Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The Eve of New Years Eve

Today Rob had a nice surprise. They let him leave work after half a day and sent him home with his paycheck and he will be paid the rest of today, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day also. YEAH!!! The joy of working for me is the paid days off. I missed all my paid hoidays this year: Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. I feel cheated.

I went back to my doctor Monday. She said I am not ready to return to work Jan. 4th as planned and pushed the date back to Jan. 31st instead. I think that was a good idea as I get tired during the day and usually still require a nap. Besides that I need to monitor my temperature and I need my breathing to get easier. My lungs seem to be improving but slowly.

Today is my parents 59th anniversary. I told Dad and he seemed to understand. I took them over Maryland crab cakes for dinner and peppermint ice cream for dessert. Dad seemed excited. His highlight of the day is his bedtime snack of ice cream which he prefers in a cone. My mother loved the gifts I bought from Dad for her for Christmas: a periwinkle blue sweater and a silver necklace that looked like an antique white gold disc with pave' diamonds (actually czs).
There is talk about my siblings discontinuing the gift exchange. One brother has never participated but the other two and my sister have always exchanged. It has created some confusion as the kids got older. Once the kids are grown do you continue to give them? What if you do and they don't give you? My brother who has no kids feels that this is unfair to him. It goes on and on. I feel when it becomes so stressful that perhaps it is time to stop. My sister's girls are college graduates (actually both going for graduate degrees part time) and they give us gifts. In that case noone minds but some others who are grown and have kids of their own seem to expect us to give their kids when they don't give us (the aunts and uncles). All of us in this economy struggle with these issues. Curious if any of you have these issues in your family to and if so what you did about it.
Talk amongst yourselves. :)

5 comments:

Susan C said...

Wishing you and Rob and your entire family a happy and HEALTHY New Year.

I'm so relieved that your medical leave has been extended. You need time to heal.

jennifer said...

Nice surprise for Rob. Nice way to end the year and begin the new one. Glad you got your sick leave extended; mine ends Jan. 11, but I only go in three days per week.

When my family started to expand in abundance and trying to buy for everyone got expensive and crazy (not to mention the ones without kids - me - feeling compelled to buy for all of the kids) and then the kids got older (and their gifts more expensive, ahem) we went to an exchange. Everybody brings one gift. No names. Then we draw numbers and each person gets to unwrap one gift or steal a gift already unwrapped. We set a price limit, everybody gets a gift, nobody goes bankrupt and it's kinda fun to shop around, trying to find the most creative gift that will appeal to the most people. This year the gifts ranged from a collection of fast food gift cards to a popcorn popper to one idiot bringing a bottle of windshield de-icer.

Happy New Year Nelle!! Hopefully the next one is better than the current one - for both of us.

Virginia said...

My maternal grandparents has 27 grandchildren. It wasn't practical to get everyone presents. We put all the names in a hat that wanted to participate in a gift exchange and each family drew out the same number of names as they put it. That was resonable and fair.

Happy New Year!

Virginia

TARYTERRE said...

Happy New Year to you and your family. May better health prevail in 2010. Glad to hear your medical leave will be extended to the end of the month. You need that time to improve your circumstances. We still give presents to adult children in our family... None are over twenty-five. It might change in the next few years, though... since we never get a thank-you note in return. Needless to say, that irritates me.

Ronni Gordon said...

Here's to a healthy, happy and peaceful 2010! I've never done it, but I've heard both kinds of gift exchanges are fun: the one where you trade and the one where you pick names from a hat.