Holiday Traditions

Sam has started a new holiday tradition here.

We have a crazy holiday schedule here. We've got both our parents to do Christmas with, and these get-togethers have to be scheduled around our siblings families as well. My sister's husband's family does their thing on Christmas eve, so I can't host my family's Christmas then or I'm eliminating one of the siblings right up front. Same thing on Sam's side of the family, with his brother's wife's family. Its a scheduling headache, to be sure, but this year we've entered a whole new phase of parenthood that kicked things up a notch.

This is the year we've actually taken into account the kids' significant others' families and when they do the holidays together. We have reached the stage when our children are that old. Josh and his girlfriend have been dating for 2 years, and they're pretty serious (obviously). We ran into a scheduling snafu at Thanksgiving that wrought havoc with things all around, so we were very careful about scheduling at Christmas. Becky has been seeing a boy for over a year, and they, too, are in the kind of serious stage, so we had to be sure their family time didn't coincide with anything.

To top it off, Sam worked Christmas day this year, because the hospital is never closed and someone has to be available to scan the injured on the holiday.

By the time we'd had Thanksgiving, ironed out all the scheduling conflicts for Christmas (including having Sam's brother's wife's entire family shift their celebration from Christmas Eve to Christmas day), had a Christmas party with Sam's mom's side of the family (and the 348 aunts, uncles, cousins and their kids), and celebrated Christmas with Sam's side of the family, we were kind of holiday'd out. Christmas hadn't even happened yet.

At the get together with Sam's family on Christmas Eve, the whole family was there. Sam's brother and his family were home from Italy, and their 2 older children were up from college in South Carolina. Josh's girlfriend and Becky's boyfriend were there. Quincey was finally home from college, after delaying the trip up from Missouri for a week. The testosterone level was running high with half a dozen teen boys in the house, so they challenged the adult men to a basketball game called Knock Out. Not to be outdone, the fathers rose to the challenge.

By the end of the evening, Micah had won a game, and Sam showed up Becky's boyfriend, who is crazy athletic and proud of it. But the consequences ran high. Just before being called in for dinner, Sam sustained an injury to his leg, which he promptly ignored the rest of the evening. The next morning, however, it was hard to ignore. The next morning was Christmas Day.

We pulled the crutches from the attic, opened gifts as a family, and headed to the emergency room. Thankfully Becky is in charge of the cooking in the house and did a fine job of making Christmas dinner while Sam and I enjoyed some peace and quiet in the hustle and bustle of the overbusy Christmas season. He also came home with pain meds, which is a win when you're walking into a house filled with in-laws.

His strained muscle wasn't a tear, so we're grateful for that. He's been fairly pain free enough to work without hindrance by it for the past week, which is good. He was even back to doing all sorts of normal daily life things like working on vehicles.

That was on Thursday.

After the New Year's Day event at his parent's house on Friday, Sam came home complaining of a sore eye. He said he'd got something in it from working on the truck the day before, and it just started hurting. When he awoke Saturday morning, it was pretty evident that he needed to be seen. His family doctor said to head to the emergency room. Turns out, if you have metal in your eye for 2 days, your cornea will start to grow over it. I learned that your cornea renews a layer every few hours. Fascinating, no? I'll let it up to your imagination how they got that metal out. He's been suffering with the pain for 2 days now.

I'm fairly certain, though, that Sam is just trying to gain drugs at the holidays. Whatever it takes to get through.