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Best Christmas Ever!

I should write about Christmas because I haven't had such an enjoyable holiday break in a long time. Holidays are a lot of work, so for many years, I haven't enjoyed them. I'm not sure exactly what changed, but Christmas 2023 was mostly enjoyable. We still had to figure out gifts and make food and clean, clean, clean, and wrap a million presents, but all of that work didn't threaten to push me under this year. I had more help. Ricky and the kids wrapped a lot of presents ahead of Christmas Eve so Rick and I didn't have to stay up until 3:00 a.m. wrapping everything. Also, I let some things go. If I didn't get to that thing, I just didn't get to that thing and tried not to feel too guilty.

We went out to dinner on Christmas Adam (thank you Wilde family for calling it that so we can remember you every year on the 23rd).


Emily and Logan flew into the local airport late that evening. We (I) had the fabulous idea to all wear our matching Reindeer PJ's to pick them up. All eight of us pranced into the airport. It was a delightful surprise.
We had a bit of late-night arm wrestling. Logan and Andrew are evenly matched (except that Logan had the disadvantage of traveling all day and was pretty pooped).
On Christmas Eve morning, we went to church. I was peacefully enjoying the Christmas music when all of a sudden had a weird pain under my ribs, felt kind of woozy, and then got very hot and itchy. Like my skin was burning off. I left the meeting, and when my allergic attack (which I thought was what it was) wasn't improving, I texted Rick. He insisted on taking me to the ER even though I wasn't having trouble breathing.
They did an EKG, blood work, chest x-ray, and other fun evaluations. Aside from my blood pressure being elevated and having symptoms of an allergic reaction (which cleared up within the time I was checked in), everything was fine. They let me go home under advisement to see an allergist and follow up with my primary care doctor (which I haven't done yet).
We continued our celebrations and Christmas Eve preparations the rest of the evening, including opening Grandma's pajamas and acting out Luke 2.





The next batch of pictures loaded out of order. We did a lot of fun things together to fill the days between Christmas and New Year's. We played games at the church. Logan taught our family a new game called War Ball. It's super fun and now a new hit in the State College Ward.

We also built gingerbread houses. Logan's and Emily created a Park City Mansion.
Makayla made a cottage.
Ricky had a hard time, but ended up with a church.
Sean spent so much time making an awesome tiled porch that he didn't end up doing much decorating on his desert house.
Gavin and Brooklyn made an abandoned house, complete with graffiti and gummy bear ghosts. I thought I had a picture of it, but can only find work-in-progress pictures.




I mentioned earlier that one thing that made Christmas break nicer for me was the help with cooking. This is Emily chopping onions for Logan's delicious chicken adobo.
Makayla used our leftover ham to make a tasty soup. She also made homemade sourdough croutons for our side salads.
Christmas dinner was mostly me, but Makayla also made some fabulous mashed potatoes.


I made cinnamon rolls AND dinner rolls. Yum!

Here are a couple of Christmas morning pics:

On New Year's Eve, we played Texas Hold 'Em with leftover gingerbread house candy and lit off our remaining 4th of July fireworks.




And just a few hours later, we were at the airport again, saying goodbye to Makayla, Logan and Emily.


It was a decent Christmas. :)

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