SUMMARY: Gifts and wrapping
Christmas Day came and went with the usual sudden flurry of unwrapping and laughing and sharing somewhere in the middle. The pile o'gifts under the tree wasn't nearly as large as it has been at times in the past, when more family have been in town or before we started drawing names rather than gifting willy-nilly. That's probably just as well--most of us don't need more things, but we want the "kids" (one of whom is nearly a college graduate, hard to believe) to get a lot of joy from it.
Before:
After:
Things were also more subdued because my dad started to feel unwell on the evening of the 23rd, vowed that he didn't need to see a doctor until after Christmas, but changed his mind the morning of Christmas Eve. He ended up in the hospital for about 4 days, to his dismay including Christmas Eve and Christmas, fighting an infection. We weren't sure whether he'd be released Christmas day, but he wasn't, so after his various relations got back from the hospital, then we did the gifting and laughing and chaos that we know as Christmas day. Wasn't really quite the same, knowing that he was there and not with us, but we enjoyed the day anyway and mentioned his name many times over. He's home now, still tired, but happy to be there.
Now it's almost New Year's Eve. I think that the dogs need a walk, and so do I.
