Family visits at Christmas

Christmas? What’s that? Christmas was a thing? It seems so long ago. Nobody cares about Christmas anymore!

But that’s fine, I live in Tucson and it might as well be summertime. So I’ll post pictures of family visiting in the warm and sunny weather 3 weeks ago, and you won’t even have to think about the fact that it was indeed Christmas time, oh so long ago.

For example, here we are in the pool!

John is playing human ring toss, and my kids are being very tolerant, lol.

The pool had been 55º and I heated it to 85º in time for our guests to use it. I don’t know how much that will end up costing – we will find out on our next bill! It wouldn’t have been cheap. But hey, it’s Christmas right? That’s how we celebrate Christmas in Arizona – we heat the pool.

But before we all jumped into the pool, I had to take a covid test. You know that moment – we’ve all had that “Oh shit” moment when we suddenly wonder – wait, am I sick? Is this a sore throat? OMG, could it be covid?

My “oh shit” moment came the morning after my kids arrived. They arrived in the late evening, and the next morning I woke up and was…not sure I felt all right. For the first few moments I tried to ignore it. I rationalized. I must have just been snoring, and it made my throat a little raw. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I might be sick.

It was the first day of vacation! My kids had traveled from out of state! What was I going to do? I’d have to quarantine myself and miss the holidays after they came so far to see me. And what about them? They’d have to test too. And would they have to quarantine too, even if they were negative? How would they get home? How would that even work? Now what?

I wasn’t going to risk giving it to my family. I had to know the worst, right away. So I dug out a test and anxiously waited 15 minutes for my results…

Oh thank god. Negative. And I thank Steven and Adrienne too, because they’re the reason I even had tests at the house. They had requested them in early December for their mid-December trip (back when it was still fairly easy to get tests) and luckily I had picked up a few extra to have on hand through the holidays. Tragedy averted, whew. And I never ended up with any cold symptoms. I must have just been snoring after all!

Let the festivities commence!

John and Alex went on a beautiful hike.

The rest of us stayed home for that one. It was a big hike. I hope that someday I’ll be strong enough to hike like that again, but I don’t know. It’s been almost two years since the surgery and over one year since the chemo and I’m not there yet. And I’m not getting younger. But at least I can still hike, even if they’re relatively flat hikes, they’re still beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, look at Laura’s cookies! They have green tea in them.

Alex brought his bike with him and went on several rides. One day he went quite far up Mt. Lemon. That is a serious ride. I would never aspire to be able to do that. Not even if I was still young.

This next set of photos are pretty clearly Christmas scenes. I can’t really pretend otherwise. Merry Christmas everyone!

Time for portraits!

Someone’s not taking portrait time seriously…lol!

You may be wondering where Biska was this whole time. She was out of her mind with puppy excitement and I had her on a leash around my waist to keep her from causing havoc. She was constantly lunging at Kira wanting to play, and Kira did not appreciate it. It took two of us to hold her still long enough for a picture. Hopefully she’ll be a little bit calmer next Christmas – or at least learned some manners.

It was the year for personalization!

In addition to these adorable ornaments that Laura bought, I also ordered personalized Christmas stockings that read “Serenity” (Callan’s nickname) and “Chirstina”, which is the way she spells it, with the “i” before the “r”. The rest of us already had personalized Christmas stockings, but Callan, as you know, recently changed their name and Chirstina is new to the family, so they both needed stockings. I would post pictures of them but I apparently didn’t think to take a photo of the stockings. And they’re packed away in the garage now. So next year!

We also had a lovely evening at the botanical garden. This holiday light show is not nearly as astounding as the Albuquerque biopark River of Lights, but it was considerably less crowded and very pleasant.

Here we are out for a post-holiday cup of coffee downtown, with Laura in her new Sharks cap. The weather had gotten considerably colder over the few days they were here. It was good we used the pool on the first day because the idea of a pool became less appealing as the air temperatures dropped. But it was still nice enough to sit outside, which in my opinion is plenty good enough for December.

I miss them already! It already seems like so long ago.

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