December 23-29

Day 317-323
Christmas is a season of the heart, and ours are a bit battered, but still able to celebrate the joy of living and giving. The kids all came on Christmas morning to open their gifts, although Santa was caught stuffing the stockings! Who thought they would get up before 10?
I'll be a bit sentimental here, in that my perspective for celebrating has undergone radical change this year. I wasn't too concerned about how much or whether we were on time, and the Christmas cards are still sitting in the box. We are together. We love each other and our lives are going forward, even if it isn't what or how we expected them to be. The way was prepared for us, and I see now that that was God's presence in our lives. How amazing to look back over these months and see it.
The New Year is fast approaching , and who knows what it will bring? We hope you all have a good and prosperous year. We will continue to go on the path we are on. Glenn continues to improve, and was busy setting up the new machines we received for Christmas. It is good exercise for him, he says his reading is getting better, although he doesn't think he can read a book yet. I am still amazed at how much stuff he knows about computers. He just types away and pokes the buttons, and lo and behold the thing fires up and away we go.
We are having a break from therapies next week, the therapists are on holiday, and that is OK by me. I seem to be able to sleep in without too much trouble. Colin and I worked on the tractor, and discovered the sediment bowl was 1/2 full of ice. We didn't think that was a good thing, so he took it in the house and cleaned it up. Guess what? The tractor started, and he was able to push the snow around a bit. Hopefully it will be good for the next time.
I got a power shovel from Chris, Aryn, Dale and Desi, so I was out blowing the snow off the decks and ramp. It will be nice to have the snow blown away instead of pushed over the sides. It is a bit like vacuuming (for me anyway), but I got a stiff neck, either from the 'flu or from the shovel. My neck is a bit better today, but crawling around hooking up gadgets yesterday was a painful ordeal, which I let Glenn know. I hope he felt a bit guilty, but I don't think so. His gadgets were hooked up and I survived. I also got a turntable which hooks up to the computer, (OK, it was really my gadget I was hooking up to the computer) which means we can now record my albums and burn them onto CDs. This was Colin's gift, as he was unpacking them at work and thought about us and our power point shows. It was a bit of a trick to get it working, but I think Glenn has it figured out. I bought Glenn an all in one printer-scanner-copier, which he has been playing with for the last couple of days. It's supposed to be wireless, and he was having trouble getting all the machines talking to each other. I think they do now, I haven't been able to get close to the computer! Jackie and Johnny got us a set of cordless phones, so I was busy setting those up too. I still haven't got the one in the basement plugged in, but I will get to it.
Yesterday I was trying to get through to the table again, and burned a couple bags of garbage. Christmas is hard on the environment, the packaging is tremendous. I hope I didn't burn any important instructions. I also tidied in the garage in an effort to catch up to the recycling. I made some progress there.
I'm rambling a bit, so I'll just cut myself off. Life is settling into routine, and I glad to be able to catch up on some of this stuff. I feel like I'm gaining a bit of control again.
Hey, my niece and her hubby are waiting for their baby to arrive, so say a pray for them, they are a few days overdue. Good luck to them and hopefully you'll have the New Years Baby! Wouldn't that be cool?
'Til next time,
Louise