Giving Thanks For Christmas and Family

The past month has been very busy. In the last week of November our water heater stopped working and had to be replaced. It happened right before I was headed out the door to go to work. My brother-in-law came over to help me with replacing it. We rushed to Lowe’s to get a new one. We barely got there before the store was going to close. When we went to remove the old water heater, the drain was plugged up and 50 gallons of water would not drain out. We had to move the thing while it was still full. Not a fun task. Once that fun was over, we went to put the new one in, only to discover that it was shorter than the old one and wouldn’t reach the pipes. Luckily, he had some boards at home and we were able to build up the base below the water heater to lift it up to the height it needed to be.

 Then came Thanksgiving. I got back home from work just in time to head up to the cabin in Arkansas for our holiday weekend. We had lots of fun riding around on the 4 wheelers, shooting fireworks, firing the guns, and even an unexpected trip into town to buy a new air mattress for us to sleep on. The 1st night  we slept on our old mattress and found ourselves on the floor halfway through the night. I discovered a hole in it right below my pillow. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings. Okay, we actually didn’t have thanksgiving dinner until Friday night, but that was because we didn’t get up to Arkansas until the late afternoon on Thursday. This year, for  the 1st time, the turkey was deep fried. It turnedout pretty good too. My sister-in-law made my most favorite dessert in the world…… Cherry Cheesecake. It was delicious! Not a single piece was leftover. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and we had to head back to reality (and home) on Sunday morning.

This year we decided to buy ourselves a brand new artificial Christmas tree. We’ve been wanting a pre-lit tree for a few years now so this year we went out and got it. It really is an awesome looking tree. My son just stands there looking at the lights and saying, “Wow!” He has been absolutely fascinated by all the Christmas decorations everywhere. Last week, we went to this neighborhood that does a Texas themed Christmas story in the poeple’s yards and Joshua just loved it. There was this one house that welcomed people to get out of their cars and walk through the Christmas Wonderland they had in their yard. The decorations were fantastic. Joshua was so excited that he was bouncing up and down and waving his hands all over the place.

I’m glad Joshua’s enjoying the holidays. He gave us another scare last week. On Monday I was busy putting up our Christmas lights on the house when I got a call from his daycare. They told me that he was running a fever and that he had thrown up and asked if I could come and pick him up. When I got there, he was sleeping in the office area, away from the other children, and he was burning up. I brought him home and all he wanted to do was sleep. When his mom came home she woke him up and took his temperature. It was 103 F. We were in the middle of deciding whether or not to take him to urgent care when he threw up all over my wife. I brought him to the bathroom to clean him up while she went and cleaned herself up. He threw up again in the sink. Once he was done we immediately got him in the truck and headed toward the hospital. But the worse was yet to come. As soon as we got to the end of our block Joshua began having a seizure in his Mommy’s arms. That scared the crap out of us. I began to panic, but saw that my wife was really losing it and becoming extremely panicked. I pulled myself together and tried to remain calm while trying to calm her at the same time. We managed to hit almost every light red! I was getting annoyed. My wife had me call her mother on the way to the hospital and she in turn called the hospital to let them know we were coming.  Finally, we got to the urgent care and they took us right away. They ran tests, took blood, x-rayed him and said he was going to be just fine. Thank God! The next day he was as happy as could be and seemed to be himself again.

Well, Christmas is only a week away. I’ve actually already completed all of my Christmas shopping this year. Except for the stocking stuffers. I can’t wait to see my son’s reaction to all the presents under the tree and getting to open them. I’ll probably post again that day or the day after. Now it’s time to get back to my job. Hopefully, my load is ready by now.