Merry Christmas ... is it still Christmas???

 I will start with an explanation.  The afternoon of December 23rd I started to feel achey.  I napped that evening and awoke feeling weak with a chest infection on the 24th.  I laid on the couch all that day hoping to combat the problem.  I awoke on Christmas Day and didn't feel too bad.  I showered, put on comfortable clothing and drove to the Rudolph House (had to call it that at this time of year) to open gifts with their family and Brooke's parents and her sister Hayley.  All my gifts for them were already there except for the two chairs for the kiddos (seen below).  I entered the house, put the chairs down and Alanna ran up and gave me a hug and Emerson ran past me and sat in a blue chair, ignoring me completely (whell !! ).  Below is my Christmas Day.

The kids, all decked out in new PJ's got their breakfast smoothies and returned to the chairs.

It took nearly 3 hours of present opening before a break came.  There were still gifts under the tree but the kids and the adults were beginning to be overwhelmed.  You can see the sun shining in the window on the left so it was around noon when this was taken.  It was a cold day, -26 in the morning with a windchill dropping the temperature to -40 but nice and cozy in the house.  

Hayley spent some book time with Alanna while SR (not pictured) played trucks with Emerson.  The hosts then busied themselves in the kitchen preparing the fresh turkey and all the fixings, the guests departed downstairs to shower and dress and I returned home to recharge with a nap, then dressed for dinner and returned to the house.

As the finishing touches were put on the meal, Gran and Gramma spent a bit of time with the kids.  Above, Gran pours tea from Alanna.

We all sat down to an absolutely astonishing Christmas Dinner.  Words of thanks went around the table and Emerson even sang us a song - the first one I have heard him sing since Wheels of the Bus song.  Kudos to the chefs - the meal was festive and delicious.

A   B I G   T H A N K Y O U goes out the SR and Brooke for all the hard work they put in to make this another memorable Christmas Day.  Their beautiful children were an added blessing this year.

I left around 8PM.  It was still around -26 outside.  Hayley wanted to do a "tea throw".  When you do this at -40 the tea freezes in the air around you.  At -26 it did begin to freeze but quickly turned to fog/mist.  It was a valiant try though and through a slow-mo camera some frozen spikes  were captured before turning to a foggy mist.

Home again, home again, I went to bed and didn't get up for 4 days.  What I thought was a light touch of a cold was actually a deathly flu.  My chest filled and wheezed, I coughed and coughed and coughed ... which gave me a head ache, my eyes ached, I was hot then cold, then hot and luckily I had no appetite so I didn't have to get out of bed for food because I could hardly move a bone in my body anyway.  The very unfortunate part of this story is the virus also spread to the Rudolph household so despite the extremely enjoyable December 25, everyone has been under the weather since.  Hopefully this too shall pass - the sooner the better.