- Birthday celebrations - it's always fun to do birthdays with a big group, and we celebrated many: Kenny's, 2 year old nephew Lewis, and mine (an early celebration since my actual birthday is at the end of January). Best of all, we got to be around for an actual birth day -- nephew Caleb Thomas was born on December 27th.
- Ching Christmas - We did many traditional Christmas things - gathering with family, eating a wonderful holiday meal (as well as fudge and cookies and appetizers throughout the rest of the day / week / month), and opening presents on Christmas Eve and stockings on Christmas morning. Some traditions that are more specific to the Chings: eating lefse, which is a traditional Norwegian treat (Kenny's mom is Norwegian) that is similar to a tortilla with butter and sugar spread on top (but i think there's actually a lot more to it); and singing all the verses to Christmas carols (a new twist this year was discussion of using smart phones to look up lyrics, but we ended up successfully sharing hymnals and piano books).
- Medical mishaps.
- Round One: We started the trip off with two sick kids, which resulted in two trips to Urgent Care (Zoey's trip was pretty standard; Joshua's, once again, went something like this), two sets of antibiotics, and a week later, two healthy kids.
- Round Two: On Christmas morning, Joshua hopped out of bed at 5 am to check his Christmas stocking, and in the process his G-button came out and burst. So that started the morning off with a bang! When the button comes out, you need to replace it within 30 minutes or head to the emergency room because the body starts healing itself (and the hole that allows food to enter starts closing) right away. We always travel with a spare, so we got the button replaced, but our spare also turned out to be a dud. So we debated going to the ER as the spare button came out 3 more times in the next 24 hours. We were able to keep it in well enough to wait until the day after Christmas to deal with it. It took many phone calls to find a medical supply provider who had the right size button in stock and who was willing to sell it to us same day without a prescription or insurance clearance, but thankfully we got it done and avoided a trip to the hospital.
- Mountains are the best - now that I've lived in the Great Plains, New England, and near the ocean, which each have their own incredible beauty, I can officially say that mountains are my favorite kind of natural attraction. They make a drive to the grocery store beautiful. They provide for year round recreation. And it's hard to beat the look of the mountains at dusk.
- New Year's resolutions - in case anyone is interested, i have three: 1) read War and Peace; 2) read through the Bible in a year (my first time attempting this since becoming a parent, which should bring an interesting new perspective to it); and 3) run 100 days in the year (so far, i have completed zero days, but i received some great new running clothes and shoes and i'm excited to put them to good use).
- Travel delays - We were supposed to fly back to Virginia yesterday, but due to the crazy weather this week, our flight got postponed until Sunday. So 6 extra days of vacation! Kenny had to cancel a few classes and Joshua will miss a couple days of school and therapy, but for the most part, this delay allows us to spend an extra week with family without causing a major disruption to any of our lives.
That's been my month. I would love to hear about your holidays and New Year's Resolutions! (i am not interested in hearing thoughts about why New Year's resolutions are pointless. #sorryimnotsorry #justhashtaggedmyblog)
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