...and to all a good night!

Christmas Eve. How ever did it get here so quickly? Wasn't Thanksgiving just last week?

We are in Austin (Pflugerville, actually, having a pfantastic and pfun time...) visiting Tim and Megan, Kennedy and Lleyton. And waiting for Santa to come. Although he will come only for Lleyton and Kennedy.

You see, I had to call the North Pole earlier in the season to put in an official "hold delivery" request for us. And it took me forever to get an actual person! (elf?) Automated systems abound and let me tell you, I think I actually got someone in India at ONE point. I think this outsourcing thing is really getting out of hand.

But I finally got through and was able to get my request to delay delivery till Saturday as all five of my grandchildren will be there to wake up and have Christmas at Gramma and Papa's. And we need Santa to visit.

It totally pays to have friends in high places.

So while it may be Christmas Eve technically it will be Christmas Eve for us on the 27th. But for the rest of you, have a restful and joyous Christmas Eve.

May you have been good enough to get lots from Santa. And may you be surrounded by those you love and who, in turn, love you.

To my adorable canines...

Izzie: "Yes, you needed something?"

It's a dog's life...literally.

Yup, this is definitely the life.

Nothing special here. Just a shout-out to Shelby and Izzie who have followed me around with perplexed looks on their faces the past couple of weeks as I've gone "to and fro" with boxes of decorations, wrapping supplies, trips to the attic, up and down the stairs. And then we had cold enough weather that it actually SNOWED in HOUSTON! Nope, didn't stick, but hey, it snows here about once a decade so it makes the news. And Izzie was wondering WHAT was with the cold fluff stuff. Plus it was super cold outside.

So I put on the fire and they have been comatose lying on their special pillow, soaking in the ambiance ("the holiday spirit" combined with a real fire = Doggie Heaven).

Merry Christmas, mutts. I love you guys.

Shoes for kids...

I like Robeez shoes - I've bought them for my grandkids since Day 1. They are soft, washable, lasting and according to my sources, when outgrown do well on eBay! So I get emails from them throughout the year. Well, they sent one today about a program where you send (free) eCard wishes and for EVERY eCard you send, they donate $5 to Kids in Distressed Situations (K.I.D.S.) We don't get anything out of it except warm fuzzies for doing something so easy and simple that enables another party (Robeez) to make a donation. Okay, it's perhaps "shameless" product placement on the part of Robeez but, hey, I'm OKAY with that! They DO make a GREAT product, my grands have been wearing them long before I heard of this donation program and I'm more than happy to give them a product quality shout out!

So go ahead and start emailing. And don't forget to have a look at the cute shoes - especially their latest "invention", a soled shoe line called "Tredz" which a very cute! And I have the grandchildren to prove it...

Deck them halls, ya'll...

I've spent my time recooperating productively I'll have you know. The house is now decorated to the "nines" and today I finished wrapping gifts (at least the ones I have so far...hurry up, Amazon, time's a-waistin'!) Still have cards to get out but that's small potatoes compared to getting the halls decked and the gifts wrapped! So, for your "viewing enjoyment", I present Christmas 2008 at the Drennon house...

And now I have a CTD...

Luke discovers Gramma Cheri's Famous Apple Pie on Thanksgiving Day

...which stands for "child transmitted disease". I have to make an appointment and go see my physician posthaste on the morrow as I am miserable right now. I want to take my nose off and put it in the freezer for awhile.

As if.

But I do not for a minute regret HOW I got this "lovely" sinus infection and head cold. Who can resist the chubby arms held up to you by your grandson who has JUST learned to say 'gramma, hold you?'

And the kisses. He gives kisses. Big, sloppy, wet kisses. Melt your heart, make you float kisses.

So now I'm paying the piper. But it was SO totally worth it.

I miss you, Lukey-Luke. And I hope YOUR cold is better.

A long time ago, on a planet far, far away...

I love facebook. I've found friend there that I haven't been able to find on classmates.com or through other avenues. And in reading the "walls" of those friends, have discovered many wondrous things not the least of which is this wonderful tribute to Star Wars and John Williams. It brought a tear to my eye...through laughing so hard! :)

But seriously, it's seriously CLEVER and definitely worth watching and hearing.
And thanks to Mark Charles who had it on his facebook wall.

When it rains...well, you know...

It appears to be "take mom to SURGERY" week around these parts. As previously posted, my mom had cataract surgery on Monday. Doing well. All fine there. But yesterday, an hour or so after leaving Mom off at her house following her post-op appointment with the optometrist, I get a call from Mike saying "mom is in the hospital and had surgery". Talk about confused and having an adrenaline rush! "But I just dropped her off a bit ago! Why didn't she call me?? What's going on???"

Turns out it was HIS mom up in Bedford. She'd had abdominal pain on the weekend and finally agreed to go to the ER early Monday morning. Tests. Redo test. Infection of some sort. To make a long (and believe me, it's a LONG one) story short, she had keyhole surgery last evening to remove her gall bladder. She was discharged this morning and (hopefully) is doing well now at home. Jenjer works at the hospital where the surgery was done and actually had her in her care last night (Jenjer is a nurse's tech) so we felt she was in especially good hands!

We have high hopes for an UNeventful remainder of the week on the health front. Actually, uneventful on ALL fronts would be nice, thank you very much.

Update...

Mom's surgery went really well. In fact, as soon as we were in the car to go home, we headed to Starbucks for the obligatory post-surgical caffeine-in-a-red-Christmas-cup toast. What? You never heard of it? When's the last time YOU took someone for cataract surgery, pray tell??

Anyhoo, she was home by 3pm and "took the day off". We go back for a follow-up Tuesday (which is technically today since it is 12:36am and I never got the update done on Monday...sigh...)

Soon she will literally be "seeing straight".

Talk about an eye-opening experience...

Waiting for Mom in surgery...

I'm on my iPhone in the waiting room at the Sugarland Surgicenter waiting for the doctor to do Mom's right eye cataract surgery. It's outpatient so we should be home by early afternoon. We got home from our Keller trip about 11pm yesterday so she barely had time to get turned around before heading out this morning. We stopped in Pflugerville on our way home yesterday so we could eat dinner with Tim and Megan. It took "like forever" to get from Keller to Austin due to what the Brits aptly call "sheer weight of traffic". I suppose everybody (and their mother - ha ha!) was driving home following the Thanksgiving holiday. Anyway, we spent HOURS in stop-and-go traffic on I-35 south. Sigh...but we had a good audio book ("Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer oddly enough - Mike and I had seen the movie Tuesday night...) which was fortunate because otherwise it would have seemed even longer. I was sick of football on the radio and I think Mike was sick of Christmas music. :)

So we are home, Mom's getting her eye "done" and I'll post how she's doing later on today. I also hope to post some photos later too.