Christmas Day. Josiah was chomping at the bit to wait until 6 a.m. He came in to wake me up. I did not open my eyes, but said, Dad doesn't feel well [true], could I have another 30 minutes? Josiah agreed, but then came and asked if they could open their stockings. Sure! Then he asked if I wanted to take pictures of him opening them. Well. I would love to, but right now my eyelids are unable to open. We did get up at 6:30 a.m. Gift opening commenced. The kids said they had a good Christmas. Josiah got a flipbook kit from a professional animator/artist/YouTuber. What I hadn't realized was that the kit we bought was one of the first 5000 and he had signed both the box and the flipbook inside. Josiah has been working on his own flipbook. It is a neat kit - it comes with a backlit screen as well as thick paper which makes flipping the pages a lot easier.
Henry's big gift was a giant adult Lego kit. I thought for sure it would take a few days to assemble. But he got started on it quickly and by the day's end he had it completed. The amount of concentration and hunching over it took was astounding. Halfway through he did ask me to crack his back. He loves the Lego cityscapes.
Caroline was surprised with a Benson/Angus blanket. And she got her ripped jeans. Surprise!
They really enjoyed all the gifts from aunts/uncles and grandparents. They listened to music all day on their new speakers. The boys did their Lego kits. Todd napped a lot because he wasn't feeling well.
We had a gift for Benson, but he had to wait for it until he was out of his time-out period. He stood by the back door to be let out mid-morning on Christmas. When I opened it, his ears quickly perked up. Then he ran. It was a squirrel and instead of turning itself around to climb the fence behind him, he instead ran forward toward the tree. So for a snippet of time, they were running towards each other. That turned into Benson chasing it around the tree for a few rounds. We were encouraging the squirrel to go up the tree, but it just kept running on the ground. Benson would briefly get the squirrel in his mouth, but then the squirrel would be running again. We got our shoes on to try to separate the two so the squirrel could run away. At the same time, Benson got the squirrel in his mouth. He had a better grip this time. Caroline made it out there first and she was not messing around. She grabbed Benson by the collar and she shook him around to drop the squirrel. It was slightly scary because I didn't want the squirrel to touch her in any way. But Benson dropped it and it walked away to the fence. It climbed over and was gone. So, because of that 2 minutes of excitement, Benson had to wait until the afternoon to get his Christmas bully sticks.
It was good to see Grandma again and this time we finally got answers. Although not the answers we had hoped, we were very encouraged by the doctor's assessment that by starting chemo right away it should attack the lymphoma and put her in remission. She started it the same night as her diagnosis. It was a long and rough two week inpatient stay for her. Home is where she wanted to be and she was finally able to make it there on New Year's Eve. There were a couple of highlights to her hospital stay, though. One was the therapy dog, April, that came to visit. Another was the cutest little grandkids that always make us smile.
Our New Year's Eve was a little less exciting. I flew back to Texas that morning and by evening time the kids wanted to do lots of games. We played HORSE with the basketball, don't-let-the- balloon-touch-the-floor game, a holiday-themed drawing challenge, surprise gift-giving challenge, and then we played Organ Attack. The adults didn't make it to midnight, but the kids did.
With the new year, we had to hit the ground running. CC started back this week and we were a bit behind on our preparation for it. Henry worked hard on his science fair project and paper. It dawned on us that we have to do more than one trial, so we'll knock that out this week! Despite having 5 weeks to do so, both boys started their required reading books a few days before CC. Henry hunkered down with The Secret Garden, Josiah had To Kill a Mockingbird. Not exactly light reading for either of them.
Caroline had her follow-up with the audiologist. Towards the end of her hospital stay, she had a full hearing work-up. At that time she passed everything except for one nerve that didn't 'fire.' It was the nerve which connected her left ear organ to the brain stem. In September, it appeared absent - there was no reaction from it at all. But because she still had swelling around the brain and her infection affected the central nervous system, they wanted to do a repeat. We were pleased that the nerve now gave a normal reading. The audiologist office was at the same hospital as Caroline's longest stay, so we had to revisit the echo dome. We looked all over for the therapy dog, Angus, too, but no luck. Our appointment was a little too late in the day to catch him.
Josiah had a very good follow-up appointment of his own. After 3 years, 3 months, and 4 days, he finally got his braces off. True to form, he picked out an American flag retainer. He shows me 'Merica every time he takes it out to eat. Then he wanted to go on a sticky/gummy candy binge. He has enjoyed a good bit of bubble gum this week as well. He teeth look good and the orthodontist was happy with how they turned out. In all the excitement we forgot to ask how long he would have to wear the retainer.
The end of our week was filled with Latin tutoring, Awana, and Henry watching movies. His class got together to watch The Secret Garden. He didn't get to finish that before I had to pick him up and bring him to his monthly movie night at his church friend's house. It is loosely called movie night, because they only watch a hour of a movie at most and then go run around outside, which is Henry's favorite part anyway.
Someone has a big birthday coming up this week, so the excitement is brewing.
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