Merry Christmas

Well, today did not start out like most other days. We spent the night at Alyssa and Dan's, as did all the children and grandchildren. Kathleen and I slept on the floor in the family room, Aaron and Tami slept on an air mattress, shared the living room with Andrea and John slept on the couches pushed together, Becca and Alexis slept in the dining room on the floor. That was downstairs, upstairs, Toni slept on the floor in Natalie's room, Chucky slept in Zander's room, and both Zander and Natalie slept in their new sleeping bags that they got from their mom and dad. Alyssa slept in their own bed. They suggested that Kathleen and I could have it, but I thought that Alyssa probably needed to sleep in her own bed.

Anyway, I got up a little before sunrise to let Reggie out for his morning constitutional and I went back inside to get some day clothes on and when I went back to get Reggie in, he had decided to take himself for a little walk. So I went back inside to get some shoes on so that I could go look for him.

I thought that I saw him across the field playing with a little girl, so I went out to the street and started to walk to where the house was, it was still dark enough that I could not see a driveway, so I went back to Alyssa and Dan's driveway and started to walk across the field. The little girl must have seen me as she put him on a leash and started to walk toward me. She let him off the leash about a hundred yards away, and I called out to him and he came running.

By the time I got back inside most everyone was up. I started to put away the dishes from last night and the other adults went upstairs to sing to Alyssa and Dan. Once I had the dishes put away, I started to load it up again and also did a lot of the hand washing stuff. The grandchildren had a snack so I gathered up their dishes and put them into the dishwasher.

The adult females, scrambled some eggs, sausages, toasted some cinnamon bread and made some juice. Andrea had to cook the eggs in two batches, so we kind of ate in shifts. After everyone ate, I gathered up the dishes, finished loading the dishwasher, and then started it up.

Sometime this morning the grandchildren got to open up their remaining presents and even some of the adults got some gifts.

Toni and Chucky had to leave early, as Toni had to work later this afternoon. Andrea and John left next as they still had another Christmas with John's family, they were also hoping to catch a little nap, as no one got as much sleep as they would have liked.

I loaded up our SUV and waited for Kathleen to finish visiting. When she was getting close I opened up the back door and Reggie jumped in and was ready to go, I took the back roads back and even went down to the Columbia River and drove along it for a while and then headed home.

Reggie was glad to get home, I let him out into the back yard and he did not want to come in for quite some time. Kathleen and I unloaded the SUV and I put my things away. After changing my clothes, I went downstairs and read the paper. Lots of adds, not much news!

After recycling the paper, I decided to collect the trash from all the trashcans in the house and took it outside. The trash is usually picked up on Tuesday, so I took the can to the front, even though it will probably not get picked up until Wednesday this week.

Well, I think we will be having some leftovers tonight and I do not think anything else will be happening tonight. I think that I will probably call it an early night tonight, so I will say good night and Merry Christmas again!