An odd sort of Christmas in Life

This year was an odd Christmas. There was just so much going on. The past couple of months has included my cousin with the brain injury that ended up having to have brain surgery. My mom has been spending 3 or 4 days a week at their house taking care of her and her mom (because the rest of their family is full of evil idiots), the death of Lizzie (which still guts me if I let it), the kids having to deal with the death of their father, Tootie’s medical issues and pending surgery, and then on Christmas Eve the bad news all poured in. My cousin (who I’ve never met, even though he lived in the tiny town my parents live in - very long, complicated story) has been dealing with medical issues, which is why my aunt and uncle moved him out here with them. He was getting dialysis every other day, going blind, and other issues. Well, he’s been in the hospital, in ICU for about 2 weeks with pneumonia and other complications. He seemed to improve and was moved to a regular room on Dec 23. My aunt went home for the first time in 2 weeks. And, a few minutes before midnight, he just died. No one is sure about what happened, but we think he just gave up. He was ready. We got that call early Christmas Eve. Not long after, my parents left to go get some last minute things at the store and refill my dad’s medicine (because of course we wait until Christmas Eve when it will be 4 or 5 days before it can be filled otherwise). About 5 minutes after they left, I answered their phone, expecting it to be my aunt or uncle. Instead, it was my mom’s best friend. She was letting my mom know that their friend’s sister had died early that morning, unexpectedly. About an hour after my mom got off the phone with her friend, the phone rang again, my aunt’s sister had passed away Christmas Eve morning as well. I hadn’t seen her since my aunt passed away about 10 years ago, but I remember her fondly. She and her husband ran a turtle farm. I loved going to their house to see the turtles, and they always tried to send me home with one. (My parents had issued dire threats to my aunt if I came home with one. :) ) So, all in all, an odd sort of Christmas, but we made the best of it. There wasn’t much under the tree, except for the kids, but we were all ok with that. We had each other.
Some pictures from the holiday. I went down on Wednesday to help Mama catch up on getting ready for the holiday. We made candy and got sausage balls ready. Then Cbaby and I took a walk to the back, to visit Lizzie’s grave and just walk. The first pictures are from that walk.
There is a massive tree next to the creek with a large section of hollow trunk. I stuck my phone inside and got this picture, pretty cool:

A couple of views of the creek. The pink is Cbaby deciding how to climb the same steep hill we used to try and climb.

Added to the strangeness of the holiday was the weather. It was the warmest Christmas is 15 years or so. I missed the really amazing clouds by a few minutes, but a view of our sky Christmas evening

Some shots of the gift giving. RD, Bubba’s foster/stepson (another long story) was with us for the first time. We LOVE him. I’d take him in a heartbeat if I could. Bubba’s wife is awful to him. So, we all had fun buying for him. He’s a freshman in high school and very much into science, so you see the theme to the gifts. I found the telescope/microscope/magnifying glasses combo for my parents to order and it was a huge hit. He just kept saying, “I’ve always wanted one of these!!!” The rest of his gifts were books (I thought Bubba was going to take him down for his Navy Seals K9 book), a few clothes, and science kits (I found him a robot building kit - super excited about that!) It was fun to see him fall in love with them all. He was so excited to have a stocking. I don’t know how you can be 14 years old and never have had a stocking for Christmas. The girls seemed to love all the little goodies we got them. It looked like a wrapping paper plant had exploded, and they loved it.



Belle LOVES Bear (my parents’ tripod). He’s finally decided that she’s maybe not so bad. :)

I decided to not ask permission for Cbaby’s main gift this year. I bought her a Caboodles (I always wanted one of those, I remember my friends all having one) and put in some makeup. Nothing too drastic, just eye stuff, mostly. She has an amazing complexion and doesn’t need base or blush, but I got her some normal looking and some fun colors, just for her to start exploring. She’s in 8th grade, the year we got to start wearing eye shadow. Tootie is going to work with her on how to apply. I even got her some awesome liner so that she can play with creating cat eyes. You can see her reaction here.

My sister and brother in law weren’t overly thrilled that I didn’t ask, but they were ok. Bubba, on the other hand, kept trying to hide it, telling her she was too young, and telling me I wasn’t allowed to by Bella make up before she was 30. :)

Bad weather, too warm, and bad news aside, we made the day. We all decided that we were doing make-your-own pizza and the kids LOVED it. I bought all sorts of things for them to use from the normal to all kinds of cheeses, bacon, Canadian Bacon, pineapple ground meat, sausage, and veggies. RD went crazy with his and Belle ate herself sick (well not really, but we stopped her before she could) on the fresh mozzarella.