Had good intentions of getting a ride in today --- spent the morning organizing Christmas gifts. For some reason I received a lot of socks as gifts this year. Not sure I'll be able to use them all so some of them may go to Goodwill.

Reorganized all the gift wrap, tissue, gift boxes, etc. from the disaster on a shelf in the basement to a better arrangement using a big flat plastic box that can go under a bed. In the process, I found an old gift card in a wine bag for a local liquor store. Ugh, it's so easy to miss little things like that.

It started raining so I went to hop on the trainer and oddly, had a flat tire. It took way longer than it should have to get the bike off the trainer and the tube changed. Not sure what happened, seems to be the valve stem. Whatever...by the time I was back in action, the urge to spend any time on the trainer had passed.

Merry Christmas BT
We had a very nice Christmas, starting in the morning when Steve's daughter and family spent the night with us. It was fun watching their kids open gifts. They packed up and left mid morning to go to the other grandparents' place, and we hosted lunch for my side of the family. Everyone made it except for a nephew who was sick (not COVID) and stayed home to rest. My niece brought her boyfriend -- first time she has introduced him to family, so it may be getting serious.

After lunch and opening gifts, the crowd moved to the basement and played pool and ping pong for a couple of hours before heading home.

All in all, a very nice Christmas -- I hope we have many more like this

Went over to Hannibal today and took the youngest grandchild out to lunch and then to one of those indoor play centers for the afternoon. His sister was having a birthday party at their house and the mom had some concerns (rightfully so) that Marshall would have wanted to horn in on the fun and would probably piss his sister off. We had a fun afternoon --- it's better for us to just do one-on-one with grandkids.

Got in a walk/jog this morning and then had mom, sister and SIL over for lunch -- we put together the big saran wrap ball that is unwrapped on Christmas Day. It's good sized and should take about an hour to get through.
About 11 this morning, we heard a BOOM so loud that the windows shook. It sounded like something exploded close by. Went outside and all the neighbors were also coming outside and looking around confused. They are saying it was a Boeing jet being tested somewhere around western Illinois.