Tuesday, December 31, 2013

La La Land


If you have a policy of monitoring your screen time or your children's screen time, or you have an aversion to TV and video games in general, you would have had a seizure this week in our house.
Wesley got a WII U for Christmas, Halo 4 for our XBox, I got the entire book manual for Skyrim, we have hours and hours of video tape from Wesley's birth through childhood to watch, and we got the final season DVD set of Breaking Bad. Then Corky came to visit and brought Portal.


Gerry also got a new interface and mic for recording music, so he has been in front of his computer writing music since Christmas Day.


We did manage to look up every now and then to eat or visit with friends, but it has been a long marathon of couch sitting around here and eating sweets. Here we are with Corky making s'mores.
At least this isn't how we always behave, but it's Christmas! So we are in sloth mode.

We have had a great Christmas this year. Gerry did a huge job making sure I kept my sanity, which included not cooking some extravagant meal on Christmas Eve and not going to my mom's this year. This was the first time in over five years that one of us wasn't sick on Christmas day, or one of us wasn't mad and not speaking. We didn't rush through Christmas so that we could pile in the car and ride for four hours. Nothing broke. Remember last year, our well pump broke on Christmas day and we had no water for a week.

 It was good! I discovered last year that I have an allergy to the mold spores that release from the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree people will tell you that this is not proven and is a myth, but it's very real to me. Last year I got a really bad attack and as I sat looking at the tree with water pouring from my eyes, I realized the tree was making me sick. Saturday I woke up with a major sinus attack and knew right away the mold spores were out. I started getting all stopped up, we took the tree down immediately and in an hour all the sinus blockage had gone away. I will never give up having a live tree, but now I know it has to come down soon after Christmas day.


Yesterday, we had enough of our zombie state of mind so we drove up to Hanging Rock State Park, hiked up to the top of the mountain and just enjoyed the cold air and the views. I packed a healthy lunch of veggie wraps, fruit, cheese, nuts and got back on a healthy eating plan. There have been a lot of sweets in the house this month. Amazingly, my Weight Watchers mind set has stayed with me and I have not gained any weight back over the holidays. I sure burned a few calories yesterday, quite a hike!


Gerry is a happy man when he can step to the edge of the rocks and look down a 1000 feet or so. I am not happy when he does this, but he will never stop being on the edge of anything, so I just don't look.
Yesterday as we were talking about how something could happen and he could fall and die, he said, "well at least I would die doing something I love".....  how can you argue with that?!

It was a nice day to celebrate nature and family and think about a new year to come. We gave Wesley an aquarium for her house at school, so today we go get a new family member. I will introduce you when we get back with our new fish!

4 comments:

Dennis Allen said...

Sounds like a proper love and joy Christmas.I'm sure it's great to have Wes home too. I'm wondering if all evergreens give off the same spores and if you could use a cedar or spruce instead of the usual fir? Happy New Year.

Tracey Broome said...

Dennis, I'm not sure about the trees, might be worth checking onto, although I love a Frazier fir!
Happy New Year!

Amy said...

Beautiful pictures. happy new year! hope to see you in 2014.

Shannon said...

love the pic of Gerry on the mountain. Love how those landscape shapes stack up in the background. I'm sorry about your friend's passing. I'm so glad you had a not-sick xmas. Happy new year doings!