Well, that wasn't a very Christmasy post yesterday was it? It was a memorable, fun, family day. All five of our children were home ... they are old enough to just enjoy each other with out all the nannynannyy their younger selves could and often did bring. Some days, all the work that has gone in to raising them seems like nothing more then a labor of love.

My back and other parts of me continued to feel yucky. It was a good day to sit quietly and enjoy everything with out stressing on napkins rings and grandma's silver.
We open gifts on Christmas morning. The uncle sent the funniest presentation of money ever ... the bills were glued together with post it note type adhesive, then rolled up like a roll of money. Some were not glue together, but just rolled up as tightly as possible and then glued to themselves. It was very funny to watch all five of them unrolling the money and getting it organized for their wallets ... Three said he felt that he was actually earning the $$. I have been loaning my camera to Four and my photo a day blog has suffered ... she was delighted to open a nice camera of her own, and I am looking forward to catching up on my other blog before the end of the year. It was Christmas morning last year when Two suggested that we start a blog together and each post a photo every day. I don't consider myself a photographer, but it has been very interesting to take a photo (almost every day) and see what I like looking at and how I like to see it. I will continue that project this next year.
One requested lamb for dinner, and my husband decided to grill it. Three has been one of those guys who doesn't like the idea of eating meat. Fish he is okay with. Taco Bell ... okay with ... meat camouflaged as some thing else ... not blatantly meat ... he is okay with. I get it, I am a little bit like that myself. This year, he has gotten to where he can sit down to a nice steak and eat it without too many wierdities. It never occurred to me to give him the heads up on the change of protein ... he immediately knew that wasn't beef and was absolutely appalled to find that it was lamb. Five said it seemed insensitive to serve lamb at the birthday celebration of the Lamb of God ... . "That's fine, more for me." One said. He had big plans for gyros with the leftovers. L and I decided to slip out for a movie, and saw The Tourist again. I really liked the first viewing of it, but there wasn't enough texture to make it a great movie to see again ... the landing wasn't as rough as I remembered it. It snowed as we drove home afterwards ... I love to see the snow flying in to the headlights as the car zooms along. Where we live, snow is always a surprise.
Two, who is accident prone and my sons who are in great shape had all kinds of advice for my little back ache ... I went to bed last night feeling a lot better, but when I woke up this morning I realised that the back pain was a precursor to what may be the flu ... headache, achy, fevery ... nauseous. I am almost never sick. Today I have been in bed sleeping and reading my new book "Astronomy for Dummies". I remember when I fell in love with weather watching ... I know, it's super unabashedly nerdy. My best friend is a farmer's daughter ... she grew up on weather. She used to call me from half way across the country to give me a heads up about tropical storms which might eventually be of interest to me. Hahaha that was so long ago. I love weather watching now ... how cool is it to see how our planet works! So I realized that Astronomy very well may hold the same joy for me and I'm looking in to it. A secret pleasure for me is looking for and finding things ... like a speck of gold in a pan of mud ... or a sand dollar buried finger deep at the leading edge of a sand bar ... it's the little things. I think I might like looking for things in the night sky ... specific things. And I think that patio at the coast that is getting closer and closer to full time may provide just the place to view from.
That's it ... it's been a pretty sweet day. Someone brought some frozen grapes in earlier ... someone else made a peanutbutter and honey sandwich for me (my favorite sick food) ... someone brought the lap top in for me ... it's very nice to be taken care of every once in a while.