Whew! Was that it?

Hard to believe that it's all over and we're slowly drifting back to real life. This week - the seven days between Christmas and New Year's - is always most enjoyable. It's time to relax, read, listen to music, watch movies, gather ourselves together, and spend some time getting ready for a new year.

Elizabeth arrived safely, and returned home safely. It didn't inspire confidence that she went into town in Thompson and managed to drive herself into a snowbank. Had couple of people stop to push her out. Her bumper is cracked. She said the road was really icy and she just couldn't stop. Then we had to watch her get on a 500-mile icy, snowy, empty road, and not worry ourselves silly. But all's well that ends well and she arrived home in one piece to everybody's great relief. We found out, while she was on the road, that we now have cell phone coverage all the way to Winnipeg. It might not help when we're half-way down there but it's nice to know that we can phone somebody. Before now we only had coverage in Thompson, and it resumed again an hour-and-a-half outside Winnipeg.

It was a really nice, peaceful, quiet Christmas for us. I'm still not recovered from shingles - still in a lot of pain and so tired all the time I can hardly sit up for parts of the day. It's into its 10th week and hurts as much today as it did at the beginning. I'm going to see yet another doctor on Monday. Nothing works at keeping a person stress-free like another visit to a doctor. Geez!

We all decided to put the brakes on the whole insanity of the season. No extravagant gifts, no overspending, no overdoing everything. And it all turned out great! We kept the gift giving to books, calendars, DVDs, clothing, and some chocolates and everybody's tipple of choice, so there was no crazy running around at the last minute.

The food was good too, and this year for the first time ever we didn't have so many leftovers that we didn't know what to do with them all. And didn't eat like these were our last meals on earth. All in all it was a great success.