Merry Christmas!

I am already on my second cup of coffee on this Christmas morning. The crossword puzzle, as is my daily first activity, is done, the kitchen is clean, the dishwasher is running and the scalloped potatoes are ready to go in the oven. We had a wonderful Christmas eve, which is when we do our gifting. As always, I am so grateful to still have my parents and that at Christmas they tend to help out my bank account considerably with a donation to my finances.  My brother was thrilled with his because it will pay for his new 4 wheeler which he will be getting as soon as his wife is well. Our friends that we always share Christmas eve with furnished 24 quails for dinner and while my family went to church services, I stayed at Mom's and cooked the quails. We always have Christmas eve at my brother's lake house, but yesterday the plans changed rather quickly. His wife is really sick. In fact, she is scheduled for surgery early tomorrow morning. Seems that she had been in pain for about 6 weeks and the geniuses have finally decided that there is an abscess somewhere in her abdomen...probably on an ovary. They won't really know until they look in there with a scope tomorrow. Anyway, she is on lortab just hoping to not be an emergency before tomorrow. Because of her illness, we moved dinner to Mom's house. I went down to her house yesterday morning and got everything cleaned up and ready so that she didn't have to do anything, but cook some beans. I cleaned everything up last night to prepare to go back there today for her chicken and dressing, which she has already made. It just has to be cooked. I'm trying to make it as easy for her as I can. She is just not able to do much, but she will die trying.