Christmas with Karen

Greetings Troupers,

I thought I would share how our Christmas get together went with Karen. Despite the possibility of bad driving, Jay and I went out the evening of the 23rd, and somehow got extremely luck and missed all of the bad weather. We started out at about 4:30 pm and in addition to the great weather, by the time we got near any major cities there wasn't very much traffic at all, which was wonderful.

We didn't get a whole lot of sleep since we arrived a bit after 2 am, but we got enough that we were able to get up and go to breakfast with Melinda, David, and Ronnie, before they left for Cincinnati. Ronnie is getting so big! I got to hold her for a little while, but I couldn't do it for very long because I hurt my shoulder. It was nice though :) and she enjoyed the books we got her (and more importantly, playing in the wrapping paper!). She also loved the pictures I showed her of the cats and dogs we live with here in NY - she pointed at the dog and said 'Vau Vau', which is the German noise dogs make ^_~

After they left we pretty much just hung out; at one point we found the old checkers/chinese checkers board in the closet and Karen and I had a silly 2 person game with the marbles - it would have been more interesting with more people, but Jay hadn't played before and dad wasn't interested so we just chased each other across the board. I won, although it was close, and Karen had better moves than I did. We also went to FRY'S, which of course I love, because Jay decided he wanted a GPS, so Karen gave it to us for Christmas since she hadn't really been able to go shopping. <3 GPS...

On Christmas morning we had more presents; Karen and Dad donated to our washer & dryer fund (for the new house) and I had gotten some stuff for them. I gave Dad some mixed nuts and a cheese & cracker basket that I had Wegmans put together for him. Jay gave Karen an L.L. Bean giftcard and I gave her the hand held Vacuum she's been wanting - she said Morgan is scared of the upright, but that hopefully she will not be scared of this little one.

Most people won't have heard about it, but we usually do a very elaborate Christmas breakfast, including a phyllo-dough ham loaf, scrambled eggs, champagne, and Ben & Jerries ice cream. I know it seems very strange, but it all goes pretty well together. This year however, since it was just 4 of us and Karen wasn't really up to much, I decided to just make an egg casserole. So we had that, the ice cream, and some sparkling grape juice. Then for Christmas dinner I made a lasagna, as that is one of my specialties and it is MUCH easier to make than our usual turkey with sides. Despite the fact that the meat that we thawed out from the freezer was actually really bad, we were able to find another package that was ok and the meal went mostly as planned.

Overall it was a very pleasant day, and we ended it by watching some classic Doctor Who episodes and going to bed.

The next morning Jay and I were going to drive back, but we decided to have a pancake breakfast. We got up and prepared the batter, and then I woke up Karen and Dad. Karen started to make pancakes, but unfortunately it turned out I shouldn't have let her do that because (we think) she got over heated, and she actually passed out next to the stove! Fortunately I was able to catch her before she hit anything, but it was very scary.

At the time of this writing, as far as we know, it was just overheating that caused it, not her head injury. She hadn't eaten or drunk anything, she hadn't taken her medication (I think she was off on the time, actually), and she was sort of going back and forth from the frying pan to the oven with pancakes, which possibly changed her blood pressure. She was only out for a minute and she was able to get herself to the couch after a bit, where we gave her stuff to drink and we all ate breakfast in the living room so she wouldn't have to get up. She was feeling better by the time we left and Dad said they'd mention it at her appointment today. As far as we can tell it was not related to her other problems; hopefully they'll confirm that. Let's just say I was really glad that I have training from the military in how to handle that kind of thing though!

After we ate and made sure everything was settled, we loaded the car and headed out. Amazingly our drive back was almost as good as the drive out, except for some fog east of Jamestown. Overall the trip was very nice and I'm glad we went.

As I learn more about Karen's out patient stuff, I will relay it to you guys but for now she's staying at Granny's for a couple more weeks.

Hope everyone had a great holiday, and keep on troupin'!