I've really been looking forward to this weekend. Thursday the new Star Wars movie was released, and our church rented out an entire theater for a private screening. It was being done as an outreach program, where anyone could buy tickets for as many friends as they wanted, and invite them to come to the movie and as a tie-in, we've been doing 'the Star Wars of Christmas' as a sermon series on Sundays for a few weeks now. So, invite a friend to the movie, and invite them to church on Sunday. The kids all took friends along but Beth and I didn't. The movie itself was good, I thought, but it seemed to me that the action was driving the story and not the other way around. Too frenetic and jumbled in the first half, anyway. We were sitting in the very first row on the side because we got there a bit not early enough.....Friday was the Komets vs. Indy Fuel for the teddy bear toss game. They sold tickets at half price for Black Friday, so that's how I got the tickets. My guess is that they were trying to boost attendance at the teddy bear toss game deliberately. Anyway, I went through Goodwill after work on Thursday and bought 10 good stuffed animals for the toss, cost $5, so we would be ready. Unfortunately the game wasn't that great. The K's were down by 2 by the time they scored and played kind of lackadaisically for most of the game. It was kind of boring. Late in the game they tied it up at 3-3 after pulling the goalie, but they lost in overtime after only a minute or two.....Saturday Beth and I went up to Wakarusa to pick up our half-cow. The cow seems to have been smaller this year, but that's probably ok since we had a lot of meat left over from last year still. We gave a lot of it away to the Harrisons to make room in the freezer for the new beef.....Also Saturday Beth took the girls to the mall in Fort Wayne while Alex and I stayed home, and he got a message from a guy that wanted to buy his PC case and power supply that are left over from when we were trying to build a new PC a while back. He met the guy in Columbia City, and he paid $30 in cash.....Last Tuesday I took Missy to the BMV to get her learner's permit. She finally finished the online course a few weeks ago and we haven't gotten around to getting that til now. Now we just have to get Alex his license, he's way overdue for that.....Natalie is finally enrolled in the online high school course for next semester. After I got her signed up a few weeks ago, they told me there was a waiting list (they had said there wasn't one when I actually submitted everything) so she's been on it since then, and I was starting to get concerned she wouldn't get in. But she's all set now, so we'll see how this goes.....I am officially on Christmas break from work. We're visiting family in Michigan for a day, and we will have Laura & Thomas for a day, but other than that we really don't have anything planned, so we'll have to see what we can come up with.

The call from Chapman Place came at around 1:30 in the morning on Saturday the 14th: Mom has passed away. It was something of a surprise, as much as these things can be anyway, since although she's been on hospice for about a year, there hadn't been any signs that the end was imminent.  I broke the news to Beth in the morning and texted Laura to call me, which she did around 6:30. In the afternoon I headed to FW, first to the funeral home where Mom is being cremated, got all the necessary papers signed there, and then to Chapman Place where I got her all moved out. There wasn't much there anymore, so I was able to get everything into the truck in a single load. I was all done clearing the apartment by dinnertime. Laura wants the cedar sweater cabinet, otherwise most everything will be disposed of or sold. All of her clothes will go right to Goodwill. The nurse told me she had some laundry in process and I told them they could keep it or donate it. I did find a glass jar that had about 8 of her Zuni fetishes in it; I had thought those were all lost. I'll keep those. Her dresser needs some repair work and we may keep that it we can find a good purpose for it. The cremains and the death certificate should be ready by the end of next week. We'll have a memorial service for her in January sometime after the holidays; Laura and I will talk about it some more when they come by after Christmas. We also will wait for the death certificate before telling the financial institutions, I think. At least this time there are no cars, or campers, or credit cards, or leases to deal with.....Beth is sick again since early this week, this time with influenza, so I was sleeping on the couch when the call about Mom came. It's been bad for her. Coughs, chills, body aches, fever, fatigue, the whole bit. The kids all had flu shots, I didn't. I haven't had one since my Navy days. But after the doctor said it was influenza on Thursday I went and got one. It takes a bit to be effective, but I hope it helps. I was at the doctor myself on Tuesday, for an inflamed prostate. That again. The check absolutely sucks. So I'm already on a course of antibiotics for that myself, but it won't help vs the flu.....

Beth's third and final craft show of the season was Saturday. When she finally felt well enough to make soup again she finished things off and got everything ready for the big Wawasee Middle School show, plus she for some reason she could not remember by now, volunteered to cater (of sorts) the church's secret sister reveal party on Friday. She needed to make 5 batches of soup for the meal, get everything ready and get it set up for a 6 o'clock party, so that left me and the kids to get the Wawasee show set up before 8 so it would be ready for Saturday morning. It turns out her secret sister for the past year was Kate, which she pretty much knew. Her own secret sister did not show up. The good news was that there was a lot of soup left over from the church party so she just reheated it for the Wawasee show. That's how she did her split pea soup and painted desert chili, she only needed to make a pot of soala for the show and didn't need to get up at 4am to do it. Natalie helped her run the show for a while; I ran her back and forth from home a couple times and made sure that Beth wasn't left alone for too long. Big space, big crowd, lots of noise; it made Natalie anxious and Beth nervous. But they both did ok. By the end of the day Beth was sold out of soala, love soup, pasta & tortilla, and split pea (!) and had sold 83 jars of soup. It still surprises me that most people buy 1 or 2 at a time to eat themselves rather than 6 or 8 to give as presents to their miscellaneous friends. Anyway, the show was a success but didn't seem as much so as last year, the crowds didn't seem as large and things weren't as busy for as long. But we only undersold last year by 6 jars.....Today Beth and I went out to FW to visit Mom since it had been a few weeks since I saw her. She was in bed, but awake, so the nurses got her up and into her chair for us to visit with her. She is wasting away. We got her to drink an entire box of Boost and most of another while we were there, though. She was a little responsive though, and she did hold my hand for a while as I was sitting next to her, although it was probably just a grasping reflex. We just sat and talked to her for a while, then headed home. Beth got a photo of mom holding my hand.

Thanksgiving: just the latest thing to not go to plan here. The plan was for us all to go to Laura & Thomas' for Thanksgiving, then visit with the Caspers on the way back. However by Tuesday night Beth started a bout with the stomach flu. We had been planning to leave Wednesday morning (I took Wednesday off) so we could be there by late afternoon, but Tuesday night it started in earnest for her and by Wednesday evening she was still all torn up inside, so we cancelled. The kids were pretty disappointed, so were Beth and I, but couldn't be helped.....so anyway we tried to make sure we did something fun this weekend. On Wednesday I took the girls to FW to do some shopping, mostly for Natalie's birthday coming up (17!) She wanted to go to Hobby Lobby and the mall, so that's where we headed. We started at Fazoli's (including cheesecake for all!) , then Barnes & Noble (I found a neat 80s themed puzzle for Beth) and Nat went from there to Earth Magic, because she is on some new age kick and wanted incense. She spent a looong time picking some out, and looking over all the crystals and stuff. Missy checked out Think Geek mostly. Hobby Lobby after the mall, which we went through in slow fine detail. Nat knocked over a glass thingy which shattered, and verrrry nearly started one of those shutdown panic attacks, but after a while in a relatively quiet corner she recovered. But by the time we were done, both girls just wanted out of there and to go home, which was fine with me.....Beth was able (with Alex's help) to do a bit of shopping Wednesday for our dinner on Thursday, which consisted of a crock pot chicken and veggies with mashed potatoes, so pretty much Thanksgiving fare. Family gatherings with a big meal are Beth's favorite part of the holidays so she's pretty bummed about this one, but it's better than traveling with a stomach bug.....Later on Wednesday evening we all went out to see "Frozen 2" which everyone liked, some more than others, but I thought was very good.....Black Friday Beth and I went shopping for a new bed. We've needed one for a long time; we're still sleeping on the one Ronnie and DeeAnn gave us when we moved in to this house. We thought that furniture places wouldn't be too crowded on Black Friday, and we were right. We wanted to shop local so we started at JB's, but we didn't find anything we were really enthusiastic about so we went to Mattress Firm, and we found a nice Sealy with a free adjustable base (for Black Friday) that we both thought felt really good. So we bought it, and spent a lot more than I was planning on (It all came to around $2200) but we really need it. The bed was delivered and set up today, and we are really looking forward to sleeping on it.....Also since we had a free weekend we weren't planning on, I finished replacing all the ceiling tiles and replacing the fan in the downstairs bathroom this weekend. It looks unbelievably better and it's nice that the fan doesn't rattle any more...Saturday everyone went out to see "Knives Out" which I really liked. It's been a long time since we saw two theater movies in the same week, maybe just as long since we saw a movie that had nothing to do with Disney. Gotta love a good murder mystery, even if I kinda called it, at least as to how.