Busy Time of Year

A lot has happened over the last month. We finally, officially, completely and no jokely, sold our house in NM. Then we turned around a couple of days later and bought a house here. We were supposed to have closed on this house the weekend before Thanksgiving which would have worked out nicely since Dana was off from work. However, it didn't quite work out that way. Instead, the closing was pushed back a week so, with the owner's permission, we started moving in the day before Thanksgiving. One pickup and Expedition load at a time. We took most of the day off on Thursday to spend quality time getting on each other's nerves and eating the wonderful meal Dana prepared. Then we jumped back into it on Friday with the help of a couple of our friends. Good ol' U-haul apparently lost my reservation for a trailer because I was never able to get one. That would have saved at least a lot of trips back and forth if not a fair amount of time. And, living in football country, our help was only good until about 1:00 because the Auburn vs. Alabama game was coming on. But with their help, we managed to get all the heavy stuff moved. All that was left was the little stuff. And that took another 2 days. Dana slept all day so I worked Kevin and Cameron to the bone.

Having moved in and no longer owning a washing machine or dryer (our rental house had one and we sold our old stuff when we left NM), we decided to head to Sears in the wee hours of the morning on Black Friday to snag the good deal on a new washer and dryer. Actually, Dana decided that I would head to Sears in the wee hours of the morning. So I talked Kevin into heading out with me at 2:00 in the morning. As one would expect, we were the 5th person in line for the 4 sets available. To make matters worse, it was cold and rainy. I waited anyway to get a different set while Kevin wimped out after about 1/2 an hour and sat in the pickup with the heater on.

Now we're into the part of the year where it seems like hardly a day goes by without some sort of activity to keep us busy.

I really like this picture. It was a windy day and Cameron and Cade were picking up piles of leaves and throwing them in the air. Can you be any more carefree than that?

Cade had a little Thanksgiving skit with his pre-school class. He looks like a man among boys (and girls) in his class. And yes, that tiny little girl is 4 and in his class.

A couple of weeks later, they had their Christmas performance. Cade is lip-synching his heart out...


While we watch and entertain ourselves from the pews.

We forgot to take the camera with us when we went to the tree farm to get our tree so I'll describe the scene. Picture freezing weather and wind. Now imagine us shivering while we wander among all these trees trying to find one with a fairly straight trunk that isn't too tall or short or wide or butchered. Out of desperation, someone says, "How about this one," and without even looking everyone readily agrees just so we can get the heck out of there and back into the pickup with the heater on full blast. Oh yeah, and Dana had been up all night and was really tired. That's the stuff memories are made of right there.

Kevin had his 7th grade band concert a few days ago. He looked mighty handsome in his tux (which is missing the jacket in this photo but he wore it later). The band sounded pretty darn good, especially after listening to the 5th and 6th graders right before them. Kevin even said he wondered if they sounded that bad last year. Yes.

The majority of the houses on our street have made at least a minimal effort to decorate for Christmas so we couldn't go without either. This is the extent of our decorations for this year, except I'll add two little trees that we'd forgotten about to the display this weekend. It doesn't look like much here but it is voice activated. I say, "Cameron, plug in the lights," and Cameron does it.

MSFC didn't decorate their usual Christmas tree this year. Instead they created a megatree using the Saturn I. How cool is that?

We had some freezing rain yesterday. These little birds, and several others, were all over the ice that formed on the patio table. We still get a kick out of seeing the cardinals and other birds that actually have some color.

That's all for now. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!