Christmas Dinner

After we finally dragged the boys out of their pajamas, we went to Grandma Paletta's for Christmas Dinner. It was good to see everyone and see how all the cousins had grown. When we started opening presents Chrie kept telling the teenagers to sit quietly like my boys and stop sneaking the presents. She told Brandon how great he was doing leaving things alone and Brandon -very truthfully like only a child can be- said it was only because he didn't know where his presents were at or he'd be looking too.

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning was of course early. Brandon actually woke up at 2 am and refused to go back to bed so Bryan and I ended up putting him in our bed inbetween us. He still kept trying to sneak out. I guess he finally make it out when we passed out because the boys were up playing for awhile before we finally rolled out around 7 am. Brandon got spy gear from santa, Ben got a huge lego star wars kit, Sean got some ben 10 toys, and Sam got his huge Geo Trax set. They played all morning. Eve and Daniel stopped by to pick up medicine for the baby and Eve got to open her presents. It was a great day. We had gotten stuff for hoggie sandwhiches the day before so I didn't do any cooking or cleaning all day. It took until late in the day to coax the boys out of their pajamas, and that was only because he were leaving the house. We talked to grandma and grandpa Good who were snowed in, in Oregon of all places.
I know this is a lot of posts all at once, but Christmas has so many fun pictures.

Christmas Eve

Jared (my brother) and his family were able to come over for Christmas Eve this year. Our family tradition is to act out the Christmas story each year, Hannah was excited to be Mary and carry around the baby Jesus. Brandon said he was to old to be in the play but relented if he could be the donkey this year. Then all the boys get to open up their new pajamas on Christmas Eve, and Hannah and Ammon opened the gifts they got. It was a great evening. Daniel wasn't able to come since his kids were sick this year.

Sean and Mac

Sean and his friend Mac were in preschool together. They got married and have been "husband and life" ever since. Mac has Sean well trained already. When I asked him what it ment that he was married he told me it ment that Mac was the boss of him. :) He has to buy her jewelery and bring her flowers as often as he can. Yes, she has his well trained already. So this is sean bringing her Christmas present. He got her a princess necklass and she bought him a giant Hershey's Kiss.

Gingerbread House

Brandon took the liberty of breaking out the gingerbread house while I was sleeping today. They got everything put together and only had me put the white frosting on the roof. They actually did a pretty good job getting it together. Tonight they are picking it apart eating it. I'm glad I got some pictures this afternoon because it won't be around for much longer.

We have been making the rounds of the stomach flu this week. Sam had it for 24 hours and I'm just getting over it. Hopefully it'll stop there but with lots of kids of just a matter of time before it spreads. I was worried the illness would shut down Sam's kidneys again, but since he hasn't finished his steroid regiment yet he seems to be doing OK. The boys are going nuts trying to figure out presents. Poor Sam can't stand it, he keeps digging under the tree and pulling all of his out and piling them up. I guess he can recognize his own name because he only piles up his own presents and begs to open up 'just one'. He is going to be fun to watch on Christmas morning. Not sure if it will live up to all the hype though.
I would like to know what it is about my DNA that triggers a baking fit each holiday season. For some reason I start cooking for Thanksgiving and can't stop till New Years. I've probably make 7-8 batches of fudge at least, dozens and dozens of breads, cookies, etc. My neighbors are all loving me because I don't want them all in the house but can't stop baking. We haven't had many nice days so I haven't attempted divinity or peanut brittle yet and it's supposed to snow until Christmas day so maybe well pass on those this year. At work I'm becoming known as the fudge lady. If there is a therapy or treatment available please let me know asap.
My shoulder is healing well. I have most of my range of motion back, but still a little uncomfortable now and then. I'm going to physical therapy 3x a week, and he says mine is the fastest he's ever seen get back to normal. So I'm busy planning my race schedule for next summer. Well I can dream at least. I've had so much time off from training I'll be starting at square one again. With a few lovely pounds from the dozens of cookies.
We got progress notes from the boys' school. They don't give grades since it a big hippi school, but they let you know if the child is progressing well and internally motivated to learn. :) Ben now thinks I'm the meanest mom ever. He is so smart but if he doesn't like something he refuses to do it so he has a few 'areas of concern' on his report. So now every day even weekends he gets to sit and write his abc's to improve his penmenship, and will start this week doing extra math problems I make up until he no longer has an area of concern and a takes little interest in the subject. I figured he needs to learn he has to do all the busy work and jump through the hoops now and hopefully when he does get graded on things later he'll be able to accomplish things. But for now I'm a really mean mom. Oh yea and for good measure he through in that I make them do all the work around the house and I never do anything. Boy I felt like I had finally achieved true motherhood. I was honored. I can't tell you how many times I said that to my mom. I'm finally a real mom.

Getting Ready for Christmas

Wow, I forget how much I use two arms. Spent the day with the boys finishing up Christmas Decorations and getting together teacher gifts and Christmas cards. I'm feeling very festive I just keep forgetting I can't move my arm more than a few inches in any direction. It doesn't really hurt till I try to reach for something and then oh boy does it let me know I just had surgery. Feeling so much better already, only taking the pain pills when I wake up at 1am because I rolled on my arm wrong. I am a very restless sleeper and constantly move around, wonder where my boys got that from. But I can type again since that doesn't require me moving my shoulder too much. All the major house decorating was done on the 2nd. When I told the boys I was going to have surgery on my arm all they were worried about was that we hadn't put up any Christmas lights or decorated the tree yet. So of coarse that had to be done before the big day just in case.
Just wanted to wish everyone a happy holidays!

Shoulder Surgery

Well it 2 am and my body is wide awake. I've had more sleep in the last 24 hours than I usually get in a week so of course my body thinks I should be wide awake at 2am.
I went in for Same Day Surgery on my shoulder Wed morning. I usually have pretty severe nausea and vomitting after surgery, just like everyone else in our family so they decided to be preemptive and put a motion sickness patch on me. About 5 minutes later I started running a whopping fever, turned red from my ears to my chest, couldn't stop coughing, I felt like clawing my throat open to catch my breath. Needless to say I had a severe reaction and they had to give me benadryl iv push and epi before it calmed down. I was feeling good after surgery, not even nauseated, but as soon as I got up to get dressed, I started coughing uncontrollably and sweating etc. Needless to say the nurses freaked out and I had to stay a few more hours. The anesthesiologist made my promise I would take 50 of benadryl every 6 hrs for the next 24 hours. I thought they were being a bit paranoid, the patch was only on me 5 minutes, but sure enough at 10 pm last night it had been over 6 hours since my last benadryl and the coughing and itching came back. We'll see how I do in the morning. Each attach has gotten lighter and less severe so hopefully it'll be gone come morning.
The truth is though, I haven't been nauseated once and the tight throat still feels better than throwing up for 24 hours. Too bad I know they'll never give me that medication again, since besides the difficulty breathing it worked great. :)
The surgery went well. My ligament was less than 50% torn so he didn't have to sew it. Hurray!! That means no immobilizer for 6 weeks. I have a sling on and I can start using my arm as soon as the pain subsides. He said my shoulder was a mess, full of debree, fluid, puss, yuck, so He thinks it will heal up much faster now that it's all cleaned out.
Now If I can only get my knee better I can start training again.