Not that Christmas has kind of crept up on us or anything, but we did a lot of last minute shopping on Wednesday. The 23rd. Of December.  Mostly for the little things like stocking stuffers, though. On Thirsday, bizarrely, Missy passed out overnight. Beth had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and Missy got up at about the same time, and she passed out when she was in the bathroom. Not sure why, maybe she was just really tired, or not even fully awake. She seemed fine in the morning, though. We had Christmas at home on the 25th, nobody was sick this year fortunately, and Ruby enjoyed her first Christmas. The kids got a pretty good haul; Missy only wanted Webkinz stuffed animals, and she got something like 10 of them. Alex mostly wanted video game stuff, so he got Splatoon and some Disney Infinity figurines, plus both kids got some Lego stuff. After we were done here we headed to Michigan to have Christmas with the Wiessner/Pinkster family. We spent the day at Stephanie's house with everyone, then spent the night and did some shopping/returns the next day. Topped off by all of us going to see "The Force Awakens" together at Crossroads, in 3-D this time.

Tonight: one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of all time, in our house anyway. Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. All of us went out to see the movie, and I think everyone was equally excited. Well, except maybe for Beth, who was interested. Good show, I say, and in keeping with the finest traditions of Star Wars. The plotlines all seemed familiar, but I'm hoping that was all on purpose (I'm sure it was) and things will progress in the next episode. It's been a good weekend overall because Saturday was the Komets' annual teddy bear toss. We went to Fort Wayne with the Boschains, got dinner at Red Robin beforehand, and then got to witness not only a Komets victory (5-1 over the Brampton Beast) but even a Komets hat trick! First I've ever seen. Of course I didn't realize it was a hat trick until after the game was over but it was still cool. Ben (who is not quite 1) also really likes hockey, we found out. And we got the kids to all contribute stuffed animals.
Ruby the kitten has finally been declawed. We thought about not doing it but she is just to aggressive with them (and she's also a biter). A bit of luck with that too, we had an appointment to bring her in the other day and forgot about it, but another appointment opened up all of a sudden so we got her in right away instead of waiting weeks like we did for the first one. We had her fixed while we're at it, of course.

One of the most disgusting things ever is when your daughter gets sick overnight and throws up over the side of her loft bed. O my goodness. Splatter...all...over.... She truly spewed and it went everywhere after falling a good 5 feet. Blaaaaaaaa. So Beth and I were up late last Monday night cleaning things up as best we could, and getting a bunch of stuff into the laundry, while Missy went downstairs to sleep on the couch because her room smelled strongly of barf. Ewwwww. So gross. Anyway, the good news was that school was closed in the morning due to fog, so she didn't miss school, and as soon as I could I rented a carpet cleaner from Owen's. We also had to clean a bunch of stuffed animals, pillows, books (several were pitched), and everything else in the room. I hope we never have to do that again.
And the week just kept getting better by Thursday, when Beth dumped an entire cup of coffee all over the laptop! She said the screen just suddenly went blank and wouldn't come back. And yep, it's all sticky all over. I took it into a computer repair shop in town to see if they could get the photo files off the hard drive, other than that I don't think anything on it matters that much. They were able to copy the hard drive onto a big memory stick so that's ok, and after things dried out a bit we got it to boot up again (they couldn't even get it to boot at the repair shop so it must have still been too wet). It seems to be working now except for about half of the keys on the keyboard, but we have an on-screen keyboard we can use. That's a pain. But it works for now until we can get a new one.
Saturday I rented that big walk-behind leaf blower again since the backyard is now piled high (now that it's mid-December, the oak leaves have finally all dropped) even though I cleared it a month ago. I was able to clear everything in a few hours, even blow most of it through the gate. Also yesterday we all went to Owen's and rang the bell for Salvation Army for an hour. You wanna hear kids grumble?
We had the Christmas program at church this morning, Pretty typical kids' program, really, but a nice show anyway. Alex being in middle school means that he hasn't been in children's church all year, so no more of that for him, but Missy was in it. However she did not want to have a speaking role so she was an angel. Typecasting, you know. She sang all the songs but no solos. Tonight was a white elephant gift exchange for our Bible study small group. It was held out in the country at the house of one of the couples in our group. I brought a DVD of "Notting Hill" that we never opened, and took home a string of Christmas lights with the huge old school bulbs. The grand prize was a giant old turntable, but I wasn't that lucky (not). Unfortunately Beth did not attend the party because she is sick. Missy puking all over he room might have had something to do with that...

The Christmas tree is up as of today, and wow does Ruby love it. Kitty's first Christmas, and she thinks it's all for her. She's a pretty hyper kitty anyway, but wow. Climbing, jumping, batting, chewing, climbing, climbing...and knocking ornaments off as soon as the kids get them on. So, we just don't have breakable ones on this year. We did caroling with the church group earlier today...on the 6th? Yes. No competition, I guess. No snow on the ground, no decorations up most places, but we went caroling. Don't know why so early but whatever. Beth and the kids and I were in a group that went around some of the neighborhoods just up the road a bit from the church, most places were friendly enough if someone was home but it looked like they weren't expecting caroling this early. Anyway. Michigan State defeated Iowa to become Big Ten champs, and are going to the playoffs! Woohoo! I hope they don't embarrass themselves against Alabama. In other big news this week, Beth and I went on a date to Fort Wayne last Thursday to see the Piano Guys in concert. What a fun show! We've never been to the Embassy Theater before, but we're going to have to go see more shows there. Loved it.