Happy New Year - Highlights and Lowlights From the Last Few Weeks

The holiday season is always busy, and this one was no different. We had our share of joy and chaos and food. Where to begin?

My brother-in-law out in Ohio has taken up hunting and, for Christmas, sent me a box with 2 venison roasts, 2 pounds of ground venison, 2 pheasants, 2 partridges, venison snack sticks, a venison summer sausage, and 4 goose breasts. Since two of the goose breasts were starting to thaw (even though the food was packed on dry ice, it was supposed to be an overnight delivery but it took 3 days and, yes, they got their money back for the shipping costs) we had them the night they arrived. My husband grilled them and I made an elderberry-cranberry-port reduction. Most of us thought they were lovely. The youngerchild apparently doesn't like meat that's a little "gamey." I have plans for some of the rest, like maybe venison meatballs or venison lasagna or something.

There was a quick run up to Christmas eve, in which the youngerchild was sick with a bad cold and I worked all the way through the 23rd. We had our first Christmas with my parents a week early. We had our second Christmas, with just the four of us, on the 22nd. On the morning of the 24th we flew to Denver to spend Christmas with my family out there and then go skiing. This is where the chaos set in.

We've done this ski trip thing for many years, right? We have it down to a science. We know how much food to get (as long as my husband doesn't go off script at the grocery store) and what meals we can easily cook in a small and not perfectly stocked kitchen. We have not, in the past, had to deal with illness. What happened was this - the youngerchild suddenly developed a fever and didn't want to get out of bed. We spent Christmas afternoon at an urgent care, with a negative flu test but a tentative diagnosis of pneumonia. Antibiotics were started. I asked the doctor if we could go to the altitude where our rental condo was; he assured me all would be fine.

Nope.

Up at altitude the fevers did not go away. After a day where the youngerchild did not ski and one of our friends did not ski but the rest of us did, in the night things seemed to be worse: breathing fast and really hot. The next morning we went to the urgent care on the mountain where it was quickly demonstrated that my youngerchild needed oxygen. A chest X ray showed a pneumonia but on the opposite side of where the original doctor thought. A different antibiotic was started and the options were to stay at altitude with oxygen or go down to a lower altitude and it was likely oxygen wasn't going to be needed. In my opinion there was no choice so the youngerchild and I left, leaving my husband, the elderchild, and our friends to stay and ski. I got a home oxygen saturation monitor and checked frequently, the first day was a little dicey but then things got better quickly. So we hung out with my sister and waited for the rest of the crew to finish the trip.

The original plan was this: we had the rental condo until 1/1, everyone was supposed to ski 4 out of 5 days, finishing up on 12/31. However, it was really warm up there (apparently the only part of the country that was) and after 3 days everyone decided to return their skis, book a snowboarding lesson for 12/31, and then come down a day early so we could be together for New Year's Eve. But then another event happened which threw that into disarray as well: they decided to go ice skating. Yeah. Suddenly I get a call on 12/30 that my husband had fallen, hit his head and, "there's a lot of blood." My friends sounded nervous, so I made them put him on the phone. He sounded fine. I had them take him to the same urgent care where he apparently started repeating himself. As I'm trying not to panic too much, thinking about concussions, head bleeds, CT scans and how to delay our flights and the fact that the kids have to be back at school on 1/2 and how am I going to get him down to where I was and whether he'd be safe to fly I eventually get another call that he's looking and sounding better and his head is getting stitched up. They get the intern on the phone with me so we can chat and we decide that he can be watched by our friends and then come down tomorrow. Snowboarding lessons were cancelled, everything else that had been planned was cancelled, and early on 12/31 they packed up and came down to Denver. Thankfully by then he just had a headache and we were able to go to the movies.

With regards to the cooking, I managed to get chickens roasted on the first day, the leftovers were turned into soup the next day. After that, the rest of the gang were on their own, and they seem to have fed themselves just fine.

Now we're all home, and we all feel as though we need a vacation from our vacation!