Christmas Past

Well, we're home. After three households and 10 hours of driving over the course of 2 days, we're home.

It's snowing here in Milwaukee, maybe 6 inches today, so we decided to make for home late last night. We arrived around 12:30 a.m. So it was a nice feeling to be where we wanted to be when it started snowing at 8:30 this morning.

We had a good trip. Some of the highlights:

One happy cat. On Christmas Day, we lost Philo. We woke up and opened presents, then were packing up the van to head up to my parents' for Christmas dinner. In the loading process, the back door was left ajar, and Philo was nowhere to be seen. We searched the house for him -- he tends to burrow into the backs of closets to sleep, but we couldn't find him. After a brief search of the neighborhood, we decided to leave the garage door ajar and set out a blanket and some food, just in case. We figured the chances were 50/50 -- he could be outside, but he just as well be hiding in the house. We knew there was no point in waiting. He's a cat, so we could sit around all day before he'd appear from his slumber. We worried a bit more when a call to our cat sitter the next day resulted in a report that she couldn't find him either. Well, since I pretty much ruined the suspense with my title, you can probably guess that Philo isn't lost or a cat-sicle. When we got home last night, he was on the couch waiting for us. Silly cat. He has no idea how worried he had us. But I sure was happy to see him.

Splish, splash. Even though we were only at the Menomonie hotel for 24 hours, we managed to go swimming three times. And by "go swimming" I mean that we followed Owen as he fluctuated between the big pool and the little pool (i.e. hot tub) and Nora clung to Jon for dear life. Owen realized he could stand up by himself in the shallow end, so he spent much of his time standing near the number "3" on the wall and splashing himself in the face.

A merry Christmas. Jon loves his Wii, which I was excited to find on a routine trip to Target. Owen played almost nonstop on his Leapster on Christmas Day and Nora was pushing around her shopping cart while it was still in the wrapping paper. We also got one extra Christmas present for ourselves. We decided to upgrade our camera and on Christmas Eve bought a Canon Rebel SLR. Man, that thing is fast. It's a big step up from our other digital and it will be fun experimenting with it. The photo of Owen sipping soda below is one of those gotta-love-natural-light shots that I think are going to make having a faster camera fun.




Into the woods. Late on Christmas afternoon at my parents' house, we loaded everyone up for a "sleigh" ride, which was really an old truck bed pulled by a tractor. We headed into the snow-covered woods as the sun was setting. It was beautiful. I had one of those moments where I look around and can't believe I'm lucky enough to be doing what I'm doing. Surrounded by family, with my daughter on my lap, cuddled in blankets and riding past these snow-decorated trees at twilight. I sure have done a lot to get away from my farm upbringing, but I do like going back for visits. There's something slightly magical in the connection with the land -- or maybe it's just the way my family celebrates it. I guess that's part of being raised by a man who's a poet at heart. I mean, we went into the woods, spread out birdseed and lit candles in jars to hang in a tree. Who else does that?!