Did I say I couldn't get sick? Well, since I am off work this week, I guess it's ok to get sick. Just a little coughing, nasal dripping, and fatigue to fill the vacation days. Bleah.
This morning, while I was still mostly asleep, Betsy asked me if there was anything I would like to accomplish this vacation. I responded with the only thing on my mind at six thirty in the morning. "I would like to sleep in until ten AM!", I foolishly replied. She spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how this could happen. Obviously, this will never happen if I sleep at home. The boys just wake up too early. So, I have an invitation from either, my parents or her mom to spend the night at their house and sleep in till ten. Now I feel like an idiot. I'll go back to work and some one will ask me what I did on my vacation and I will reply, "I slept in until ten AM on one day!" Wow! Go me! So now I'm thinking about just what I want to do on this vacation, and realizing that I was largely unaware that there is this week here and I have no plans for it. I think I'll just spend most of this time hanging with my kids. Elijah has learned how to play the memory game (you know the game where you try to flip two cards over and have them match) and it's kind of fun to play with him.
New years for this year should be interesting. Every year when I was in college I would go to Cris' house and have probably the hardest drinkin' and partyin' night of the year. After I graduated and got married I wasn't able to go anymore but Cris continued to throw New Year parties. A couple of days a go I heard that Cris had a stroke a few days earlier. He is younger than I am. He is a bit heavy and smokes a lot, and I guess his job is pretty stressful, but I was totally shocked when I heard the news. Brian decided we should get together for this New Year. It certainly won't be an old fashioned R.O.G. party, but all the regulars should be there, Cris, Doug, Brian and I, and we probably won't drink a drop of alcohol.
A few weeks ago my parents had their fortieth wedding anniversary, and we kids completely shocked them with a surprise party. Events conspired in our favor, and they had no idea what was happening right up to the moment we yelled "Surprise!" I think my mom cried four or five times during the evening and she said that my dad was even more touched than she was. Good times! The week before the surprise party they went on a trip to Mexico. A few days after they got back my oldest sister, Molly, arrived from Minnesota for the holidays with her little boy, Milo, who is around six months old. So, they were swamped with other activities and did not notice some of the suspicious stuff we did, like take a bunch of old pictures out of the house to display at the party. To get my parents to the restaurant Molly and her husband offered to take my parents out to dinner for their anniversary. The battle to get my parents to the restaurant is an interesting tale in its self. (Molly, tell about Carol's lunch menu campaign in a comment) At the restaurant we assembled all four of us kids, our spouses and children, and seven or eight of their closest friends. Sarah, my youngest sister and her husband drove down from San Francisco without my parents' knowledge to participate in the surprise. I think everyone had a good time, and most of the credit goes to my other sister Kate who really did most of the organization and my wife Betsy who helped a lot.
