Christmas morning Ben had pneumonia and was a little out of it but with the help of some alternating doses of Tylenol and Motrin he managed several bursts of excitement throughout the day (something I would later regret). Abigail did not want to get out of bed, a sharply contrasting attitude from the night before when she couldn't wait for Santa to show up. When she did finally get up she didn't want to open any presents, looking almost too shy to participate. She finally opened up and began to open up, the gifts.

After a few hours of family time (Kerri's parents and all of us) we ventured outside to hang with some neighbors and their kids and some of the new toys. The boys across the street got a go-kart and a motorcycle-ish thing. Most of the parents took turns running up and down the street. I'll get some pictures up later. The key thing to remember for later is that 15 people were hanging out in the drivesways and the middle of our dead-end street. My garage door was up with the Laker game on and a few beers poured from the tap. It was all very fun but fairly quiet. Ben continued his bursts of energy.

Later in the day we were getting ready to go to my Mom's place for a larger family dinner and I got outside to put Kerri's phone in the vehicle when an old Ford station wagon came racing down the hill doing what appeared to be 60MPH. He took my corner and headed up the hill but as he rounded the corner the vehicle took a couple of hammer-type bounces and killed the motor. He made it a couple hundred yards up the street when his car stopped and started heading back down the hill in reverse. By the time it got back to its original corner he was moving pretty darn fast. He decided to take it but of course there was a car coming down. The wagon swerved to miss the car (unbelievable!) but there was a parked truck on the side so he swerved again, again at a very high rate of speed. He somehow turned the wheel hard and fast enough to swing his front end which took out Darin's brickhouse mailbox and finally slammed backwards into a motorhome that was parked on the street for the day. This guy had to be under the influence of something or was running from something or both. The car that he almost hit turned out to be following the wagon. He had apparently just taken out a small tree before jamming up my street. I didn't know if the driver was hurt or anyone else who might have been in his path had been hit so I called 911. Pretty soon there was a fire truck and 4 police cars on the scence. I had to leave soon after talking to folks about the events but when I returned I was told that the driver got to call a buddy and go home. He had been driving on a suspended license and had no insurance. I guess Darin and the owner of the motor home are out of luck. If it were me, I'd be rotting in jail right now. But that's a different issue. It terrifies me to think about what would have happened if the guy had come by a little earlier when the neighbors were all in the street -- There would have been at least a couple of bodies littering the area and I imagine the driver would have eventually been one of them. Anyways, scary shit.

At Mom's place we (30 of us) read the story of the birth Christ and minutes later had children tearing into gifts. Ben did remarkably well, mostly because he already knows how to rip paper apart but also because he had this crazy amount of energy available for a little boy with pneumonia. I started to wonder if the doctor had diagnosed him correctly as did some of my siblings. But when we got home I realized the rather large error in my judgement. Not only did he crash and burn from an energy standpoint, his breathing degraded terribly. He was so excited with all of the people and fun things to do that he powered through (with the help of his Motrin dose) and used every last bit of umpf! that he had left. His breathing went from somewhat shallow to very shallow, rapid and strained. Kerri noted the new use of his neck muscles in order to assist in breathing. So last night we decided that we would avoid anything that made him feel better unless a fever got over 101 degrees.

Kerri worked today so I had the kids and aside from Manning breaking Marino's record there was very little to report. Poor Abigail had to entertain herself for most of the day and Ben spent all but 30 minutes sleeping on my chest. I was very close to taking him to the hospital in the morning due to his labored breathing but by mid afternoon his breathing improved and he was generating useful coughs to help clear his lungs. I learned a very valuable lesson in the process. No matter how wonderful and rare it is for all of our family members to get together in the same place, when the kid is sick, stay home and hope to read about the events on a sibbling's blog.