Change in Christmas plans in Another Open Diary refugee

We were just going to have a quiet time at home alone and I was going to make a pork loin with apricot stuffing… but John’s sister called last night to find out if we were coming up for Christmas. We hadn’t planned on it - John has to work Christmas Eve and Boxing Day - but his remaining siblings are getting on in years and his sister is in very poor health, so we never know how many more Christmasses there’ll be… so we’re going to make a flying visit. Drive up as soon as John finishes work on Christmas Eve (which will hopefully be early because the banks close at 2pm anyway…) visit Christmas Day, and drive home as soon as we wake up on Boxing Day since it’s not a holiday in the US… it’s only 2-1/2 hours from here on a good day, three if there’s a lot of traffic. Of course, we have to assume that we’ll be in the MOST traffic, same as the time we drove up the night before Thanksgiving and it was bumper to bumper all the way, but we live a good hour and a half closer than we did then, so it’s doable… I won’t get to go to church for Christmas, but that’s okay - we’ve made it to enough ‘church’ Christmas things this month and we were in church on Sunday to take Communion… and family is important. So here’s to family Christmases.

Now I just have to quickly rustle up some small Christmas gifts… we bought a stuffed elephant for Rita at the children’s concert last week and I already wanted to give her my ‘doggy’ mini album, but I don’t have anything special for Dick and Roger. I’ll give them one of my handdrawn notebooks and maybe get a pen to go with them. Not a very elaborate gift, but it took a good hour or two for me to do each drawing…