surgery on Christmas Eve? dang.

Paul has a torn meniscus, and has been trying to get it repaired. With the hospital situations these days, it's tricky, but he had his pre-op testing done (his ekg was good, which is a huge PHEW for us, because he has had A-Fib in the past, and has had two surgeries to correct it). His Covid test was negative too, so he's good to go, tomorrow morning we leave here at 5:30, before the sun comes up. I can't be with him, just drop him off and pick him up, that's life these days. So Merry Christmas to us, right? He's confident he'll feel fine. Sonja and I went to the store the other day for some last minute gifts, to replace two that I actually lost. They'll show up, but dang, where did they go? Anyway...

This was marked down because it's broken. Can you even imagine gifting this to someone, to a hero? You are such a hero, I bought you a broken cup.

Then there was this fine set, with a broken mug, seriously? Anyway. Today I have made three sets of pie crust, which means top and bottom, which means I've used 6 sticks of butter, mmm. I'm making chicken pot pies, which are way too good. There'll be some leftover dough, maybe a pumpkin pie and a sugar free pumpkin pie.... Yesterday was dear Margaret's birthday, she's 24 years old. She was my home-from-the-hospital-on-Christmas-Eve baby, our ninth child. I realized that wow, I was 31 years old and had nine kids. We had a nice little impromptu birthday celebration. Paul made venison chili, I made 10 pounds of chicken wings. We had some green beans, then I made a sugar free dessert, some chocolate pie/cheesecake pie stuff. (The crust was melted butter with a scoop of peanut butter stirred into the pie plate, then some toasted crushed pecans, then some of the cheese cake mixture (cream cheese whipped up with with whipped heavy cream mixed in, a splash of stevia and a splash of fake sugar, then the sugar free chocolate pudding (from a box), then the rest of the cream cheese mixture) Anyway, it's the day before Christmas eve, and we are all very excited here! The kids are finally done with online school for the whole vacation, yay! They're playing, if you can believe it, Grand Theft Auto.