Christmas or Bah Humbug

Christmas 2025.

I have been playing the malingerer with this respiratory flu virus since Dec 1 & never even put up a tree. As the Sunday before Christmas, the day I had scheduled my family Christmas approached, my wonderful children all stepped up offered to host in their clean, decorated houses!! We switched up from one house to another because the grandchildren have been bouncing the virus around, too, but it worked out that everyone was healthy enough to attend in the end.

My oldest daughter makes charcuterie boards. I tried to hire a caterer but it turns out you have to call them in October. I ended up baking a ham, making cheesy potatoes and heating a family sized tub of Stauffer's Mac and Cheese which was a big hit. Note for next year: Oct 1, put up a tree and call a caterer. 

I started early on the stockings and brought them with me. They were a little more sparse than usual. 

Instead of a gift exchange Grampa and I go to a warehouse where they sell Amazon boxes full of miscellaneous stuff. They are always an interesting assortment of items. This year the winner was a box with hundreds of dollars of Oil of Olay products, $25 a bottle eye creams and about 50 bottles of some $10 acne product.  One box had security cameras that matched a different family's system. One box was women's underwear and one box had used books and a bottle of soap.  

The OG's. 

The grandkids

People who chose to marry into this wacky family. 

It was fun and exhausting. I was home by 3 pm and fell asleep. Today (two days later) I have a temperature again, a splitting headache and my cold is back. The temperatures reached almost 50 this evening and we were going to do our yearly walk on Main Street to see the store windows. We also skipped the Christmas hotel, the visit to the nearby village that turns into Whoville and even driving around to see lights. I have boxes of Christmas cards I have not addressed yet. 

I never went to the doctor. Out of those who did seek medical help, half tested positive for Influenza A (I think) and half were negative. Everyone was told to take Tylenol and drink plenty of fluids. So I did. And I am.  The best was the littlest who ran the highest temperatures, tested positive and then contracted pink eye from visiting the doctor's office.  I was vaccinated so I feel cheated with this bug.

We have decided our New Year's Resolution is to get over the flu. 

Merry Christmas and I hope you all are doing well.