Holiday recap!

It's time for the first annual holiday recap!

I don't know how much I'll remember, but I'll give it a shot.

My last post was December 14th. In that time, I built a table and a desk set. My mother, who is impossible to shop for, told me that she wanted a narrow console table for her entryway. She told me that I should start building, because I had a year to get it done. (I'll post a picture later.) I had some red oak lumber in the shop, so I decided to give it a go.

My daughter wanted a table and chair for her room. I, being so smart, decided that a desk and chair would be better. So I set out and made an old school style desk and chair. My daughter only got the oak plywood (hers was painted after all.) It is a nice bright purple. (I'll also update this with a photo later.)

That took most of my free time leading up to Christmas. We then had Christmas, which was good. The kids got pretty much everything they asked for, which wasn't too much this year. The oldest got a lot of "cool" clothes. The older daughter got some cooking stuff and art things, and a lalaloopsy doll (don't ask). The younger daughter got a lalaloopsy doll (don't ask), and a desk. The entire family got a Wii. The youngest was totally not interested, and didn't open his presents for days afterward. My wife got some clothes and a huge pan. I got a Roku II.

I'm moving the family away from cable tv, too expensive, and the Roku is awesome. The only drawback is it is hard to get sports. I also had to upgrade the router to make sure that the signal was strong enough. I'm also running Netflix on the Wii, but seem to be having network problems occasionally. I'll probably get a cheaper Roku player for the basement.

After Christmas we had a short work week, and then New Years Eve. I spent a good part of New Years laying down with the youngest. Part of his autism is sleep problems. We give him some medication to help, but sometimes it doesn't kick in very quickly. He was up until 11:20 p.m. I then got up, and played a few games of Uno with the wife and daughters. Then we went down and watched the ball drop in New York. Man, Dick Clark looks scary!

Then the youngest had to go in and have some dental work done. As part of his autism, he seeks for sensory input. One of his favorite is grinding his teeth. This has resulted in some bad teeth. We took him in, and he had to be sedated (general anesthesia). They weren't able to get great x-rays of his teeth in the office, so the first thing they did was take x-rays. They found worse problems than they thought, and he ended up with eight crowns, and numerous cavities. When they brought him out of anesthesia, his mother went back with him. I could hear his screaming from the other end of the surgical center. When they finally called me back, he had blood on his face and was throwing a tantrum on the ground. We think he was upset because he had Novocaine on top of the general. It must have felt like he had a bandage on his face, and he kept trying to scrape it off. I picked him up and took him to the van. He threw one more tantrum before I could get him in, in which he made it to the ground. I put him in, and strapped him down. About half way home, as we were on the interstate, he managed to squirm down in his seat until he caught his chin on the seat belt. I had to pull over so my wife could fix it.

We finally got him home, and he was inconsolable. We gave him his sleeping medication and he finally went to sleep. After he woke up, he was still dazed for the rest of the day. He was also dazed the next day. Finally, around 3-4 in the afternoon, he woke up and started to be himself again. Now he is starting to act normally, but the crowns are bugging him. (They left the crowns on his molars longer so he had difficulty grinding his teeth.)

Well, that pretty much sums it up. I'll update the post once I have the pictures. Hooray for the holidays.