Christmas updates :-)

I fell asleep for a little bit on the couch earlier tonight due to being TOTALLY exhausted, and wouldn't you know that once I got back to bed, I was wide awake staring at the ceiling. So here I am, blogging away :-) Figured I might as well update since it's been awhile.

I'll start off with my last post... as I said in that, our friends' daughter J had to go back to the hospital last week. We ended up visiting her on Monday night, and she was ZONKED from Morphine...poor thing. We took her a little dog with a santa hat on that sings "Santa Baby," a coloring book, and a huge helium balloon shaped like a reindeer. She was in and out of sleep the whole time we were there. The next night she was spiking fevers and they found out she had an infection in her spinal fluid, so she had a PICC line inserted (an IV they put in if you're going to need one for more than just a few days), so she's been on antibiotics for that. The GREAT news was that she got to come home Christmas night. She just has to continue IV antibiotics at home for awhile, but she's slowly getting back to her old self.

I was so impressed with Children's Hospital though... they were awesome to little J. They brought paints and all sorts of activities for her into her hospital room, which she LOVED... and on Christmas night, while J and her mom and dad were all sleeping, "Santa" snuck in and left a little Christmas tree and a huge bag of toys for J. It brought our friends to tears the next morning when they saw everything, especially since they hadn't gotten alot of Christmas shopping done due to everything going on. She got barbie dolls, My Little Pony, coloring books, a magna doodle and all kinds of great toys. It really cheered J up because she was worried Santa wouldn't visit her!

J came home in the early afternoon Christmas Day. Santa and Mrs. Claus made a special visit to little J at her house on the 26th, once she was feeling a little better, so they celebrated Christmas that day. The good thing is that their other two kids are 2 and 1, so they really had no idea that they were celebrating Christmas a day late.

My sister-in-law, Alyson and I went over to see J and her family lastnight... she is doing great! All smiles and running around as if nothing ever happened. What a blessing! We ate dinner with them and played with the kids and their new toys for awhile.

So that's the story with J.

Now, backtracking a bit to Christmas Eve. We had a big get-together at my Grandma's like we do every year on Christmas Eve. We had a lot of laughs, a lot of food, and a lot of my uncle's homemade wine. (Which, of course, I had to sample every kind he brought.) Good times!! Russ didn't stay very long though... his brother and his wife flew in from Alaska, and he went and picked them up at the airport while I stayed with my family. So I didn't get to see my in-laws until Christmas Day.

Ahh, Christmas Day. Now THAT was interesting. It was pretty much go-go-go from the start. We went to mass at 9am, then came home for a few hours...I made us all breakfast then we put Alyson down for her nap. While she was upstairs, we opened up our presents to eachother. Russ got me a necklace that has a mother and child intertwined (kinda in a heart shape), with Alyson's birthstone in the middle. He also got me a dell laptop...in PINK! My other laptop just died one day, so I had been using his... he's happy to have it back now! As for my presents to Russ, I got him clothes, some Dallas Cowboys stuff, a wallet, and a grab bag full of odds-and-ends things... nothing all that exciting. He's so hard to buy for, because he always seems to go out right before Christmas and buy whatever he needs...silly boy.

So after we opened presents, we THOUGHT it'd be awhile before Aly got up, but she didn't sleep long at all. We headed over Russ's mom's house to be with everyone. Russ's OTHER brother (the one who lives close to us) was there with his wife and kids, and we weren't sure how that was going to go. It went pretty well though. His brother was just his usual a-holish self, for lack of better words. As Russ says when it comes to him, "If you have low expectations where he's concerned, you won't be disappointed." Which he wasn't expecting much more from his brother. His brother got him a Santa Claus that stands on this little pedestal... you press a button and Santa goes, "Ho ho ho... I've heard you've been extra good this year, so Santa had an extra special present for you" then he turns around on the pedestal and pulls his pants down. Yeah... that was Russ's present from his brother. I call it the "screw you" present. Russ's mother was TICKED about that. Oh, and then, Russ's mom's husband's family has a tradition where you say a prayer for whoever got you the gift you're about to open... and when Russ's brother opened our gift, he just said a really crappy prayer, like, "Thank you for the love that is Russell, the generosity that is Russell" and was just totally smartassed about it. I SO wanted to say something but I kept my mouth shut. If they had been getting along it wouldn't have been so bad, but since they're NOT really close, it was totally a slap in the face to Russ. Guess it's just one of those "you had to be there" situations.

Anyway, the rest of the day went well though... we ate dinner , talked with everyone for awhile, then came back to our house to meet up with MY parents. They TOTALLY spoiled us with presents. Even the dogs got two huge bags of presents. They were loving it. Alyson opened up all her presents (from us AND my parents) while my parents were here. She was more into the Christmas thing than I thought she'd be, which surprised me. She tried opening her presents once we coaxed her a little, but mostly it was me who was the present-opener. Aly got a babydoll, a baby stroller, a grocery cart, Dora bath toys, clothes, the Fisher Price Learn About Town, Fisher Price musical friends table, blocks, leapfrog fridge dj,pots and pans set, etc etc etc... she has enough toys to open up a store now.

The day after Christmas, I hung out with my sister-in-law K (the one from Alaska) while Russ and BOTH (yes, BOTH) his brothers went out to lunch together. From what Russ tells me, the lunch went pretty well. Later, Russ and I went to Cabela's with both brothers and their wives... a lovely family evening....lol. (Russ's brothers are both big into hunting, and Russ got this grand idea that he wanted to buy a gun. He ended up getting some huge gun (AK 17, I think???) like they use in the military. What for, I dunno. So he dropped some mad amount of money on this gun, and was all excited.

After all that excitement (yeah right), we all ate at Olive Garden. It wasn't as tension-filled as I thought it would be... it was good for all of us to get out together for a change. That was a first, actually. Russ and his in-town brother probably talked more over the past 3 days than they have in the past 3 years.

Anyway, onto yesterday... the 3 brothers had more male bonding time, and went out to their hunting land to practice shooting. They were all pumped to play with Russ's new "toy." So they did that for awhile while my sister-in-law K and I hung out, then we all met up for dinner. Pretty noneventful. (I'm trying to be short and sweet where the updates are concerned...lol)

So all in all, it's been great that all 3 brothers have gotten to spend time together. Hopefully everyone can act civil and (gasp!) even become closer. We'll see. As Russ says, "If you go into it with low expectations, you won't be disappointed." I'm not holding my breath for some miracle to happen, but all this is a start.

So there are my holiday updates. Russ's brother in in town until Thursday morning, and I think they will be staying with us for a few days (they've been staying with his mom so far), so I'll try to update when I can. It's just been busy busy busy since Christmas Eve. If for some reason I don't get to update before New Year's Eve, I hope everyone has a WONDERFUL New Year! Be safe, whatever you end up doing for New Year's Eve!!

Next post will have pictures, I promise :-) Just have to get them into a slideshow since there are so many.