Happy New Year

I hope all of you enjoyed a wonderful Christmas and Holiday break. Here at our house, the two weeks around Christmas and New Years are always chock full of fun. And BUSY! Here is a bit of a review of what we’ve been doing:

We celebrated on Christmas Day with all my siblings and their families. Aunt Sandra even spent the night on Christmas Eve, so after we all attended the Christmas Eve service at church, the two of us stayed up late chatting and putting final touches on our Christmas Day meal. We probably took our visiting a little too far because we didn’t retire until just after 3am. But how often do I get to enjoy a sleepover with my little sis these days?

Like a trooper, she got up at 6am to stick our Christmas ham into the oven (this is the first time we’ve ever cooked a ham and it was delish!). By 7am I was up and dealing with Tom Turkey. He turned out to be a moist and juicy bird and dinner was great. What fun to have everyone here for the holiday!

The next few days we hung around some, cleaned out old toys, threw away much wrapping paper and packing materials (have you noticed how hard it is these days to extricate toys from their tedious packaging?), and tried to reorganize children’s rooms to accomodate all the special new things. And then, we got geared up for birthday festivities.

On Wednesday night we helped Grammy Ruth “surprise” Jay’s Dad with a 60th Birthday Party gathering of family for dinner and dessert. That was wonderful, and I think he enjoyed himself. We took a bunch of pictures at this event. But, I’ll have to add them later.

Thursday late afternoon was our combined birthday party for Jonathan (turning 4) and Abigail (turning 6), who enjoy birthdays only a week apart on either side of New Years Day. We had family and friends here to help us celebrate and we played “Pin the Tail on the Burro” and “Musical Cushions”, decorated cupcakes, and at the request of the children, batted around a poor Tropical Fish on a string (pinata). What a great time that was! In between directing games and food, I got a few shots of our party. Again, hopefully, you’ll get to see them soon!

Friday of course was New Years Eve: during the day I cooked a turkey for the second time this week in anticipation of more visiting at our house on New Year’s Day. But that night, we hired a babysitter, enjoyed dinner out, and attempted to spend the rest of the evening with some friends. Unfortunately, a pesky headache of mine (likely due to too much excitement and partying PRIOR to NYEve!) sent us home from our friends’ house around 10:15.

The next day, my folks arrived, and we extended our celebration of Christmas even further. We had a late lunch with all our guests, and exchanged more gifts, and enjoyed visiting with everyone.

The children were all exhausted after such an exciting week, and we put them in bed by 6:30. As our kind visitors on Saturday had helped to clean up the dining room and kitchen, things were in a pretty neat state, and Jay and I breathed a sigh of relief as we anticipated a restful and quiet evening at home. And then, just as we were discussing what delightful, relaxing things we might do with an evening all to ourselves, Jonathan appeared at the top of the stairs and announced that his tummy was hurting terribly. Uh oh…..within half an hour, he was in the throes of an awful stomach virus. Poor Jonathan.

That rest we were anticipating hasn’t quite come yet, for we have had two nights of being up with our very sick little boy, as well as a bit of a scare when he was still vomiting 24 hours into the virus. Last night I was up with him again several times, and for some reason, I could hardly drag myself out of bed today! But Jonathan is now definitely on the mend and we are so grateful.

Tomorrow, we hope to all officially be back into our regular schedule of school and activities. Abigail gets to take “birthday donuts” to school for her actual 6th birthday, and Jonathan has requested chocolate chip cookies for his birthday snack at school on Friday.

We are very grateful for a (mostly) healthy holiday and wonderful visits with so many friends and family members over the last couple weeks. We hope all of you are enjoying this New Year, and are excited about what is in store for 2005.

One Reply to “Happy New Year”

  1. And Happy New Year to you! We certainly enjoyed being with family and friends in different places during different parts of the Advent Season. And I’m especially thankful that you were snapping pictures at the BIG 60 celebration, since my mind was otherwise engaged — or was it absent?!

    Hope you can settle into a quiet, restful phase soon.

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