Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Ours was good - allow me to update you!

We visited both families this year for Christmas, and decided to drive instead of flying. This turned out to be a good and a bad decision - good because we avoided the major delays all the airports seemed to be having, and bad because the delays were due to weather which we ended up driving through. The day before we left, we got 9 or 10 inches of snow here, and areas south of us got ice. The roads were pretty much fine by the time we left, until it started snowing as we were driving through Iowa. Then they were not so great. What made it even scarier were all the cars we kept seeing in ditches from the previous day's ice storm. Luckily, thanks to some skillful and careful driving by Randy, we made it to Kansas City for the night.

The hotel we stayed at was recently remodeled and was, no joke, possibly the nicest hotel either of us had ever been in. The bathroom was gorgeous (I know! A hotel bathroom!), there was a beautiful built-in armoire/computer desk thing, and it had a 33" flat panel TV, which is both bigger and fancier than the one we have here at home. We kept checking the (pretty cheap) rate quoted in our confirmation e-mail to make sure there hadn't been a mistake. So, if you are ever looking for a hotel in Liberty, Missouri, I definitely recommend the Hampton Inn!

The rest of our Christmas was good, too. We saw both sets of parents, and had a lot of fun hanging out with Abby and her boyfriend Matt at my house, and with Joy and Cory at Randy's house. Both of our parents have "new" houses, and it was awesome to get to see all the changes. My parents' house was actually new last year, then they had a fire and were displaced for nearly 6 months while basically everything in the house was repainted, restored or replaced. So, "new." Randy's parents' house was actually new almost 20 years ago, but they've recently had non-essential (but nice!) things like trim and bathroom vanities installed. The kitchen's also been completely redone, and is gorgeous now. So, again, "new."

As much fun as it is to see our families and get nice Christmas presents, it is also very nice to be home again. It is less nice to have to go back to work, but such is life, I guess.

Here's what else we've been up to, in handy list form (now with bonus exclamation points!):

- This is our third winter in Illinois, and it is off to a rollicking start. Last winter was extremely snowy, and this one is already on pace to outstrip it! Um, great? Our mail box was damaged by a snow plow a few weeks ago, and the township road department brought us out a replacement box, free of charge. However, the ground is completely frozen, so right now it's sitting in a bucket of sand right next to our old, currently unusable mailbox. Classy! They've promised to come back and put it in the ground once spring arrives, which will probably be sometime around mid-June.

- We recently switched to VOIP for our home phone service. It's the T-Mobile @ Home service, and it's only $10/month, since we both already have cell phones with T-Mobile. This is especially exciting because apparently local and state taxes make it impossible to get the most basic of basic phone services in Illinois for less than about $45 a month. What a deal!

- While we were in Oklahoma, Joy and Cory asked us about our water softener. The water where they live is very hard, and they're thinking of getting one. We both recommended it, but I have to say, now that we're back home, I recommend it even more. A water softener makes for very nice hair. I guess it's good for other things too, but hey, shiny hair!

I leave you with these final words of wisdom from Jackie Chan, courtesy of an interview we saw on Toon Disney. Don't say you don't like something without trying it - that's not polite. "Try it before you don't like it."

I hope you like our blog, but please at least try it before you don't like it!

Recapping the New Year

Wendy and I made the usual rounds over Christmas, visiting each of our fams for several days, and having a delightful time. Fortunately travel went relatively smoothly for all involved, despite the blizzards in Colorado and storms in Dallas.

In Tulsa, we got a chance to have lunch with our friend George, which was cool. And we also made our annual trip to Bill & Ruth's, a local sandwich shop that has super-tasty 3 cheese and avocado subs. If you're ever in Tulsa, stop by and check 'em out. In Wichita, we got a tour of the new house Wendy's parents are having built. It's rapidly coming together, and Wendy and I are both jealous because it's going to be very nice when it's done!

When we got back home, we were surprised to find the oak trees in our front yard had been trimmed. We had a company come out and give an estimate for it, but we never agreed to have the work actually done. After talking to them, we found they had made an honest mistake, and after a bit of haggling we reached a fair compromise to settle the issue. That's just part of the fun of owning a home, I suppose.

We also said goodbye to the college football season by watching nearly all of the final bowl games. Sadly, OU lost its bowl game to Boise State, 43-42 in overtime. It is, however, being called one of the greatest games of all time. OU fell behind by 18 points in the 3rd quarter, then staged a miraculous comeback, only to see Boise State stage an even more miraculous comeback. The way I look at it, though, is that Boise State ran, quite literally, every trick play in the book, and they still barely managed to pull out a one point win in overtime. At least it was a good game. And now the countdown to next season can start!

And, finally, our blog has been updated to a new version, so you'll notice a few things may look slightly different. We can now label posts, which is super-handy, and the Archive links to the right have been made a bit more useful. And for those of our readers that use RSS feeds, you'll find links on the sidebar to subscribe to posts and to comments. Enjoy!

Well.

Last night, I finally fell asleep around 4 a.m. This morning, I got up at 8 a.m. I left about 10 minutes later than I should have for work and was stuck behind someone going 5 miles under the speed limit for probably a third of the way there.

When I finally got to work, it turned out that the server was misbehaving, and I spent probably 30 minutes trying to get my computer to restart. I spent another several hours looking up the zip codes for over 200 addresses, for a mailing we're doing.

When I got home today, I discovered that the two boxes of Christmas presents we had to mail to ourselves had arrived and had been sitting outside our garage in the rain all afternoon. I brought them in, checked the mail (in the rain!), and then walked all the way across our light beige living room carpet before noticing that I had stepped in mud while checking the mail. I also managed to almost completely shred one of the crusts I needed to make dinner while trying to get it out of the pan.

The carpet is now clean, a pot pie is in the oven, Randy is on his way home, and I am drinking a much-too-strong pina colada.

So. How are you all doing?

As promised, here's a selection of the 100 memories from our Christmas trip.

1. Wendy accidentally walking in on a little girl in the women's bathroom at a gas station, apologizing and moving on to the next stall, where she accidentally walked in on a little boy.

20. Abby doing the laundry dance.

22. Santa bringing Randy's mom a tulip toilet seat.

26. Santa bringing Randy's dad an Aircap 2 - strongly reminiscent of a chemical warfare mask.

27. Playing Battle of the Sexes with everyone at Randy's house.

28. Discovering that Cory is rather metrosexual, and thus knew many of the answers to the female questions.

31. Celebrating our fourth anniversary!

34. Nearly running out of gas on our way back to Kansas City, but fortunately just making it to a gas station in Topeka.

38. Graffiti in a Kansas bathroom: "God is the reason for the season," except "God" was crossed out and "Jesus" was written above it.

70. Randy's dad saying he wanted a 52" plasma TV for Christmas, and Wendy telling him that all we could find was the 56" one, which wasn't what he asked for, so we didn't buy it.

76. Walking down the aisle at Wal-Mart with Wendy and Abby and hearing a little boy say, "Mom, that lady is cute! Both of those ladies are cute!"

80. Getting home and discovering that our suitcases had been searched.

(Which surely had nothing to do with...) 82. Wendy having her Miss Army knife confiscated by Midway security.

Happy 2006!

Hola, amigos. Sorry it's been so long since we rapped at you, but we're back now!

December was busy, but not terribly exciting through most of it. My back problems were re-diagnosed as possible gallbladder problems, and then re-re-diagnosed as possible back problems. I suspect that I did in fact have a severely pulled muscle or deep bruise, since it seems to have finally healed almost completely over the last week or so despite my less-than-healthy holiday diet (which would probably not be the case if it was a gallbladder problem).

So I spent more time this past month than I would have liked at the doctor, and the rest of the time frantically trying to get the Christmas shopping done. We did get it all done, with time to spare, thanks to the beautiful, beautiful internet.

We were able to go and visit both families again this Christmas. We first headed to Tulsa to spend some time with Randy's family. We had a great time hanging out with everyone, and were very pleased to meet Joy's fiancé, Cory. He's a funny, wonderful guy, and they're obviously very much in love. We approve!

After a few days, we drove up to Wichita to see my family as well, and again spent most of our time hanging out and playing games. While we were in Wichita, we celebrated our fourth anniversary. It fell on the same day as OU's bowl game. OU won, sealing the victory with a late interception, which was a nice gift. (Sorry we were so, um, exuberant with our cheering, Mom. We didn't mean to wake you!)

We're glad to be back home now, although I wish we could have stayed longer. We had a wonderful time with both families. Coming soon: a selection of our 100 memories from this trip. I'm sure you can't wait!

May you all have a happy 2006!