Well, we made it home safely. It was a long drive. Basically about 21 hours. Whew. But, it was nice and in the end, we drove through like 7 states. We had a little chevy though that got good gas mileage and we had good music and it was a nice weather. Mostly.

We had a very Lego Christmas. Ryley, our nephew, is totally into the lego starwars thing. So, Rob spent his holiday sorting through thousands, and thousands of plastic pieces.

I – went shopping – for glassware. I mean, I am in the glass capital of America right? But, I was surprised that the only pieces I bought were all made in China 😦

Come to think of it – so was everything else. I was surprised that these glass pieces weren’t even made in America and so when we went back to mom’s I checked all the open gifts, and was surprised to find ‘everything’ was made in China.

Wow.

But we had a great time. There’s one picture here of Malcom the fatt cat. He was so cute.

Glad to be home in Austin. Sounds funny to say Home and Austin still in the same sentence. But, it’s so nice – there’s no snow here!

On a trip to Michigan for Christmas. I put “Chismas” in the title, because we were still giving Rob’s Mom a hard time from last years’ place settings. Mine said “Chis” and so we’ve taken to celebrating Merry Chismas.

It was a very long drive.

14 Hours to St. Louis, and additional 9 to Michigan, but I likes to drive. What I didn’t like was the snow. We didn’t get too much of it thank goodness. But, what we did get slowed us down and so I had to concentrate hard which of course makes you exhausted once you reach your destination.

Stopping in St. Louis was fun! We finally had an opportunity to visit with Rich our good friend who we have been saying we should stop and see but never seem to find ourselves in Missouri!

Now we had a chance.

This picture of Rob was on a particularly sassy cold portion of our trip outside Indianapolis when he was giving me a hard time about how balmy that mid 20’s weather is. He likes to play up his midwestern roots sometimes while my teeth are chattering.

Fine.

I simply got the in the car, cranked up the heat and locked the door. He finally said through the closed window that it wasn’t that warm outside. I thought not.

There was some snow on the ground. I took this picture over the head of Mom’s figurines in the window so that you could see it looks mighty cold outside, because it fricken is! I don’t care what these thick blooded Michiganders and Ohioans say. I’m looking forward to hitting the Texas stateline!!

Brrrrr.

There’s a great site that has photos of the campaign. It includes pictures of the candidates, but more importantly a variety of supporters. Some really, really cool pictures. Take a look!

Well – It’s Christmas time and we’ve been doing the usual. Staying busy trying to set up home – meetings – and work.

We’re getting ready to drive to the midwest for the holidays and I’ve been checking the 10 day forecast for the conditions in St. Louis and Michigan.

Yah.

It’s going to be a slower drive than I thought. It’s looking pretty wet and cold and so that means we’ll be creeping along. But hopefully not so slow that we dont’ get there until new year!

Here’s a picture of Yoda in a stupid game I got sucked into the other day on the web. And our new roommate Johnny. He’s a nice guy and it is so (SO) easy to kick his *ss in Risk – that’s it not even believable. But – he’s got Mikey our other roommate advising him in strategy. Maybe he should find a new advisor!!

Here’s also a picture of Rob in our laundry day the other evening when we were at home and realized over half our towels are trashed! I think I know what we’ll use our gift certificate for Linens and Things for (thanks Mom, Rocki & John, Peter & Gina!)

And we dined at whole foods on Sunday. Ahem. Ok – I like whole foods. It’s a great place with lots of selection of healthy tasty items. But there’s a reason some folks call it whole paycheck. I had an order of sushi, a salad & a cranberry drink. Total? $19.35. Wholly cow! I’ve spent less on dinner at a restaurant. But, at least we had the birds to watch. They fluff up and dive into the stream to take a bath and boy are they loud too. But, it was a beautiful day.

So, it had been a while since I had a weekend that I wasn’t running ‘every’ minute. It was nice! We went to San Antonio Saturday night to visit friends and go to a meeting.

We went out afterwards to a great dessert place in San Antonio the “Candlelight Cafe” and here is a picture of us having dinner at a BBQ place on the way that had the best bbq sauce I’ve tasted yet! Way better than last weekend when we stopped in Elgin.

Then here’s Rob giving me his no you may not face. He does this a lot.

Lastly here’s a Calvin and Hobbs strip that I thought reminded me of so many folks I know! All is going well here, and I hope it is going well with you too. Let me know!

Click on the link above to receive Christopher’s holiday greeting. It’s fun.