Happy Nearly-New Year’s, everyone!

We’re recovering from the first 2 rounds of Christmas and prepping for round 3 this weekend. Have you survived?

We have, but barely.

We kicked things off in high style with Jude getting out for Christmas break. The next morning, I was feeling ambitious and decided we should try out Kitchen 324 on their opening day. We weren’t there 20 minutes before poor Jude gashed his finger open with an apparently very sharp regular ol’ table knife. Blood spurted everywhere and I rushed him to the bathroom to inspect the damage. I decided it was pretty bad and that we needed to go straight to the doctor. So I wrapped his finger up in the bloody linen napkin (sorry, Kitchen 324 – we took home a souvenir) and took the white-faced Jude straight to the doctor across town. I drove like a maniac and I told Simon to come meet us because I was 99.4% certain it would need stitches and there was no way in Hades I was going to go through THAT alone! Luckily the pediatrician determined that while it did need stitches, he thought we could get away with glue as long as Jude could hold it still in a splint for a few days.

So I guess you could say we started off the holidays with a bang.

After the sadness of last year’s Christmas, we were anxious to have a better year. There were lots of lunches and church services with extended family from out of town and Christmas Eve was spent at my parents’ house. Christmas day was wintry and white and we spent the afternoon with Simon’s family enjoying a delicious Christmas feast.  And the rest of the days afterwards have been a blur of food, toys and snow flurries. I’m officially ready to detox after all the heavy stuff we’ve been eating, that’s for sure!

Funny story — a few days before Christmas, Jude climbed into bed with us early in the morning.

“Dad — dad, wake up!”

“Hrmph?”

“Dad – – I know what we need to get Mom for Christmas. We need to get her a D-R-H-A-J-L-K.”  (Jude is into a faux-spelling thing right now. He makes up all kinds of words.)

Pause.  “Uhhh… whats’t that?”

“A DIAMOND NECKLACE!” he hisses furtively.

So, on Christmas Eve I opened up a box from Jude, and there lay a pretty little bauble. A diamond necklace indeed. Melts my heart just to look at it.