Monday Morning Chit Chat - Calm After The Holiday Storm Edition

Good morning, and I hope each and every one of you had a great weekend, whether you celebrated Christmas or just enjoyed a pleasant winter weekend.

It was a good thing, as I mentioned in last Monday's post, that I decided not to stress over not getting things done for Christmas, because that's just what happened.  I have fillings for two different kinds of candy still in the freezer needing to be dipped in chocolate.  I never did make the pitas to go with the homemade hummus, and some other menu items were deleted as well.

We had a great holiday all the same.  Friday morning we ate breakfast with Shane's dad and step-mom at the IHOP.  They're making a pretty tasty Big Steak Omelet these days.  After breakfast, we shopped for some new tennis shoes for Shane and were surprisingly NOT annoyed by the last-day crowds in the stores.  Later, we joined our daughter Jean and son-in-law M at Genghis Khan Mongolian Grill for dinner and then drove through Kansas City's Country Club Plaza to look at the lights. 

We also found a surprise jewel of a neighborhood on our way home.  In an area where nearly all the homes are either Tudor Revival style, several long streets each had theme lighting.  Some streets had strings of red lights in the trees, another had multi-colored lights wrapped around the trees nearest the street and a third had sidewalks lined with luminaries.  It was obvious based on participation that these streets had been doing this for years, but it was something new to us.

Christmas morning saw Kat opening gifts and Jean and M visiting to play games and enjoy some food with us.  In the afternoon, Clay's mom and step-dad visited for a short while.  I had something of a working holiday, as I still had some food to prepare for our visit to my parents on Sunday.

Sunday morning, with Jean and M in tow, we headed to my parents home.  All of my brothers and sisters were there, and most of my nieces and nephews were able to attend, too.  All of this came as a surprise for my mom; she is not in good health, but she was able to get up and out of bed for a few hours to visit with us.  It's been about 1-1/2 years since we've been together as a group, and about six years since we did so at Christmas, so it was a special day.

We spent the rest of the day at home, just relaxing, reading, watching television and working jigsaw puzzles, and today things are definitely winding their way back to normal.  Shane is working (thankfully, work hasn't stopped yet), but Kat will be home from school all week.  Our plans for the week include slowly un-decorating the house and getting everything cleaned up and put away.  One day this week Kat and I really need to give her room a good cleaning.   Finally, we'll be bringing the week and the year to and end at a family-friendly gathering our friends' house in the country on New Year's Eve.

I really enjoyed the slower pace of our holidays this year, but I'm still glad they are over.  When I was younger, I think I thrived more on chaos and spontaneity, but now I'm more comfortable with my routines. :)

What do you have going on this week?