This was the worst gift of the year given to the kids by their mother. Don’t be fooled into thinking this would be fun and entertaining. The commercials say “no mess”. Yeah right, you might as well just put a sandbox in your house. What a mess! You have been warned…
A few statements from Eli this week…
Eli came up to me with the saddest look on his face tonight. “I can’t lift my brongs anymore,” he said. I asked him why and he said, “my batteries just ran out.”
When Eli’s legs fall asleep he says “my legs are sprinkly”.
I found him putting Damon’s deodorant on. He said, “I have to put this on so I can breathe, mommy. I am a big man now”.
On Sunday morning I drove the kids down to my parents house in Hutchinson. Damon had to work Christmas Eve day and the day after Christmas. The idea of driving down on Monday and driving back on Tuesday with all the kids didn’t sound to fun to us. We decided just to take 2 cars and let the kids enjoy more time with their grandparents and cousins.
We had 19 kids and 14 adults in my parents house most of the week. Since my grandparents are now living with my parents and have the back part of the house we were all crammed in there pretty tight. They even had a nice heated camper trailer in the driveway for one family to sleep in. It worked out well for a place to send the older kids to play games during nap time, too.
The kids all got to go sledding together one day. The rest of the time they played games and ran around the basement. We tried to have some quiet movie times for them. After we put the kids to bed each night the adults stayed up until the wee hours of the morning playing the game Rage. It has become our new family game when we all get together.
We drove home yesterday so we could beat the next winter storm that came through last night. It was like Christmas again when we got home. Damon had taken all the gifts home with him right after the kids opened them and so they were able to play with them finally.
Eli was so sad that Christmas was over and on the way home and kept talking about it to me. When we got home and he got into the house and saw the Christmas tree was still there he got pretty excited. He ran to the tree and turned the lights on and said “IT IS STILL CHRISTMAS!” I guess he thought all the lights would disappear when Christmas was over.
patiently waiting for gift time..
gift time begins
snack time
girl time
The little girls playing Blokus
Game of Life
Maggie’s new tent set (which she slept in last night)
We had our own little family Christmas celebration last weekend. Damon had surgery on Friday and when he got home each of the kids got to open one gift. Then we went out to dinner and drove around some cool neighborhoods to look at Christmas lights. (Poor Damon was drug all over the place barely awake from surgery)
We spread the gifts out over 2 days and only let them open one gift each time. I have found that they seem much more grateful and less greedy only getting one gift at a time. On Saturday morning we let them open another gift and then on Sunday morning we let them dig into their stockings.
Then we were on our way to Grampa and Gramma’s house!
So, I had surgery today. Knee surgery. Arthroscopic knee surgery. It was great. I highly recommend it. Especially the part when the nurse keeps jabbing into your veins with a needle and block the diameter of a pencil while mumbling, “His skin is so tough, his skin is so tough…” That was way too cool. A needle that can’t get through your skin? I wanted to ask her just how dull they keep their needles, or if she just found that one in the garbage can.
A few months ago I hurt my knee while running. In the dark. In the woods. On a gravel road. Going down a hill. So, anyway, I didn’t see the 3-foot deep pothole looming in front of me like the Grand Canyon. I tore my meniscus in two places. One tear was severe, the other, well, not severe enough to call severe. I kept waiting for the pain to go away, but it never did.
Now I get to hobble around and look like this for a while…
