A Practical Walk

The week right before Christmas was a busy one for us. My daughter had her driver’s test scheduled. We had some unforseen “speed bumps” before she could actually take the test, but once she did, she passed!

I sent her out to run a couple of errands for me….this is gonna come in real handy for all of us!

That same week we had a near-hit with a deer, while driving home one night, and the very next day during a heavy fog we drove past a car accident. Reminders to be very thankful for safe travels!

Friday morning I woke up with a headache, knowing headaches often turn to migraines for me, I took some medicine and went back to bed. The pain lessened up a little bit later in the day, then came back strong. Usually migraines last half a day for me, and then I’m just low energy the rest of the day. However this one was an all day one and pretty rough. It won the record of longest migraine I’ve ever had. Thankfully my family took good care of me, and it did eventually go away.

While it was miserable, I’m grateful it hit me Friday and not Saturday, as that’s the day we had planned to open gifts as a family. Saturday morning we got up and did our gifts together.

This probably isn’t my daughter’s last Christmas at home, as she’s considering living here while attending college, and even if she did decide to move to a school futher away, I imagine she’d come back for Christmas, but still, it’s not lost on me that she’s a senior this year, and I need to soak up these times together while I can.

We had lots of wonderful gifts. A very sweet note was written from one of my kids to the other, that was a highlight that will live on in my heart. It was just a wonderful day! Because of being in bed all day Friday, I hadn’t gotten a breakfast casserole made for “Christmas” breakfast, but I just made a meat and egg scramble instead and we ate it on bread for hearty breakfast sandwiches. Thankfully my family is flexible and didn’t mind the change.

We had offered to bring tamales to the family Christmas gathering, so after my daughter and husband had prepped the meat and masa, Sunday we all worked together to roll the tamales. This was a first for me, last year my husband and daughter did all the tamale making. They turned out fantastic!

We drove up to my brother and sister-in-law in Missouri. We got to spend the week of Christmas with my husband’s parents, sisters and their families. Unfortunately we were missing his brother and wife, but did get to do a video call with them.

I looked over to see my nephew had drawn this picture of us, love the way he sounded out my name. 🙂

While the kids had been hoping for a white Christmas, it was unusually warm. Can’t change the weather, so we took advantage of it and went on multiple walks. The older kids rode 4-wheelers, we watched 2 Muppet movies, I read books to my nieces, we laughed over games, ate incredible food, sang Christmas songs, and exchanged gifts.

Another highlight was getting to ride the horses where my sister-in-law works. I can’t remember the last time I was on a horse, but it must’ve been when I was a kid or maybe a teen. The smell of horses and hay brought me back to my childhood when my parents worked at a youth camp that specialized in horses.

My son had especially been wanting to ride horses, so I’m glad for the opportunity we’d had.

Then we headed home. There were some un-fun things, like colds and a knee injury, but overall it’s been a fantastic couple of weeks! I missed getting to be with my side of the family, but was grateful to be with the in-law side.