Christmas 2018

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The 2018 Christmas season has come and gone much too quickly as usual. Our Christmas break was a little different this year with a few quieter days on the front end, busy days at the end of a 2-week break. Our family continues to miss loved ones, and the new normal is still not quite normal. Mom is recovering well from her rotator cuff surgery but dad is still responsible for the bulk of the care and feeding of my mom and 4 grandparents. She has done so well, but it's a long recovery.

Becky and the boys visited for 6 days. The girls still got to have their after-Christmas shopping day (and, yes, purses were purchased); we still did appetizers and Dirty Santa (on NYE this year). Brian, dad and the boys had a football night while the girls had a movie night. Our group took up the entire back row of the theater to see Mary Poppins (delightful!). Camden and the cousins spent an incredible amount of time playing video games, talking about video games and planning to play video games. We let the kids stay up until midnight on NYE while the adults headed to bed about 10:00. Becky and I spent several mornings with an extra pot of coffee and plenty of time to talk (and cry).

Rory's favorite gifts were the caboodle, make-up, and many hair and nail accessories. She is interested in full glam these days. Camden received an Echo Dot, Madden 2019 and luggage (he's participating in a 3-week long leadership camp this summer). He was also SO happy about receiving a signed poster of the Titans Music City Miracle. This kid's love for sports is only growing as he gets older.

Officially, tomorrow (January 7) is the last day of Christmas break for the kids, and they've requested to spend their last day binge-watching/playing video games. The adults ended their Christmas holiday at Vanderbilt Friday where I had surgery to replace my port. This is my third one, which isn't especially fun. I was able to spend a quiet Saturday and Sunday recovering and hope to go back to work tomorrow. After the surgery a couple of years ago when they used conscious sedation (and I was awake the entire time), the surgeons chose to use general anesthesia for this surgery. So much less traumatic! While another surgery wasn't part of the plan, I'm choosing to be grateful that my chemo break continues (January 4 marked 9 months). The elderly gentleman in the bed next to me was headed straight to the chemo chair for a 5-hour infusion.

My computer is on the fritz again so I just have these few phone pictures to share.

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The word for Christmas 2018 might be change. It would be easy to focus on the challenges, but I'm trying to highlight all the good stuff. And being together is the good stuff.

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