Christmas Recovery

I'm home.
And lucky y'all...you get to hear about our holiday.
I might even have pictures. If not...I will soon.
Let's see...when I last left you, S had the flu and we were missing my Mom's surprise party since ZooDad was at Quantico.
I sent the older boys down to play with a buddy and made cookies to make up for the missed party. They had just cooled when the boys got home and M asked to have one. I had not removed them from the cookie sheet but did have my cake cutter/cookie scraper out. I didn't realize that it had such a sharp edge. Neither did M until he cut his index finger open.

Blood everywhere.

I bundled and loaded all the boys up and headed to the ER. On the way, I called ZooDad and filled him in and then called my sister to meet us. (She missed the party too. But I couldn't have 4 boys in the room while one was getting stitches. ) After three big shots and 5 stitches, M was all patched up. We get the stitches taken out tomorrow. It was a really deep cut.

Christmas was over the top as usual. ZooDad spoiled me royally and loved every moment of it. I got 15 skeins of yarn AND a new video ipod. I'm still giggling over the ipod. So far I have loaded every CD I could find including Latina Christiana and all the boys' CDs. I've used 2 of my 30 gigs. My entire Johnny Cash collection. All my downloaded music. 100 kiddie songs and everything else all in one compact little device with headphones and a radio transmitter for the van.
No more searching for lost CD's. No more burning CD's. Yay me!
Oh yeah, and all the books from Audible are going next...as is Story of the World. I am so thrilled. As a bonus, when we caravan to the farm, ZooDad can pick up the signal if he tunes to right radio station.

Christmas day we played, opened presents, visited with family and ate then loaded up for the farm and did it all over again. We loaded up on firewood and 7 layer cake and headed home after spending days seeing everyone we knew. Today is laundry and finding homes for all our new treasures.

On the knitting front, I started a new pair of socks. My BIL spent two days watching me turn out one sock. He was totally amazed.
"Hey, there's a tube. What's that flap thing? Oh...a heel now. That's the foot part now. Toes! It has a toe. You can actually put it on your foot. Wow!"
I'm going to knit him a pair for next year. He'll appreciate them now after seeing how it happens.

We got home last night and unloaded everything. The packaging and wrapping has all been thrown away but the living room looks like a toy bomb went off in there. All the boys are happy and content. Every gift was loved and they got just enough but not too much.

There was great sadness this morning when ZooDad went off to work. But the boys were comforted by the fact that he only has 2 workdays this week. If the boys had their way, we 'd have a month full of Saturdays. If I had any say so...I'd wish for the same thing. We're happiest when we are all together.

At breakfast one morning, MIL beamed as she fussed over all the boys, happily answering their requests of more pancakes, milk, or bacon. My childless BIL, noted how active the boys were that morning. I told him that this was ZooDad's and my experience every morning. We have no quiet breakfasts at our house. My MIL smiled at us and said, "Aren't they blessed!"

Yes we are. I could not ask for more.