Today was Beth's surgery day. It went super well, and it even seemed a bit weird taking her home when she was awake and alert and not in any pain. We had to leave early so we dropped off the kids with friends and headed to Fort Wayne. It took a while to get her through pre-op but once she went in, it didn't take more than an hour or so, and not too much longer after that for her to be discharged. So, we were home by around 2 o'clock or so, headed home without any pain in her hand (although it was totally numb and more or less useless) and we got to enjoy the time before the anesthesia wore off. The doctor told her not to wait until she has pain before taking the medication, so we're trying really hard to keep up. She was getting sore later in the day. but the doctor said everything went very well, he was pleased with everything and it couldn't have gone better. One of the nurses also told us that most people are done using the painkillers after just a few days after surgery. That would be great, please.

We finally have meat in the freezer again! For the first time since last summer when the freezer door was left open and it all thawed/bled all over the garage floor. We drove up to the butcher last Friday and loaded up, and we were actually able to fit it all inside one freezer, which is good since the other one still kinda smells a bit, and I was concerned that the meat would taste like...last year's meat...after being in that freezer for a while. Anyway, moot point since it even fit with about a dozen frozen chickens in there too. This was also supposed to be the first week back to school for the kids (starting Tuesday), but we're having something like Snowmageddon II, and it closed school on Thursday and Friday, so Beth has been trying to find things to do to entertain the kids. It also has been snowing enough that school would have closed last week if it was on in the first place, enough so that we offered to let a friend who works at the hospital crash here if she couldn't make it home after her (2nd) shift.

Welp.....back to work. And remember how I had a rock hit the windshield of the van on the way back from Niagara a couple months ago? Well the crack that resulted completely bisected the windshield by a day or so afterwards, so we've been operating outside the law since a while back. I finally got around to having the windshield fixed today. $346.66 for a new windshield...considerably more expensive than having the van's heater fixed before we left. Expensive trip overall, van-wise.

The holiday season and Christmas break appear to be over. I will be going back to work tomorrow. It's been a good break, more low-key than some breaks we have had; there was no road trip or long visits, and we just stuck around. Break began inauspiciously, as I actually had to work about a day and a half longer than planned trying like mad to get a validation completed and signed off, including the document changes et al, but at lunchtime on the Tuesday 23rd I was done for the year and took off. We did a lot of last minute shopping at in the evening, but the following day we stuck close to home. We did go to the new Y building for free swim, and ran into the Harrisons and Johnsons doing the same thing. I also worked like mad to get the kitty condo I've been building for the Boschains done before Christmas. Missy started throwing up at around 10 pm on the 23rd, and continued to do so about every hour or so until late morning. It is nice that she is old enough to throw up in the bathroom or the trash can, though. I did take her trash out about 4 times during the night. Turns out that one of the Harrison kids was also throwing up at the same time. Most of Christmas eve I was starting to feel sick myself so I raced to get that kitty condo done, and finally did, but last thing on Christmas eve was I started throwing up myself. I did get sleep overnight, threw up again first thing Christmas morning, opened presents and went back to bed for about 5 hours. But that was it for me, and Missy was fine after a day too, and nobody else came down with it. Anyway, the my big thing was a new DeWalt cordless drill & driver set, Beth got her Keurig, Missy got a 3DS, a bunch of games and Legos, and Alex got the new Skylanders set, and a bunch of games and Legos. The day after, I took the kids to Tokens & Tickets (tokens were in the stockings), and we made the kitty condo delivery. The Boschains were sooo excited by it, and their cats were pretty stoked too. Beth has been making soup all season again this year, and just after Christmas she finished up and we deposited $405 in proceeds of which about $255 was profit and we gave to the church for miracle day. Laura and Thomas (not Ben this time, he's at his mom's) came to visit on the 28th and stayed until the 30th. Something of a surprise was that Chloe came too. Their dog. She was well behaved but Iris didn't care for her being here. I don't know if it's related, but Iris somehow fell off Missy's bed during the night that first night they were here. Or she jumped and something she was standing on moved and she fell, or something. She appeared to be hurting and was limping, but she jumped up into the top shelf in the master bedroom so we thought she was ok. Except in the morning she couldn't get down and was in more pain. I ran her in to the vet Monday morning, and x-rays showed a fractured fibula. Told us to cage rest her for two weeks. Yes, 2 weeks in a cage, to keep her from jumping and hurting herself. So, we got a big cage at Big R and put her in it that first night, and she yowled and paced all night long. In the morning, everything was turned over, litter was everywhere, and she was NOT happy. We were afraid she was going to hurt herself worse by being in the cage than not being. So, she never went back into it. She's just wanting to lie in a box anyway, so we're just going to let her. New Year's Eve we spent at our house. The Boschains and Lancasters came over with their kids, and we were going to let them play while we played cards or something, but we wound up watching funny videos on YouTube on the TV all evening. Gary had never heard of Weird Al, so we started with "Word Crimes" and it escalated from there. We watched a lot of 'Ew!' and other Jimmy Fallon bits, other Weird Al videos, stand-up comedy, just a bunch of funny stuff. And ate snacks until midnight. On New Year's, I went on the Frigid 5k run at the new YMCA. The 5k trail from the new Y building is not that interesting, I'm afraid. And it was pretty darn cold. So much so that I regretted my decision to go on the run before half a mile. But it worked out, and my time was pretty slow, but not surprising given the temperature and the fact that I've been slacking since the Veterans Half Marathon a couple months ago. Off to Fort Wayne today. I had an old gift card for Barnes & Noble, so we headed there and spent a bunch of money over that. Then we ran out of things we could think of to do, so we drove around a bit to check things out and had the idea to take the kids to SkyZone. We let the kids jump for a while (nice to have them use up some energy) and to Red Robin for dinner.

Closing Day! I started the process of refinancing the house a couple months ago, we've had a few odd bumps in the road, and today was the end of it. I dropped our rate from 5.5% to 3.25% through the refi, added in the home equity line of credit to the mortgage to get rid of that, and even so dropped our monthly payment by over a hundred bucks. Today was the day to go downtown and sign a million pieces of paper. I'm going to be glad to get it over with, the process has been a bit of a pain at times.