Festivus for the Rest of Us!

In the interest of not stealing any thunder from my friend over at Black Belt Mama and her ACL surgery (which seems to have gone well, overall), I will preface this post by saying that I am happy and our family has had a wonderful Christmas... overall. There were some snags, though.

First, on the positive note, Santa brought us Rockband. If you are a fan of the Guitar Hero series, you're almost surely familiar with this product. The riffs for guitar or bass are not as difficult as those in Guitar Hero. Medium isn't hard at all. There is also a vocal part, which is actually pretty fun, but difficult for the many songs with which I am not familiar. There are also a lot of songs the lyrics for which I am completely oblivious, so it's like really bad karaoke. Which is actually fun, in a gong show kind of way.

For me, what makes this so awesome are the drums. If anyone out there has ever entertained fantasies of being the drummer for a rock band, this is the game for you. The "drum set" consists of a group of four drum pads and a pedal. The kit comes with a pair of drumsticks. You really get to bang it, just like a real drum. The rhythms are familiar and even at medium, you really feel like you're drumming. I've been playing off and on as I feel up for it and am pretty comfortable at medium. The jump from medium to hard is a relatively big one, so I'm just going to have to play around in practice mode for a while.

So, that was our big present from Santa for the family. We've all had fun playing around with it. We had several things happen that have made this Christmas a bit of a challenge. First, I've been sick all week. Moving from one illness to the next over the past few weeks, I felt pressure in my sinuses a few days back and have been running a ~100-101F fever since Sunday morning. I tried to avoid making anyone else sick, but couldn't stay out of the way completely.

Sunday started off with feeling like crap, but I figured I'd just take it easy in the afternoon and watch football with my MIL's brother (who stayed with us over the weekend until yesterday.) Earlier that day, I had run out with my wife on a quick errand and she made a comment about the extra car in the driveway and how we'd need to be careful. Truer words were never spoken as just a few short hours later I got a call to come out to the driveway. That's right. My wife bumped her Uncle's car. While she was clearly not going very fast, it did sufficient damage that we're going to need to get our car fixed and he's already filed a claim against my insurance. On the one hand, it bugs me that my premiums will probably go up, but on the other, that's what insurance is for and it was an accident.

The weekend wore on... ill, with a fever, medicated and with no appetite, I was the one who cooked Christmas Eve Dinner. That makes sense. Right? My wife was definitely there to help, which was awesome, cause I don't think I could've done it without her. I obsessively washed my hands and avoided working with anything that wasn't going to get thoroughly cooked, but ultimately, I figured if my MIL and her brother were really intent on staying, they were taking their chances of coming down with whatever I have. It's not like I tried to conceal it.

We had a ham with honey mustard glaze and a grilled mango and pineapple salsa from a recipe I saw on Foodnetwork.com. I'm told it was delicious, although I ate a few bites that I couldn't really taste.

Later that evening, we tried playing a game of Cranium. That's a fun game that my wife and I had played before, but never with our kids... or my MIL. Suffice to say that it didn't go well. She got flustered and after accusing us of cheating and one point and continually insisting that she was terrible at everything (drawing, acting, humming, playing with playdough... pretty much everything that makes the game fun), I couldn't wait to finish and go to bed. It's now about 7pm and I'm wiped and tired of trying to fake it.

Christmas morning was awesome. Still feverish, I tried to buck up and have fun with the kids, and it seemed to work for the most part. My son got a Rip Stick, and he's been out playing with it but has asked me several times to go out with him and I can't yet.

Today, we sat around playing video games. My fever broke this morning and I'm feeling better, although I still have sinus pressure and congestion. Hopefully, the healing will continue. Both my daughter and I missed class today, but I think I'm on the mend, so maybe Friday.

So, Merry Christmas to everyone, and hope all have a Happy New Year! While this will go down in the books as a good one for me and mine, there will definitely be an asterisk beside it in the record books.