Merry Christmans 2016

Merry Christmas everyone!

It was, as usual, a busy time for us all.

I finished my classes and passed them all. 

Mom gave me my birthday present early. It was a very warm flannel lined fake fur throw that I wore around the house pretty much non stop and found to be particularly comforting for my long lasting sinus headache.

Over the course of the next few days we all got fake fur throws!

On my birthday morning Megan was the most excited of anyone in the house.

I am sad to see 42 go. it was my lucky year because Douglas Adams.

When I got into work my cube was all decked out with ribbons and birthday wishes plus at lunch we had Thai food...I love Thai food.

This was the week of the big Pie in the Face night at Cub Scouts. Kiernan sold enough fundraiser products to get a pie. He smashed his best friends dad. After ward he went and apologized for getting him in the eye. What a sweet funny kid.

We got our tree from boy scout troop 460. They were expensive! Its a good tree though and the house smells wonderful because of it.

I forgot that I threw out the old Christmas lights last year. There were so many broken bulbs. When it came time to trim the tree though it was a nasty shock to tell the kids they had to wait for me to to buy some.

I ran to Walmart before work and found a strig of LED multicolored lights with some blue/purple that I quite liked though. The kids got cracking with a little help from Nana.

We worked long hours and weekends again and even got help from other departments. It was wonderful to get back a few friends who had moved to other departments for a while.

Pax likes the tree and especially likes all the Christmas cookies and treats.

Megan put antlers on me quite a bit.

We got back to the house Friday to discover a huge stack of boxes from Amazon waiting for us.

One of the boxes was meowing.

...

We got Megan an animatronic Cat to go with her unicorn.

Someone packed it with the batteries in and the switch on.

It was making quite a racket.

At first we thought the neighbors cat Cotton was in the bushes.

Then I realized what it must be and had a heck of a time explaining to Megan that everything was OK.

She wanted us to let the poor kitty out of the box...cats don't like to be in boxes.

Daddy is allergic to cats. We need to feed it. We need a litter box...

she had a lot of concerns.

I became increasingly concerned that at this point she would be disappointed that we did not get her a real cat.

David true to his form of being able to do anything cut a hole in the ceiling and set up a new junction box to hang my birthday present from him.

I have been looking at this light online for years now and he got me one.

It hangs down quite a bit so he had to move it back from the door some so nothing would get smashed or broken.

And then Christmas eve arrived. The last of the advent calendar doors were opened.

The garlands for the birds were made and placed.

Time was killed playing board games and hanging out with the family.

Aunt Lore arrived and we opened gifts.

Many an excited cheer arose.

On Christmas morning I made Rudolph pancakes.

We sang some Christmas carols.

We took the truck to Scearces' and did some Christmas visiting.

With a few extra gifts to give and receive.

We stopped by to play with Cousin Kaleb for a bit.

Kiernan got a bb gun for Christmas. To go with it he got a ton of lectures and lessons on safety which he sat through patiently and attentively. 

Then he and daddy managed to get out of the house without the dog and practice for a while.

It was good fun.

Once in David worked more on my light.

He got it up and lit.

I was duly impressed. 

We played dreidel games and Megan played with the angles from the creche.

The kids reviewed their letters from the North Pole (thanks Nana!).

Kiernan got some sort of stomach bug or possibly his meds stopped being quite as efficacious as they have been.

He threw up a lot. Much cleaning commenced.

We spent some quite time playing video games or going to the pool at the gym.

We loved not going to school or work on Monday.

We hung out some more and rested.

Megan is done resting.

Kiernan is still sick and ready to rest. David and I are ready to rest like this for ages more.

My light looks even better than I had imagined.