Christmas in Omaha

On December 17th I flew to Omaha to spend Christmas with my aunt, Sister Johanna, and Sister Jeanne. On the 18th we drove to Kansas City and had dinner with some of my cousins. There were 40 of us and we had such a good time. We were in a restaurant with one lady waiting on all of us. It really became confusing to her since we kept moving around to talk to everyone. One of my cousins in TX bought her mom and dad a bus ticket as a surprise and sent them to KC on 4-hour notice. There was a lot of hugs and kiss’s going on with lots of picture taking. On Saturday I got to see Shalom and then Melissa and Jillian. We attended a party for the poor on Saturday night then headed back to Omaha after church on Sunday.

I had a wonderful time but Omaha had a blizzard and we were snowed in over Christmas. When it started snowing we decided to go to Mercy Villa Health Care facility for Christmas Eve services. Well, none of the priest could make it so there were no services. Christmas morning the sisters tried to get one of the priests there but could not because of all the drifts. So, the sisters did a communion service and it turned out very nice. Mercy sits kind of down in a gully but maintenance kept the drives clear so that we could make it from one building to the other.

Johanna had a therapy treatment on Tuesday morning and decided to stop and pick up a small turkey just in case we were snowed in. It paid off. Everyone’s plans were cancelled and so Johanna and Jeanne had all of the sisters on their floor to Christmas dinner. It turned out very nice. After Christmas day the weather improved a little each day and we finally could move around some.

Johanna and Jeanne purchased a Wii for Christmas and set it up in the large common area so everyone could enjoy it. I have never played on a Wii before and it was so much fun. I could not believe how sore my right shoulder was the next day. I am pretty good at golf and not as good at bowling, but terrible at tennis. It truly is exercise.

The picture at the top is the balcony of one of the apartments in the building across from Johanna and Jeanne. The wind blowing was so strong. They live on an end apartment and one side is open so there was no drifting on their porch. In the last two weeks they have had a total of 22-24 inches of snow. We watched truckload after truckload dump snow in a field a couple of blocks over.