After Christmas

     Christmas went pretty well; better than I was expecting. Courtney enjoyed her Felines of New York book, and she also got a DVD of The Princess Bride, the cats liked all the boxes strewn about, Caleb and Trevor got some new knives and hunting caps that they were thrilled by, Amy loved all her stuff(a toy stove, baby doll, Curious George stories, etc). Caleb and Trevor have been playing the Wii games I got for them a ton(Hot Wheels for Trevor, Madden for Caleb).

     I got Leslie Knope's book on Pawnee, the complete DVD collection of Parks and Rec, a couple calendars and a couple shirts. All of which is pretty awesome.

     We went over to Grandpa and Robbie's yesterday, which was really nice. Dayla and her family weren't able to make it, because Ashley had some kind of surgery on his leg that wasn't healing properly. And they'd gone to Claremore the night before to see Robert's family and Sandi, so it was just us.Caleb, Courtney, Trevor and I threw a football around in the driveway, snacks were munched on throughout the day, a couple ricks of wood were hauled, the dogs were petted, the Thunder game was watched(they lost to the Bulls), and mostly we all just talked, sprawled around the living room. The situation was a little bit like the second verse of "Laughed Until We Cried", but in a good way. It worked. Like that tune's bridge says, "Every emotion rolled into one/A little of this, a little of that/Kind of happy, kind of sad..." So sure, there were a lot of emotions, some tough to deal with. But as the Lady Antebellum song "Need You Now" goes, "I'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all..."
     Grandpa said he had no idea what to get for me, so he just gave me some money instead. I'll need to really think for a while about what to use it on.

     We walked around some through downtown Tahlequah so Amy could look at the Nativity set up on the courthouse lawn; that was great. When you bounce around from place to place as much I have, "home" is where your cat is, but Tquah is one of those places that counts as a home base, along with Morris, Okmulgee and Westville. It just feels right to be in one of those places, even if things have changed since you were there last.