mandatory vacation

I hope you all had a beautiful Christmas with tons of family and joyful spirits. I inadvertently unplugged for most of the holiday by leaving my chargers at home. It was a happy accident.

Jackson brought home the flu and he passed it on to Jon and me a week before Christmas. The boys were on the mend within a couple of days but the sickness lingered around me like a really ugly scarf. A scratchy one.

I dragged myself to Jackson’s Christmas program and that was the extent of my ability for the week. I’ve never been sick on Christmas before so it was truly challenging to let the usual Christmastime traditions go by the wayside. We made cookie but they were a little less lovely than I would have liked. The furniture was not dusted on Christmas morning. And we ate eggs and grits for two nights in a row that week. But I told Caleb being sick beats being a single parent on Christmas morning, hands down. Iraq is ever present in my mind this time of year.

We delayed our trip to the lake by one more day, and another one more day, and another until finally Christmas morning arrived and I’d tolerated all the days of couch-slumming I could take. We threw a few clothes in a bag, left the house in disarray, and went.

This time of year you find it stark and unforgiving, with a furious breeze that takes your breath away. To me it was a triumphant sight. I stood on the dock and let my worries go with the wind.

A weeks worth of family time is the best cure for any ailment.

Complete with the usual kookiness.

And many mugs of wassail over hands of cards.

The new year snuck up on me. I hope the rest of 2013 is equally as adventuresome.