A Very Blessed Christmas

My Christmas will be one of those memorable ones--for various reasons. My parents, little brother, and sister and her hubby all came to my house and slept over on Christmas Eve. Overall, it was a splendid time--but it was not without hardships.

My morning sickness (aka ALL DAY sickness) started a few days before Christmas. I had lots of sewing projects that had to be done before Christmas, so I slaved away on my serger and sewing machine for more than 12 hours, I think. Because the Butterick pattern said "Very Easy," I didn't not expect one little nightgown to take more than 4 blasted hours. But it did. (BTW I taught myself how to use my new serger, and I am hooked!)

We had our big dinner on Christmas Eve. The turkey smell filled the house and eventually made me sick. All the good smells made me sick. But we had great company.

My parents '95 Crysler LHS, which has been through everything short of a war in its 200k lifetime, encountered new troubles. It clipped a herd of bison in Yellowstone one black, rainy night and survived my parent's chestnut tree's untimely demise in their driveway, but somehow wasn't liking the four hour drive to my house. So on Christmas Eve day, my mom worked on our Turkey dinner and my DH and dad worked in the garage. Apparently, something went amiss and the gasoline got spewed all over the garage floor. They tracked it in the house. The whole house was full of fumes and I had to spend most of the day upstairs, trying not be sicker than I was. I can still smell the fumes in my house today--even in my pantry. And in the process of replacing the spark plugs, they broke the fuel rail and had to replace the entire thing--pistons included.

I happened to enter the toxic garage looking for a Pepsi and noticed my $20 SU craft and rubber scissors in their array of tools! Are you kidding me? I reclaimed and hid those right away. And then I see my daughter's beautiful altered lamp covered in grease smudges hanging upside down from the hood. If I wasn't feeling icky, I might have yelled at someone.

The day after Christmas I finally corralled my girls into the bathtub. The two year old took a flying leap into the tub from the ledge and landed on the 4 year old, which gave her a bloody nose so bad it was draining out of her mouth. Blood poured out of her little nose and mouth for several minutes. I wanted to pass out. I don't like blood--especially when I have morning sickness.

Today we went out to breakfast, or at least tried to. We had just missed McDonald's breakfast. (Who eats burgers and fries at 10:30 am? I will have eternal issues with Breakfast ending at 10:30 am. What about cravings, people?) And then we realized our Jeep's front tire was flat. My DH dropped us off at Sunrise Cafe and took the Jeep to Les Schwab a block away. Whew. Glad we were so close. It was just a leaky valve stem and only cost $11 to fix.

Anyways, I'm feeling pretty ill these days. I don't know when I'm going to get energy to stamp. And even though we had an "eventful" Christmas, the blessings were overflowing and it will be one of my favorites for a long time to come. Best wishes to you all for a blessed New Year.