A white Christmas

I finally returned from my nice 2-week vacation in the West among family and friends. I went to Colorado first to spend time with my sister Julie and her family plus my dad, Jarom, Emilee, and Cody came up from California and Arizona. Later I went south to Safford and Yuma to visit family and friends. In all it was a lovely trip.

I arrived in Colorado before Dad, Jarom, Emilee, and Cody, which was nice because I was able to spend a little time with the Smacks before the Christmas commotion began. We had a lot of fun. I went to 2 Ft Collins Eagles games with Ted. The Eagles won both games! The Eagles are very good and have won the national championship 2 times in 7 years. The first game they won without having to break a sweat. They dominated the game from the beginning and shot nearly 3 times more shots than the other team. The second game ended with the Eagles winning by penalty shots. I was excited that it went to the penalty shots round because I had never seen penalty shots in person. At the second game Ti, Tate, and Joe came with Ted and I. Ted only had 4 tickets, so he had to figure out a way to get as ticket for Joe. Joe was not going to go, but he was so enthusiastic about watching his Eagles play that Ted didn’t have the heart to leave him at home. In the end another man gave Ted an extra ticket for free. What luck!

After the first hockey game Ted and I went to Walmart to buy stocking stuffers for all the kids and family. After what seems like half the night and multiple calls to Julie to figure out what to buy, we came home with a large Santa bag full of goodies. Ted bought so much stuff that the puny stockings could not hold half of what was supposed to go in them.

The rest of the family arrived late Saturday night from Becky’s. Ted immediately started preparing carne asada. Nothing like carne asada as a midnight snack! Ted made it his personal duty to fatten everybody up. He figured that if everyone was not several pounds heavier by the end of the Christmas vacation then they obviously have no idea how to celebrate the holidays. We had carne asada, salsa, pork loin, smoked turkey, sausage, loads of candy in our stockings, fruit, and numerous other side dishes.

One of Ted and Julie’s friends came over dressed as Santa Claus. After all the boys sit on his lap to tell him what they wanted, he gave them some candy. Then he makes Julie sit on his lap before he would give up his big present from his bag. He brought the boys a Nintendo Wii! They are expensive even if you can find them. The boys were so excited and played as much as they could over the next few days. I must admit that I played my share of tennis and bowling, too, as did all the adults. It is a pretty fun set up. For those who do not know. Wii is an interactive video game. You use a controller in your hand that recognized hand movements and makes your player on the screen make the same hand movements. When playing tennis, you use the controller like a tennis racket. When bowling, you move the controller like you would use the bowling ball. It does a good job of mimicking your movements, so it is like place real life sports. You even get tired and sweaty like when playing real sports. It has several different sports like baseball, boxing, tennis, bowling, and golf.

My holiday tradition: the flu

Unfortunately on Saturday I started to feel the beginnings of the flu. I hoped that it was only an obnoxious cold that does not hamper the celebrations too much. I was wrong. I got the flu with all its body aches, stuffiness, headaches, sore throat, and clogged everything. I was sick for the next 10 days. That was the worst flu I have had in several years. After a week of being sick, I started feeling much better only for the flu to settle in my ear in the form of an ear infection. Luckily the infection was not bad enough to prohibit me from flying home.

I never get sick outside of the holidays. I am single and live quite a sterile life away from any disease vectors. However, during the holidays I spend time with children. I love my little nieces and nephews, but my body cannot defend itself from the relentless barrage of diseases that they have passed around among all their little friends. I hopelessly fall ill to the whole suite. I feel like the poor Indians trying to defend off the onslaught of small pox, measles, and cholera brought to the Americas with the European settlers. In the end it is a hopeless battle. Last year I got pink eye, an ear infection, a sore throat, and a cold. The 3 Christmases previously I had the stomach flu. I guess that is just the price I have to pay to spend time with little kids.

Winter Park and lots of snow!

The day after Christmas we all piled into the Julie’s Denali and Ted’s truck and went up to their condo in Winter Park. Winter Park is one of several resort towns in the Rocky Mountains dedicated to skiing, snowmobiling, fourwheeling, hiking, biking and enjoying the outdoors. The condo was so nice, and we had so much fun. Too bad Jason, Joe and company could not join us in the fun. We were there fore 2 nights. On the second night we went sledding. I was a little worried about the cold because I was still sick. However, Ted bundled us all up from his store of winter clothes that were sufficient to cloth half of Winter Park. Though it was 5°F (-15°C), I was quite warm the whole time. We went innertubing at a hill where you can sled down the hill then use the sled lift to return to the top of the hill. It was so easy to sled numerous times in the hour that we were there. We must have gone about 10 times in 1 hour. We went down several times holding on to each others’ tubes in a large hurling mass. We would change positions within the mass has slid down the hill, so the ones in front could end up in the back by the time we reached the bottom of the hill. Later we made a large string of tubes where each person would hold onto the tube strap of the tube in front of them. We could move around like a large snake as we jetted to the bottom of the hill. One hour seemed like such a short period of time, but it was a good bit of time - enough time to wear out all the kids and get our feel of excitement. Afterward we headed down to the Jacuzzi for a little relaxation. It was a rather interesting experience, considering that there were 7 adults in a hot tub.