It's beginning to look a lot like

The past several days have been great! Logan returned to school on Friday following his adenoid/ear tube surgery Wednesday. Other than some weird pressure issues (this seems to be minor, but annoying) you would never know Logan had anything done. He's been tearing around with Kaylin and his cousins, doing great. The make-up work from missing two days of school was tough to finish with all of the family fun and the call of fresh snow and video games, but I think he finally completed everything. I would never in a million years take Logan out of school for a week of vacation with this teacher! We'd need another week just to make up her work. On a normal night he has more homework than Kaylin who is in middle school with 4 primary teachers! And this is all scheduled homework we get notice of on a handout at the beginning of the week, not stuff he's goofing around and failing to finish in class! Ugh.

Saturday was the Kaiser family Christmas. It was crazy-fun to get all of the kids together to tear around and destroy Grandma's house. There were 10 great-grandchildren ranging in age from ~9 months to 10 years. It. Was. Nuts. From the phone calls I've gotten I'm thinking Grandma may be reconsidering her role as Hostess of Major Events. Smart move, Grandma! I do not volunteer to play host to anything, but will gladly cut pies and bread or make finger jello and celery with peanut butter at YOUR house :)

Sunday was Christmas with my family. Again, there was plenty of mayhem with 5 kids running around, but nobody fell in the lake or fell down the stairs, so I'm thinking perhaps the jammed CD drive on the computer will be fixed and forgotten. One thing we noticed was that the kids don't seem nearly as eager to open presents as we were back in the day. All of them were perfectly fine with playing together for a couple of hours, eating dinner at a normal pace, playing some more while things were cleaned up... My brothers, Sarah and I were all remembering being so excited about presents we could barely eat. Being so impatient we whined and begged the adults to hurry. Feeling like we made a MAJOR score on those odd years we convinced the adults to do presents before food. Our kids love opening presents as much as we did, they just seem to have WAY more patience. My mom suggested that maybe it's because they have SO MUCH. Well, of course they do, but so did WE! I'm wondering if maybe the big treat now is being with each other? I might not be remembering correctly, but it sure does seem like as kids we took a LOT of trips to Champaign, St. Louis and even Cissna Park to visit my mom's sisters and our cousins. My dad's side of the family got together regularly and we saw our cousins (at least the ones who lived nearby) all the time. Perhaps with this generation's working women and busier lifestyles the kids aren't getting together as much as they used to and playing with cousins is more of a treat than presents? Just a guess because I know my kids are insanely excited about opening presents on Christmas morning!

Gene and the kids have work/school through Wednesday and then we're all off until January 3rd (the day I will HOPEFULLY be returning to work!!!!) This will likely be the last time for a few months we'll all have time off together so we're hoping to go somewhere for a couple of days. The issue is my foot and that I can't be on it. The other issue is our perfect option would be a water park resort, but we don't have custom swim plugs for Logan's freshly tubed ears. Hmmmm. What can we do in driving distance where I don't have to walk or do stairs and doesn't involve swimming? Um, not a lot that I can think of! I'm going to call the ENT office today and see what they say about over the counter ear plugs and whether Logan should be swimming so soon after his tube placement. If that works out, great! If not, I have no idea and am open to suggestions.

My foot is getting better. I still don't put weight on it if I'm not wearing my cast. Around the house or short walking distances I don't use crutches. If I'm going to be walking a lot I still use one, but mostly because my left leg is so weak from being completely off it for 5 weeks, not because it hurts my foot to walk. My plan is to use my remaining time off work to somehow equally rest my foot, but also slowly work myself back into being on my feet for extended periods. I probably won't go immediately back into doing my usual physical job on my feet for 8 hours straight, but will work part days and maybe do light work like cutting diets for a while and work myself back into full duty. Hopefully that process will take like 3 days, lol.