Christmas Adam

Without much commentary, here's Christmas at my Mom's house. Actually on Christmas Adam, or Festivus if you would rather not think about Adam combing before Eve.

Mom made her inimitable fried chicken for us, which was actually kind of a bigger deal than it normally is because she took a nasty fall and had to kind of phone in Thanksgiving. Given what my wife has been through following a traumatic brain injury, I feared Mom was in for bigger long term trouble than it seems like is manifesting.

Despite a significant delay in even getting seen, and despite bleeds that were visible on scans (Corinna had none, though she's had a boatload of longterm consequences).

Anyway, it was great that Mom was up to frying chicken, and that Corinna was able to at least make the dinner portion of the festivities. And it was great to see Em and Patrick, I don't see much of my eldest daughter since she had the temerity to grow up and get a place of her own.

My nephew was playing with the girder set my brother and I grew up with, which was cool. I got him a model rocket starter setup, I meant to do something like that for his birthday and it didn't happen. So I got him a two rocket Estes ready-to-fly setup and a pack of A motors (the lower they fly the more likely you are to get them back, and the lad is five).

Em was wearing a Shawnee Mission North sweatshirt I wore in high school. It fits her, which shows how much a shirt can shrink in 25 years (and how much I have expanded).

I made rubber stamps for the people on my list this year. Well, I designed them, a company my employer has a relationship with manufactured them. I've had some customers get custom return address stamps through us, and I made a comment that it was hard to figure since snail mail is so out of style, but a coworker was like, 'I love mine.'

It got to be a fun project trying to design things the reflected people's personalities. And in the case of Em and Patrick, I know their address is not likely permanent, it's their first apartment and it's a rental situation, but I reasoned that it would be a memento of their first digs together if nothing else.

My daughters got quilts from my Mom among other things. She quilts a lot, and they're impressive.

And Santa brought us all 2015 Royals championship t-shirts. Legit ones, not the bootleg street vendor stuff I normally buy for myself. Santa cares about licensing. And that's cool, I wouldn't want to take food off the table of Major League Baseball.

Of more immediate pleasure than model rockets, my nephew got a marble track setup. He was so wound up in it, fun with gravity and all that, and his Dad got caught up, too. So much so that it took him like ten minutes to register that the kid was up on the table where he was told not to go.