A Christmas to Remember

This Christmas has been one for the books!! I briefly talked about Christmas Eve at Eric's, which was a great time. Eric did a really good job hosting, both with the ham dinner and the decorating for the 'Christmas Feel' for gift opening. It was mainly about the kids, though... they all had lots of gifts to open and they ripped through them. Afterwards, we headed up to my house and opened our gifts to each other. I got him one of the few things he actually wanted and asked for... a bonsai tree. And he almost broke it. Don't ask... I'm still trying to figure it out!! Overall, though, it was actually a nice, low key evening before the craziness that is my family Christmas.

Okay... so maybe crazy isn't the right word. We just had a 'big' Christmas because that's what we do. But it was a little crazier this year due to circumstances beyond our control...

So Eric and I head to the airport on Christmas Day. I hadn't talked to the family at all since I'd be seeing them shortly. We just took our time in the morning and enjoyed the bit of Christmas that we had to ourselves. When we got to the airport, I called home to let them know everything looked to be on time. My grandmother answered the phone, which she rarely does - usually only if no one else is home. I jokingly asked why Mom and Dad had her answering the phone. She then proceeded to tell me that Mom had taken Dad to the ER - they thought he was having a bad reaction to a prescription he had. WTF??? Why had no one called me?? I guess I couldn't get there any faster, anyway, but at least give me a heads up! So this freaked me out a little, obviously. I get through security and to the gate, and my Mom calls right before we board. No the doctors are thinking it might be appendicitis. They had to run a few tests to verify things, though. So I tell her to keep me posted and leave me a voicemail of the status if I'm in the air.

We get to ATL... no voicemail. So I wait awhile, then try to call, and it goes directly to her voicemail since she's in the hospital. So i text her and tell her to leave me voicemail as we're leaving the gate for our last leg of the trip. We get to JAX... still no voicemail! So I call, and it goes to directly to her voicemail again, so I leave a massage for her to call me and let me know what's up. At this point, as Eric and I head to the rental car, he suggest we go directly to the hospital. Only, I have no clue what hospital they're at - Jacksonville is a big city! So we end up going straight to the house. Mom and Dad were home - had been home for about an hour. Turns out he had kidney stones and would spend the next few days waiting for them to pass. No fun for him. :(

So after all this drama, I stayed up late to help Mom put some finishing touches on 'Christmas' before the kids came up the next day - she had to postpone a lot of her last minute things since she spent much of the day in the hospital. I finally crawled into bed close to 1am. Eric was asleep long before this, the bum!

So the day after Christmas comes, and this is actually our Christmas Day since this was when the whole family could finally be together. We spend much of the day doing our normal routine of opening gifts under one tree, then eating dinner, and then doing the other tree and stockings. The big present of the year was a Wii for my Sister's family from Santa. We'll be playing with that the rest of my time here. Too bad Eric heads home tonight... back to cold Indiana!!

Oh, and on a side note to all this, I am in shorts right now. The weather is gorgeous, with highs in the 70's and not a cloud in the sky!! I'm loving it!!