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We got up Friday and had breakfast. My mom had made us some Rellenos to cook before heading home. We cooked them for lunch and headed home soon thereafter. Our travel home was long, but it always seems to be when you head home. I was looking forward to seeing my dog. We made it home in about 10 hours.

When we got home, I immediately, let the dog outside. He seemed to be going for a while. I kept calling him, but he wouldn’t come. When we finally got him inside, I notice he was acting somewhat different. He kept squatting and leaking some brownish fluid. He seemed to continue to do this, so I took him outside. He seemed like he was trying to go but nothing would come out. I immediately called the vet’s office and took him to a nearby hospital. The took some x-rays and it was just as we suspected. He had stones in his urethra and in his bladder. The vet said that he was partially obstructed and if it wasn’t taken care of he could die. The options he presented was we could have the stones flushed back into his system, and then go in and perform surgery to remove the stones. He had a total of 6 stones. Both procedures were very costly. One would cost $760 and the other $1200. We opted to have the stones flushed back to alleviate the pain so that he could resume normal operation and schedule an appointment with our regular vet. The vet couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t want to have the surgery done since he had to put him to sleep. I felt that the dog was in enough stress during the week during our absence. The flushing of the stones went well and he was done in about 1 hour. It was about 3AM when he was released. It was funny because when he came out of surgery, he was very tired and could bare stand up. I picked him up and took him to the car and when we got home I carried him upstairs into our room and laid him next to my bed and went to sleep.

Christmas day was spent with the family. My sister had an appendectomy and was not able to join us until later on in the day. We had already opened all our gifts on Christmas Eve. We woke up and had our usual Christmas breakfast of Buscuits with Gravy. For dinner, mom made the traditional Puerto Rican dish of pernil, arroz con gandules, and lets not forget the dessert–flan. Everyone was playing with their Christmas gifts and awaiting the next day until they could use their gift cards to buy more stuff.

We spent the day playing dominoes and making cutout cookies, buckeyes, and chocolate covered pretzels. Instead of making breakfast this morning, I baked the cookies that we were going to decorate later that day. Mitzie and Shirley decorated the cookies throughout the day and made the other Christmas goodies. The girls and their cousin Krystle did some last minute Christmas shopping. I spent the day playing dominoes with my in-laws.

We spent the night eating, playing more dominoes, and basically enjoying everyone’s company. We had a wonderful dinner of ham and arroz con gandules, (rice with chick peas). One of the traditions in the Torres family is to open one present on Christmas Eve, then open the rest on Christmas day. So when we stopped playing dominoes around 11-midnight, we gathered in the living room expecting to open just one present. When we ended around 1:30 am. All the presents were opened in a frenzy, mounds of wrapping paper and boxes strewn around the room.

The trip out here was uneventful. We left around 4 am, got in Indy around 3 pm. Mitzie was happy to see her sisters, and it was good to see Jose and Elsie. We found out when we got to Shirley’s house that Elsie, the oldest sister, was admitted to the hospital for appendicitis. It looks like she will be in the hospital through Christmas.

We are leaving for Indianpolis to spend Christmas with Mitzie’s sister Shirley. I have a 12 hour drive ahead of me in the morning. Thankfully all four of us can drive. Hopefully we won’t run into too much rain on the way out. We have done this drive many times and we can almost do it without thinking.

Most of the presents have been shipped to Shirley’s house. I just have a few things that I need to buy for Mitz, I think we have one more thing to get for Amanda and we are done shopping for Erika is done. I am looking forward to visiting my in-laws, yeah I know weird, but Jose and Elsie are enjoyable to be around and Mitz’s sister’s house is huge. I think everyone will be down in Indy except for Denny Jr. who is still in Japan. Elsie, Mitz’s oldest sister, might not be there, we found out this evening that she was admitted to the hospital in Logansport with a possible appendicitis. Hopefully she can still travel to Indy to spend Christmas with us.

Well I better get to bed, we are planning to leave around 4 am.

I was at Target the other day and was noticing how much dog accessories have grown. I think there was three rows of dog stuff. Well for the dog lover, it’s like dog heaven. We notice all the cute clothing outfits that are available for dogs. We wanted to buy one for Bear but couldn’t find a manly one. We ended up buying this pink shirt that had Angel written on the back. When we got home, we immediately had Bear wear it. He looked so funny in it. With all his hair, he looked like a football player with all the shoulder pads. We laughed so hard. When I get the pictures loaded, I’ll share them.