Christmas in Michigan

This last weekend started the holiday travels as we traveled the long trek across Illinois and Indiana to visit Tony's family and have a Hammond Christmas. We arrived at 2am (EST) Friday night exhausted and ready to fall into bed. Saturday was spent helping Mom set up for the extended Hammond family Christmas while taking some time to hang out and chat. People started arriving around 5pm and dinner was served. It was a fun time visiting with the family and we spent some time looking at slides of the old days. Full out projector and screen of the very old days debating which kid was which back in the day. I think one of my favorite slides was seeing an American flag without Hawaii and Alaska as states. It was nice to get a glimpse of the Hammond family as they grew up and history itself. I'm sure there were some great '70s pictures in there. Soon everyone left and I had a great time catching up with my sister-in-law Beth until it was much to late to still be awake. Sunday brought about an afternoon filled with hanging out with the family and present unwrapping!! I loved all my presents (soup pot, sewing kit and cookbooks) and I'm sure Tony loved his too (tools!). We ended the night with an amazing dinner by Mom and watching White Christmas, one of three Hammond family movies to watch at Christmas. Overall, it was a wonderful day and I am blessed to have such wonderful in-laws. Monday (a personal day for Tony) brought about another long drive back home to Iowa and back to real life...at least for Tony. I'm off for Christmas break, my longest one ever!!

A Driving Hiatus

The month of November contained lots of driving. We spent a weekend in Michigan hanging out with Tony's family. Thanksgiving came and we traveled to Wisconsin for some quality time with the Dieringer family, and last weekend was spent in Milwaukee. Tony was invited by our friend Kyong to play for Night of Worship, an event with Intervarsity, allowing for a nice visit to MSOE. Overall, it was a great time to reconnect with our friends from school, as it was Tony's first time back since graduation. However, all this traveling has resulted in quite a bit of exhaustion.

Before the traveling begins for Christmas, Michigan next weekend and Wisconsin the following, we took this last weekend off. What a wonderful choice since I have finals next week and Tony has needed some quality time by himself. Friday night brought about the chance to pick up some Christmas decorations for the apartment. We also spent some time with our friends Sami and Ben watching Firefly and hanging out. (Sami works in my lab). Saturday we went our separate ways. I spent 9am to 3:30pm at Starbucks studying for finals, while Tony had some quality time fixing my computer and working with some of the desktops we've acquired. Needless to say, he had a lot of fun experimenting with linux (an operating system) and combining the two desktops.

Saturday night, Tony traveled up to Cedar Rapids to hang out with our friend Matt. They ended up playing some quality games on the Wii while I stayed home to finish some more studying (got a lot done!) and make some cookies for our Monday night cookie exchange. I settled on making some of my mother-in-laws famous ginger-not-so-snaps. Now just to keep them away from Tony until tomorrow. He loves them!

We also took the time to run to Lowe's a pick out our Christmas tree. It's real!!!!!!! It turned out to be very nicely shaped and did need much time for the branches to fall so the lights and ornaments went on this afternoon. We now have a real Christmas tree sitting in our living room! I also discovered that Tony has a lot of ornaments. (despite the pictures, it's actually quite nicely shaped)

The weekend ended with some final studying (my wrist hurts from writing too much), more computer working, peanut butter cookie making, and sitting on the couch watching some Packers vs. Lions with some delicious popcorn and nutella with Ritz crackers.

This next week brings about a very busy week at work for me, along with finals, followed by my longest Christmas break ever. Tony works for another two weeks before Rockwell shuts down for the holidays. Next weekend we travel to Michigan for Christmas and the following week is Christmas in Wisconsin.

The next thing to happen here is for it to SNOW!!!! and stick.