Little blessings

I haven't updated this blog for a long, long time. Many things happened in the lives of my kids in the past couple of months, changes that we can't avoid like my youngest daughter's first birthday and my eldest daughter first period. But I'll likely tell you about it maybe later. Well, we're almost at the end of the year 2011, but before we say goodbye to this year, I just want to share the small blessings that me and my kids experienced this month of December.

Financially, I would consider this year a difficult one. Although, we we're able to have little vacations here and there, but in general, we haven't saved a lot... ok, I'll be honest with you, we haven't saved anything at all this year. So extra expenses are not really allowed, except for the money intended for our little vacation and long weekends which I clearly set aside since the start of this year. But other than that, we can't buy anything extra expensive or simply so-called extra expenses.

Just to give you an overview of the cost of living here in France and so you may also understand that we can’t have any, extra-luxury, as I call it. Let me just inform everybody that a minimum wage here in France is 1300€ minus the taxes, that would mean, 1100€ if you're lucky that they don't get any extra taxes from it. Unluckily for me, I am within that salary range. A house for a family as big as us would mean 1100€. Luckily, our place is a “rent-to-own,” so in 20 years it will be ours. No money wasted on that part. But it also means that the remains of my salary are only allotted for that and that alone. And so the other expenses would be paid by my husband's salary, (fortunately he earns more than I) which includes school, conservatoire de musique, electricity and gas for our house (yes, we use gas here too), car, gas for the car, clothing, food and miscellaneous things. And the rest which is not that much would be our savings for that month, if we are fortunate enough not to use it in emergency cases. Not forgetting the yearly tax revenue, landowner tax, habitation tax and audio-visual tax (which, the latter, doesn’t even exist in my country of origin, but here it does.)

So imagine how can we spend even a little for something extra? Hey, I’m not complaining here, just wanting to show you of our situation why we appreciate little surprises such as what I will tell you today.

My kids want to watch "Disney on Ice," which this year I couldn't grant because that will be a part of the extra expenses that I'm talking about. Even if I'm working at the same society, which is Disneyland Paris, it will be difficult for me get tickets for us 5 or even 4, for that would mean a total of almost 200€, if we really want to see it up close and personal. Yes, you can get tickets for less than 150€ for 4 persons but it would mean that you need to bring your telescope. There’s the premier category and the second category.

And so it happens that at work, there’s this contest for free 4 tickets for “Disney on Ice.” All you need to do is to log in on our intra-net and answer a question. The question is about who are the newest characters that will be joining this year’s holiday on ice. And since, I always read our “Backstage” magazine; of course I knew the answer. So I joined that contest.

And there’s another contest which the price would be “Duffy the bear,” which I also joined in.

But let me just tell you that for all 3 and a half years that I work at Disney, I always join small contest like that but unfortunately, I don’t win anything. A friend of mine always asked me why I join such lousy contest and tells me that it’s just a waste of time. Well, I always answer her, maybe I’ll get lucky.

After few days I checked the intra-net to see if I won in the “Duffy the bear” contest and as expected, I didn’t win except the “I told you so” from my friend.

But on a Monday afternoon, the 5^th of December, I received a call from my colleague at work telling me to call the “Internal Communication,” because apparently I won the tickets to “Disney on Ice.” Although it was in the middle of the premier category, but that’s Ok at least we won’t still be needing our telescope. Was so excited that I rang my husband immediately to tell him about the good news. My kids were the happiest as I told them the news after school.

It might be shallow for all of you whose reading this but this small surprise or blessing as I call it put a smile into my kid’s heart and I know that they will cherish the experience.

Here’s some photos and video just to share our moments with you. Sorry for the video excerpt because I'm not really allowed to put it on site, I'll loose my job if I put all of it.

By the way, during our “Arbre de Noël,” (A Christmas celebration for the employees of Disneyland Paris) my daughter also won the “Duffy the bear.” So basically, it’s just like winning in the two contests that I joined in. Told you, sometimes, it’s also nice to try things, maybe one day you’ll get lucky.