November brought more COVID shot clinics for me, including Sarah and Trevor receiving their doses!
I grieved the loss of and attended the funeral for a beloved patient in mid-November.
I cannot imagine the pain of losing your child and hope I never have to experience it.
We gave thanks especially for our healthy children for Thanksgiving this year!
Trevor helped lick the bowl when I made pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.
I had a boxelder bug fly into the mixer when I was making the 2nd pie, so I had to completely throw out a whole batch and start over. Yuck!
Trevor helped Grandpa make the mashed potatoes.
Nanny ended up picking up Steve and the kids at school when the car broke down again, so she was featured in a Thanksgiving edition of "The Daily Rat" and even received an "awesomeness award".
Sarah has really enjoyed cooking lately and she made rosemary cornbread for our Thanksgiving feast!
Cousin group hug.
We put the Christmas tree up.
Attended Austin and Sarah's band concerts.
Austin attends my alma mater and has the same band director I did in high school!
Sarah plays the flute in the 6th grade band.
Most of her classmates started band this year, but she started at her previous school last year, so she is a year ahead of her peers in her new school. They sounded great for only playing for a few months!
Austin started playing basketball for BSM.
Sarah and Trevor made Austin some signs for his cheering section.
We saw Anastasia at the Orpheum.
It was rescheduled 3 or 4 times due to the pandemic, but the theater is now reopened and we were able to enjoy a night out at the show.
Christmas cookie day!
(Disclaimer: we did NOT actually use that much butter!)
I had already made the dough and baked the cookies, so I made some frosting, got out our collection of sprinkles, and the kids had fun decorating.
I got to celebrate my bestie Ann's birthday with her and her family.
Trevor and I did some fun Christmas puzzles.
We attended Christmas Eve Mass in person for the first time in a couple years.
The continued our tradition of going to Cheesecake Factory for dinner afterward.
Ready for Santa to visit.
(I forgot the Christmas jammies this year until I had to scramble to find some still in stock on my way home from work on Christmas Eve! I managed to find the sizes we needed in this cute Christmas tree print and had them washed and ready before bed!)
Christmas morning.
Our blessings abound!
Christmas gifts...
Trevor has been into Pokemon the last few weeks and was excited to receive Pokemon toys.
He got a very big (16+ age) LEGO pirate ship from Gramma and PopPop. This one will keep him occupied for a while!
Sarah loves her new cozy robe from Nanny!
A new sloth calendar for 2022!
Our little Dorky!
Austin enjoys doing logic puzzles and received a few books of puzzles to keep him occupied.
Another Christmas puzzle Trevor and I did.
A selfie to prove I was actually there on Christmas morning!
We had Christmas dinner at Nanny and Grandpa's and were happy that Jenny, Amin, and baby Adam could join us!
All the kids.
We had a relaxing day the next day playing some of our new games.
On December 26th, we were notified that Austin had a COVID exposure at basketball a couple days before Christmas. He got congestion and a cough on Monday, December 27th, so I popped in to clinic with him and tested him and myself for COVID (since I was going to work the next day to cover for a colleague who is out on leave). We have 4-plex tests at clinic that test for COVID, influenza A and B, and RSV. I was all negative, but Austin somewhat surprisingly tested negative for COVID, but positive for influenza A. There has been a TON of flu around lately! When we got home, Trevor had gone down too.
This was Trevor and Austin for most of Monday and Tuesday.
Sarah was OK for a couple days, but she went down on Wednesday.
Steve has some symptoms, but didn't get as sick as the kids. I got a little sniffly and that was it.
I've had a bad back and neck for...well pretty much forever. My back has been getting worse lately, so I set up an appointment with ortho spine and had an MRI done right before Christmas. The conclusion is that I have issues at L4-5 - a bulging disc compressing the nerve there, edema of my vertebral body there, edema of the facet joints there, and some random cysts lower down on my sacral spine that seem to be behaving for the moment. I have to do some intensive PT and have injections in my spine. Here's hoping the pain improves!
(For the nerds in the audience, here are a couple shots from my MRI that I labelled with arrows to demonstrate findings.)
With that, we are on to 2022! Lets hope it is a better year. 2021 has been a doozie!
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