After Christmas Update...

Things have been a little crazy around here the last few weeks. It seemed to take me forever to get all the Christmas stuff put up which is why I have no intention of taking it down for a while. I normally leave my decorations up until the Epiphany in January, but this year I'm leaving things up even longer.

Although our winters aren't cold here...they are a little gloomy. I like to come out in the morning and light up the tree. It makes winter seem a little less gloomy to me.

Right before Christmas Reid had a PET scan and a doctor's appointment at MD Anderson. His one lymph node lit up slightly on the scan. If it was you or me they'd probably ignore it, but because of his history of Hodgkin's they have to keep an eye on it. The doctor has told us before that even a scratch on his arm could cause that to happen. It's not unusual. If he had to put odds on it he'd say there's an 80% chance it is not Hodgkin's. He'll have a CT scan this month and we'll see what that shows. He went down last week for the clinical trial IV. He likes to joke that cancer doesn't take holidays off.

Jim also had an appointment before Christmas and in spite of the injections he's been receiving his PSA went up. He's been put on an oral medication and will begin receiving a different injection this month. He's been feeling fine, so I suspect the oral medication is helping. Meanwhile, he's looking forward to the Houston Texans playoff game on Saturday! (I'm looking forward to it too!) We'll try and get down to the stadium early and beat the crowd.

On Christmas Day we went down to the Hotel Galvez in Galveston for their Christmas buffet. I meant to bring my camera but forgot! That's OK...it probably would have been a series of blurry pictures anyway. The food was delicious and we ate like pigs. It was nice to see Reid eating well this Christmas since he spent the last two Christmases feeling yucky from chemo.

We came home and opened packages. Troy was "Christmas Boy" again this year. It's a family tradition that one member of the family is chosen (AKA stuck, coerced) to bare this title and hand out the gifts. Of course, he had to wear the official Christmas Boy hat.

Can't you see the joy on his face?


Of course, Zoom was excited and couldn't wait, so she began before the rest of us.



We didn't forget the cats. They received a sock monkey bed which went perfectly with my sock monkey collection that I placed beneath the tree this year. Ashley is actually sleeping in the bed, but it's kind of hard to see him in the picture.



Jim had a Houston Texans Christmas this year. He now has a very large Houston Texans wardrobe including a new hat, shirts, Snuggie, etc. He got just about everything except Houston Texans underwear.


This is the only picture of Reid and Keith that didn't turn out blurry. They were actually happy on Christmas Day, but you'd never know it by this picture.



While we were in the other room Ashley was busy. I came into the kitchen and found a bump under the tablecloth.



I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.

Happy New Year!

GO TEXANS!! (We're all fans around here.)