light with our life savers and piece of fruit..this went on for many many years..as us kids got older and we began to work and "help out" our mom, things got better monitarily..now I truly believe that this type of life instilled good character in us but we also swore to ourselves that as we left home, we were determined never to live like that again..and sometimes it is all in who you marry..out of all of us kids, I am the one that has done the best with Ross, we are still married with family and great grandkids, whom my mom never had the great pleasure of ever meeting.
to be continued.