Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!
We hope you all had a very merry Christmas! We had such a nice time! Kim made Christmas Eve dinner for a bunch of us and it was so delicious. We relaxed and visited with each other. We spent Christmas night at Kim and Wayne’s home. We all used to spend the night at Nana and Papa’s until they passed away in 1994. I picked up Kevin after work about midnight and he spent the night too. Wendy and the kids had been over for dinner but were spending the night at home. Joshua took home cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer. I told him that the reindeer also love broccoli but that Santa frowned on feeding it to them. It makes them fart and Santa has to sit behind them....Joshua thought that was pretty funny. Cliff and Jenny spent the night too and we all had fun opening presents in the morning. Kim provides all kinds of breakfast drinks and fixings and is just a warm, fuzzy morning. We take our time opening presents one by one. I really enjoyed Cliff and Kevin. Kevin loves Cliff and they get along so well. Cliff just fits into the family like he was meant to be with us. In the afternoon we went to Linda and Bill’s house to share Christmas with my side of the family and have Christmas day dinner. Linda cooked another huge meal and it was delicious. Sue and her family were there, Thomas was back from Russia, Robert was there with Caleb and Wendy and the kids were there. Larry and Heidi and Karen were there too. I painted and framed a 16x20 deer picture for Larry and he loved it. I liked it so much I wanted to keep it for myself. Brian did great with all the festivities but tired easily. With both of our disease processes we sleep about 12 hours and now Brian is finding he needs a nap as well. Our home is a mess with presents and boxes here and there. I don’t like to put them away right away because I like to look at them and enjoy the memories. Wendy was over today and said she was already taking down her decorations. I like to wait until after New Year’s. Christmas isn’t just a day, it is a season and I am not ready to end it yet!

Grateful

There are so many things to be grateful for this time of year, all year in fact. I am grateful for the warmth of our cottage apartment, especially when it is so freezing outside. Being cold is so painful for me. I lose the circulation in my hands and feet and they turn blue and white. This is from Raynaud’s. It takes a while to get them warm and it is painful when the circulation returns. I know our home is hot to everyone else but it feels so good to me. Luckily, I just got on a discount rate from Smud for having to use oxygen and for scleroderma. Even then, I don’t think my bill will be cheap. But it’s only for a few months and then the sun will shine again.
Kevin spent Monday night with us and I made him and Brian brownies with homemade chocolate icing. They acted like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I am so grateful for the time we share with Kevin and Wendy and the kids. Sat. night was our Disney Christmas party and Wendy and the kids were there. Sunday, I treated Kim and I to the Singing Christmas Tree for her birthday and Kevin, Wendy and the kids went too. It is easy to just run through life, hurrying from one thing to another. Brian and I know that we can not take a single day for granted. Each moment is so precious to us and we try to enjoy each and every minute. I made Brian meatloaf for dinner, his favorite meal. He enjoyed it so much. Just a small thing as this is so fulfilling. I am so grateful that I can do little things like this to make him happy. Doing for others, from our hearts, has to be one of the greatest gifts we have as humans. That and the capacity to love. Together, I feel so good!

Christmas Movies

Brian and I watch every Christmas movie we can and many of them several times. Family channel and Hallmark have one or two movies every day. And they all make us cry at the end. If we were like the Grinch and our hearts got 2 sizes bigger every time we felt the Christmas spirit...why our hearts would be...well they would be HUGE! Brian even admits he likes Christmas more than Halloween now. And he is more emphatic about watching Christmas shows than I am. And always at the end, he says, “This is killing me!” The other night we were watching Home Alone which is one of my favorite Christmas movies. (My most favorite is How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carey. When he mimics Ron Howard’s directing I know I am in on a personal joke!) Anyway, at the end of Home Alone, Brian and I were both crying. Christmas movies are all feel good movies that make you happy to be alive. We have so many warm, fuzzy memories of Christmas’s past. We are so lucky to have such a warm loving family to share our Christmas’s with. Each movie we watch evokes those memories and makes us cry.

Christmas

Brian has always helped me shop for Christmas presents. When Wendy and Kevin were little, we would go to Toys R Us the day after Thanksgiving and shop for them. Brian and I would each have a cart, one for each of the kids and we could fill them up for about $100. each. I admit, that was 25 plus years ago. Brian always went shopping by himself for me. He always got me beautiful clothes and accessories. He has wonderful taste. He would bring his shopping home and delighted in showing his gifts to Kim and close friends. He wrapped his gifts himself and I had so much fun opening them on Christmas morning. Of course those days are over. I no longer work and need nice buisness clothes. Sweats are the norm now. The past few years, Kim has taken Brian to do his shopping and then she wraps his gifts for him. Brian has been fretting for the past two months over what he wants to get me for Christmas. He worries he doesn’t know what to do. I always assure him that Kim will help him and he is satisfied for that moment. We get paid the week of Christmas so Brian has to wait until then to do his shopping. Kim is off work that week so that works out fine. With all the other problems Brian could fret about, that he frets about Christmas Shopping for me makes me cry. It has never been what he has gotten me, but that he takes so much pleasure and makes such a wonderful effort to make sure Christmas is fun for me. That is one of the reasons I have always loved Brian so much.

Daily Living

Thanks to Catherine, Brian has been back on aricept for the past few weeks. However, he continues to show changes from Alzheimer’s. Where as before, the changes were on a weekly basis, I am seeing changes on a daily basis. Each day is a learning process. It is frustrating for Brian when he spills or makes a mess and he is so apologetic, saying over and over again how sorry he is. I tell him he doesn’t need to be sorry, it is his disease process and it is not his fault. But he does feel badly to not be in control of himself. I feel his sorrow for this loss of self and I try to make light of the situation for him. Alzheimer’s is such a mean disease. Brian is conscious that his life and memory are slipping by and he can’t do anything about it. He is not angry about it and only rarely shows frustration. It is scary for him. We continue to joke and laugh about it and that makes him feel better. The other day he said that that president had this. He meant Ronald Reagan. I told him that Ronald did go through the same things as he was experiencing and if Ron and Nancy could do it, so could we. We both thought that was funny and now when faced with a situation, I refer to ourselves as Ron and Nancy. While laughing helps a lot, it doesn’t always work. Yesterday, as I was cleaning up a mess, Brian said he didn’t know how I could handle things every day and he was sorry I had to do this. I told him that I do it because I love him and I know that he would do the same for me if our positions were reversed.