December in Ohio, mostly

My dad collapsed shortly after Thanksgiving, and was rushed to the hospital.  The first few days were rough for my family, and it was tough to be way over here in Utah and unable to help and comfort them.  The toughest part of medical issues is always the periods where you don't know what happened or what is going to happen or how to fix anything.  It was just scary.  When we figured out that we had enough frequent flyer miles to send me out, I flew out by myself to help my mom.

Thankfully, it turned out that his heart had caused a mild stroke.  The new pacemaker they put in should prevent future problems, and the stroke missed critical areas.  So while there was a lot of recovery and re-learning to happen, he has continued to improve ever since.  I'm glad I was there, though.  My mom needed the extra ear to listen to all of the doctors and organize all of the information that came in from all the sources.  I am amazingly grateful that my husband had the perfect job for me to be able to do that trip.  He travels all the time, so he had frequent flyer miles, but when he is in town, he can work from home if needed.  And no one wants to be audited in December, so he was available to take the kids everywhere they needed to be.

I told my dad this was his victory picture. He was SO excited to get out of that hospital and away from all of his awful wires and tubes.

And I was able to help get a lot of Christmas decorations down from the attic and spread around the house.

And then I flew back home. I had ten days home in December, so they were busy days.  I had to prioritize things, and some things just went out the window. I have made calendars with family pictures for both sides of my family for years, and this year I just had to ditch that.  We didn't even put up the Christmas tree.  It needs to be re-strung, and we weren't even going to be in town to enjoy it.  Instead, I sewed like crazy.

We went to Jasmine's show, too.  She has been going to my friend's "Singer's Club", which is adorable.  The night of the show, I was doing a favor for a friend that is a hairdresser, and she offered to do Jasmine's hair so that I could help longer.  Deal!  Jasmine felt SO special with her head of curls!

I'll save you the "Where's Waldo" in the group shot.

Jasmine told me the other day that she wishes she could go to Singer's Club every single day.  :)

She even still had her curls the next day for ice skating lessons.

Later that week, we went to Christopher's work party.  Which is actually a lot of fun.

And that turned out to be my last outing with long hair for a while.  I've often had long hair, and often short.  This was probably the longest I have let it go, though.  I've never had it get stuck when I sit in a chair so I can't turn my head properly.  That drove me crazy.  Time to chop it off!

We even squeezed in a trip to the newest Star Wars movie.  Jasmine has fallen asleep every year we go.

And with that, we all headed back to Ohio for Christmas with my family!