A Big Surprise for Lukey and Kenzie
We usually start all the Christmas festivities immediately after the holiday I despise, Thanksgiving. There are one or two other holidays that bother me a bit but I truly despise Thanksgiving. I always make the best of that holiday anyway and, by the end of that long holiday weekend, all of our Christmas decorations are up and the tree is decorated. This year, however, Christmas came a little earlier. We started our Christmas gift-giving on Halloween night!
Those who read this blog regularly probably already know that this year has been absolutely miserable when it comes to my health but I'll add a little background here anyway. This year started out with an ambulance ride to the hospital and I've had about a dozen visits since then for follow-ups and tests. I had a more extensive bone marrow biopsy not long after my ambulance ride to the hospital. Shortly after that biopsy, I fell on the biopsy site. We've had to cancel about a half dozen weekend out-of-town trips that we had planned. All this after three years of absolutely no travel from the house during the pandemic. So it has been a very long time since we traveled anywhere.
Through this year's health problems, my treatment has changed a bit with increased dosages and a new medication added to my already long list of medications. I really haven't felt like I was even beginning to recover until late in the summer. It rained all summer anyway so we stayed indoors all summer. We do feel like we completely lost summer due to the rain but not due to my lousy health so all the rain was actually sort of a good thing. Now a couple more months have passed and I'm finally feeling like I can safely wander from home for a very short while every now and then.
I still need a lot of time to recover when I do wander from home but I have finally been able to do some little things around the house and wander from the house for a few hours without ending up in the hospital again or struggling with some other major health catastrophe that requires significant downtime.
Since I have been feeling a bit more stable lately, we've been to one of Lukey's hockey games, a few of Kenzie's soccer games and a few of Kenzie's figure skating practices. I do better in cooler environments so, now that I am writing about this, I realize that some of these activities are in cooler environments such as ice rinks which is good for my health. Warm environments are terrible for my health. There is a happy medium, however. Frigid environments are not so great for me either. Then again, frigid environments aren't really all that great for anyone. I really do have far more difficulties with my health and especially my breathing in warmer and hotter environments. Any environments above the 70s quickly and significantly impacts my overall health.
Anyway, lately, I've been feeling a bit more stable and I have finally been breathing a bit more easily. Breathing has been my major complaint this past year followed closely by significant bone pain and joint pain. My doctors are thinking that having multiple bouts of COVID (and now 'long COVID') has seriously impacted my Systemic Mastocytosis. My mast cells are already over-active and more abundant than they should be but inflammation in my lungs caused by COVID has made my mast cells even more over-active and abundant as they attack the lingering COVID inflammation. This mast cell activity causes a cascading event on a cellular level that happens with my mast cells causing life-threatening health problems. And, since the inflammation is in my lungs, my breathing has been abysmal.
On the positive side, the past couple of months have shown a noticeable improvement in my overall health. I meet with my oncologist next week but I expect that appointment to be relatively uneventful. My bloodwork has stopped progressing in the wrong direction recently so that means the changes we've made to my treatment have been in the right direction. As a result, I expect my oncologist to be happy with most of my latest bloodwork results. There are one or two lingering problems but I don't think anything can be done about those.
Since I have been feeling more stable lately and consistent stability seems to be something that is becoming rarer and rarer, Sheila and I have decided that this is the year we should take Lukey and Kenzie to Manhattan for Christmas. The thought is we should do it while we can.
We've been talking with Lukey and Kenzie about taking Amtrak down to Penn Station for years and especially at Christmastime when it seems like all of Manhattan is uniquely decorated for Christmas. Liza gave us the go-ahead to take them out of school for the week before Christmas so this is the year for the 'Christmastime in Manhattan' trip. Sheila and I immediately started planning the trip without Lukey and Kenzie's knowledge of the trip.
Within a few hours, Sheila and I had all of the major things covered and reserved. We want to do and see a lot of things while in Manhattan and we're hoping we can fit them all into two full days. We'll have one travel day and arrive into Penn Station in the evening. And we'll have a full day of travel on our way back home. That gives us two full days and nights in mid-town Manhattan to see the typical iconic Manhattan Christmas sites.
Sheila and I have done this exact same trip a few times in the past 15 years so we're fairly confident this is enough time for Kenzie and Lukey to see the most iconic sites in mid-town Manhattan. It will be hectic and exhausting but we know it can be done since we've done it a few times already. Plus, Lukey and Kenzie enjoy riding on Amtrak so the journey is definitely a significant part of the trip. We'll be in comfy Business class on the way down to Manhattan. Unfortunately, Business class was full for our trip back to Vermont so we'll be in Coach for the return trip. We'll continue to check for cancellations though in the off-chance we can get into Business Class for the return trip too.
Then we needed to figure out how we would surprise Lukey and Kenzie with this gift.
We knew we didn't want to wait until the last minute to tell them about this trip. We figured there was probably no way to keep it a secret that long anyway plus we knew we still had more planning to do as well as shopping to do for the trip. We decided that we should surprise them when they came over to our house for Halloween so we began our Christmas festivities last night by surprising Lukey and Kenzie with this early Christmas present.
We had come up with a rather simple plan on how to surprise the kids but then, on Halloween morning, Lukey mentioned to Sheila that he knew he was getting a gift at our house! I knew I had to change the plans a bit to divert their thoughts so we could still surprise them.
When they arrived at our house, we told them that we needed them to come to the house on this night so we could get their measurements for clothing we planned to buy for them for Christmas gifts. This definitely explained why we needed them to visit us on this night so that was a successful first step at diverting their attention from a "gift".
Sheila had previously purchased new boots for both of them so they needed to try those on too. This also was a very good reason why we would need them to visit our house and actually could explain rumors of a "gift". At this point I was fairly confident that I had thrown them off any of these previously conceived thoughts about some special "gift" if they actually had any of these thoughts.
While I measured one of them, the other tried on their new boots. I took their measurements then we sent them over to the couch where I like to shoot photos of them opening Christmas gifts. The couch provides a decent background without clutter. Plus our home is small but this particular angle allows me room to move around for photos at slightly different angles. They were a little confused on why they needed to sit on the couch but they quickly jumped onto the couch.
I put two small gift-wrapped boxes in front of them and told them that since it is now getting colder outside (it is now below freezing at night), we thought they could use some little "warmers". I explained that these are nothing special but simply some small early Christmas gifts so they could keep warm as Christmas approached. As they began opening these little gift boxes, I explained that they just need to put these "warmers" in the oven for a few minutes and then they could keep warm. They opened their small gift-wrapped boxes to find a rock in each box!
They looked at me with a bit of attitude and squinted eyes and, with a bit of a smile, I said, "HA! This is what the non-believers get for Christmas!" Pop (Sheila's dad) then explained that these actually are good warmers and they work well... Lukey and Kenzie were just rolling their eyes.
On a side note... I had go out into the backyard in the rain to find appropriate rocks that would make ideal pocket hand warmers and then clean them. Then I actually had to make a couple of small boxes since we had none in the house. I pulled a larger piece of cardboard out of the recycling bin and cut it appropriately so I could fold it into a small box. (For those who always complained about the math problems in school about making boxes being a waste of time... I can tell you with absolute certainty that it is not.) Then I did the same for the second small box. After nestling the rocks in their little gift boxes, I wrapped them with Christmas wrap. My point in mentioning this is to explain that some effort went into creating this seemingly small diversionary tactic.
I joke around with the grandchildren for at least one gift every Christmas so I don't think they were all that surprised nor were they very amused by opening a small gift box containing a rock but this turned out to be another effective diversionary tactic.
I then pulled out two larger gift-wrapped presents for them to open. These two presents were a coat for each of them for the trip to Manhattan. Now, we were fairly confident that I had thrown them completely off the trail to any preconceived thoughts they may have had of getting some significant "gift" this night. Clothes, although necessary and pricy, are never considered a significant gift. Their thoughts were that the boots and winter coats were indeed this rumored gift.
After they tried on their new coats, I acted as though I forgot something small and dismissingly said, "Oh yeah... I forgot your Christmas cards" and handed each of them a single card.
When they opened the card, they found a round trip Amtrak ticket to Manhattan. Their reaction actually surprised me. They were speechless. These two rather loud chatterboxes were actually speechless! Lukey was frozen with his mouth wide open and eyes wide for what seemed like an eternity. I was shooting video of all of this (at the bottom of this page) and he was so completely still for so long that it appears as though the video has frozen. What gives it away that the video didn't freeze is that you can see flashes from my camera and see Kenzie move a bit. While Lukey was frozen with his mouth agape, I think Kenzie was now wondering if this was another joke because she was also quiet and just staring at the Amtrak ticket. I could tell that she was processing this information in her head...
"is Papa pulling our legs again?"
"Is this real?"
"Wait, did I read this right?"
I don't think I've ever seen them speechless!
So, even though Lukey found out that they would be getting a "gift" on Halloween night, I do believe we successfully found a way to throw them off the scent and completely shock them anyway. It was a really nice night and we're definitely looking forward to this trip with them!
Here is a short video of them opening the gift cards containing the "tickets" for Amtrak as well as to each of the sites we plan to visit with them...
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