Happy New Year

The first week of January is always something of a rush around here, since eldest boy's birthday also falls there. Thankfully, we're past the days of needing Christmas put away prior to said birthday -- he actually seems to enjoy having all the decor out. And his friends are also large enough that no one is grabbing ornaments off the tree.

In fact, he has now turned seventeen.

Seven. Teen.

What on earth?

Of course Google Photos and Faceplant conspired with many many pictures of an adorable toddler and small boy that made me nostalgic. Although, for all his teenagerness, I'm really proud of the young man that he's becoming. What hangout time he allows, I treasure.

A small group (ha) of boys went out to laser tag and then basement shenanigans for the night on Friday. But "the real party" is a massive nerf war planned for an upcoming weekend. It amused me, when looking at a FB memory from I think his 3rd birthday that I pondered if we had set an unrealistic precedent for birthdays that year.

Yes. Yes we did.

Or, you know, we just like celebrating the kid. It could be that. (No fear, his brother gets equally ridiculous celebrations. But that's next month.)

The puppy does as well as one can expect of a baby with the glut of people in the house. And also with sleeping long and not needing potty time. But still I end up awake by 5:30 most days these days. I am trying to remember to put my laptop somewhere accessible for the groggy mornings so that I can do something more productive than scrolling on my phone and playing word games while the house is quiet and I have one (sometimes two) dogs curled up on or beside me. Today, it worked. (I have the unfortunate affliction that, once I've been awakened after a longish sleep, there is no chance I'm going back to sleep. I have tried. Oh, how I have tried. But I end up just laying there getting frustrated. So it's better to just acknowledge that I'm up now.)

My one hope for 2025 is that no one I love dies. Given the state of Daddy these days, I'm not sure how well that's going to pan out, but it's still my hope.

Fa-rah-rah-rah-rah

When I was trying to figure out what to make for our Christmas dinner, I polled my kids and my dad. Other than Dad, no one had an opinion. Dad wanted baby back ribs. That was easy enough and we hadn't had them for a while so easy peasy.

I picked up the ribs while at Wegmans - taking care to check the use by date to ensure they'd be fine for Christmas. They were.

If you've been following along at all with my 2024, you know that there's a big ol "except" coming.

Yesterday morning, in between throwing waffles on the iron, I opened up the ribs to peel off the back membrane and...they did not smell right. But maybe I was over reacting. So I called hubby over - "Smell these. Do they smell right?"

He sniffed. "I'm sure it's fine."

I hesitated, but it was Christmas and we needed food and...okay fine. So he seasoned them up and threw them on the smoker.

We went about the rest of our festive breakfast and present opening.

And then, it was time to pull the ribs off, sauce, and wrap them. And hubby brought them in and waved me over. "Do these smell right?"

No. No they did not.

Not being fans of food poisoning, we wrapped them up and into to the trash can they went. Hubby and I looked at each other and burst into song, a la the Chinese servers in A Christmas Story, "Fa-rah-rah-rah-rah."

That left the question...what would Christmas dinner be?

Digging through the freezer, the option became hot dogs or chicken breasts.

Shockingly (ha, not so), no one wanted hot dogs for Christmas.

In the end, we were able to thaw the chicken and season it up in time to grill them and have our late lunch/early dinner as previously planned. And the chicken tasted good, even if it was a little more boring than we wanted for said festive meal. 

I'm ready for 2024 to end. Obviously, on one can promise 25 will be any better, but at this point, even if not, I'll be glad to see the back side of this year.

Have a Very Blessed Christmas

 Tis the season....

Tis the reason.

Christmas Parties

One of the recurring themes of Eldest Boy's struggle is that he feels like he's socially awkward. He doesn't particularly care for my response of, "Join the club, kid." (Hubby gives a similar response. I suspect that 99% of the world thinks they're socially awkward, but really we're all just normal.)

Regardless, one of the things he's doing to try and combat this, is finding reasons and ways to trick me into having big parties at our house. (I say trick, it's not really tricky. He asks and, because I'm a sucker who wants him to feel good about himself, I say sure.)

Most of the time, these parties (gatherings or hangouts, whatever one wants to call them) are just him and his friends. I'm all for him having groups of friends over and will happily provide pizza and chips.

But sometimes -- like at the start of summer and then again last night -- he gets a wild hair that hubby and I also need to participate in the party, so asks if we can invite whole families.

Which is why we ended up with somewhere around 40 people at our house last night for a Christmas party.

My therapist is trying to get me to see the positives in things...so I guess the big positive is that for ten sparkling minutes before people started to arrive, my house was immaculate.

Of course, then people descended. And those people ranged in age from 18 months to 50+. And the crowd of littles were, largely, unsupervised with hot chocolate. Meaning my floor ended the night stickier than I had thought possible.

That said, all the kids seemed to have a wonderful time. (They were, by and large, in the basement. Although they ran up to get food as we'd set up the dining room as the buffet.) One of them is a burgeoning DJ and brought along his equipment (including a smoke machine! He did not turn that on as there was concern about smoke alarms. I think it would have probably been fine, but I also appreciate his discretion.)

The adults all seemed to also enjoy one another. We hung out largely in the living room with conversation ranging here, there, and everywhere. It was loud. It was amusing. 

It was exhausting.

I got a lot of the house put back together last night (because sticky floors and dropped food are both bad ideas for puppies) and finished it up this morning. But right now, the boys are all out with Trial Life doing an escape room, and the pups and I are reveling in the silence.

If I could go another week or two without another large group of people that I had to interact with, I might just recover.

My question though is this: do the socially awkward go out of their way to plan a party? 

Mrs. Grundy says no.

A Whirlwind Trip

Wednesday, Daddy and I hopped a plane back to Texas. This time Austin, for the funeral of my uncle. It was lovely, again, to see all the aunts and uncles from Dad's side. And one cousin also came. (She and her father are estranged, so I was surprised she would willingly be around him for a few days - but she had been very close to this uncle earlier in her life, so it probably shouldn't have been a shock.)

Anyway, as funerals go, this one was lovely. 

I'm still pretty convinced I don't want one. And Dad reiterated that he didn't, either. But if I were to have one? I would want it to be like this. Lots of glorious music. Their church actually has (and still uses!) an organ. They sing mostly classical church music (think Bach) and that was honestly so lovely. Uncle had been a choir member and so the whole choir was there to sing.

What music wasn't glorious choir music, was congregational hymns. Good hymns. Again with the organ.

I would love to find a church around here that had music like that and also good theology. But it's hard enough to find the latter, I think I have to settle on the former.

Regardless, we were glad we went. We were also glad we were able to change our tickets to come home yesterday (Friday) rather than staying until Monday as we'd originally planned. 

Daddy has been sick for the last week? Two? He was pretty convinced he wasn't contagious (but man, the chest cough that lingered got him a lot of side eye) so still went. But that was also a near thing. (Honestly, I think the difference was that cancelling would have cost money, but changing things was free.) And I know my aunt, in particular, was glad he was there.

Still, there's truly no place like home.

It's the little things

I am down to only two emails in my inbox. This makes me ridiculously happy. And one of them I can get rid of when a multi-author promo I'm in has finished (soon!) and the other is just instructions on Facebooks ads that I need to read again and make sure I've gleaned the goodies out of.

So. Close.

Eldest boy does not get my joy. He has over 3000 emails in his. He deletes nothing. And, well, given how he also throws nothing away, this tracks. But seeing his inbox gives me anxiety. I couldn't do it. 

Hubby keeps a lot in his inbox, too.

I think it's the ADHD.

Dunno.

Regardless, it was my smile for the morning and I figured y'all were due for something not depressing from me.

Y'all

Happy belated Thanksgiving.

We had a low-key day with my dad. Hubs smoked a pork loin on his Traeger and if I never eat pork loin cooked differently, I will be a happy girl. It was amazing. I made mashed potatoes and rolls to go along. I meant to make green beans but ended up forgetting. Ah well.

Dad came over early and we had waffles and vanilla sauce for breakfast, as well. So it was a feast of a day.

And of course there was pie.

But, because this seems to be the Year of Murphy, my uncle (Dad's older brother) passed away last evening. He'd been in the hospital for two weeks, but all the reports said things were routine and going as they should. He'd had gall stones removed. And then they decided to also yank his gallbladder, except it was so swollen they had to do it open vs. laparoscopically. And that, of course, is where everything went sideways.

After battling infections, they finally figured out that they had sliced a bile duct in half when they operated on him the first time. My aunt was, as you'd imagine, hesitant to let them operate on him again, since it seemed every time they did he got worse.

I don't think it would have made a difference. He would have either died on the table or in his hospital bed. It took them so long to realize the problem, I can't see how he would have recovered.

So. Dad and I will take another trip to Texas soon. This time to attend the service for Dad's brother. And I'm just not sure how many more hits Dad can absorb.