Indiana Events - Day 2 & 3

Despite receiving the sad news about Packard yesterday, we have been trying to cheerfully celebrate Christmas with David's family here in Michigan City, Indiana. Day two in Indiana (yesterday) was our official "Indiana Christmas Day". Certainly, with David's mom still in a rehabilitation facility to recover from her stroke, we needed to change up some of our traditions in order to celebrate together as a family. David's sister, Carolyn, arranged to reserve a conference room at the home so that we could all congregate together. Carolyn is great at going over the top and therefore she went out of the way to beautifully decorate the room with tons of Christmas decorations. David's mom also had no idea that we were planning on coming to visit all at the same time so she was quite surprised when she was moved to the conference room. Present were David, Madeline and I, David's brother Ed, wife Lynn and their kids Brandon and Zachary, David's sister Carolyn, her husband Dan as well as Dan's daughters, their significant others and Dan's newest grandson, Dawson, who is only a few weeks old. We had a nice time together and David's mom was thrilled.

Later in the day, we headed back to David's parents house for dinner and more gifts. After dinner, Madeline busied herself with some of her new toys while several of the adults played a friendly game of Risk. I on the other hand never learned (nor ever cared to) play that game so I kept myself busy coloring a masterpiece in one of Madeline's new coloring activity books.

After a late night last night, David, Madeline and I slept in. We also went to see the new Disney princess movie, The Princess and the Frog. The movie touched on death and I later used it as an opener to prep for breaking the news about Packard to Madeline. Wish us luck....

After spending some time visiting David's mom, we met up again with David's dad, sister and brother-in-law for dinner. (David's brother already headed back to the Milwaukee area). We had a nice evening together and we are now back in our hotel room, all settled in for he night. Since we slept in late this morning, we did not make it o the pool today. Needless to say, we must rest up for a pool excursion tomorrow or Madeline will certainly have our heads.