Our Holiday Vacation

As promised, a few pictures from our trip. We were travelling for the nine days between Yule & New Year's. I am notorious for forgetting to take pictures while vacationing, so I don't have any from Carson City -- I think I forgot to take the camera out of its bag for the whole interval that we were there. Sorry :-{

Here is Ali's friend T. clowning around with Hunter. Good gods, he's going to break her back. We had lunch at El Torito with T.'s family -- decent Mexican food is something that's not easy to find in the Midwest, so I was quick to suggest it -- and enjoyed a nice long gab with T.'s mom & her guy. Besides good Mexican food, the other two things you just can't get in MO are good sushi & In-n-Out burgers. Yup, we had a wonderful Japanese lunch with Boo on New Year's Eve. Yup, we made a run for double-doubles animal style. Trifecta!

Had dinner & another nice long gab with our old neighbors, who amused us with stories about the kitchy decor the new owners have used to ruin our old house. They apparently have done the house in a Tommy-Bahama-cabana-club style, all canvas & beach colors. They replaced our (admittedly boring) brass chandelier in the dining room with a fixture that looks like a giant pineapple. Uff da. The neighbor's eldest boy is almost exactly the same age as Ali, but as the picture demonstrates, they've reached that stage where the girls start to shoot up in height and the boys lag behind. Makes for a funny photo :-) No, I haven't the slightest idea why Hunter has only one shoe on.

Opening presents with the grandparents was a low-key affair. Hunter is modeling his snazzy (only slightly too large) pullover from Boo.

One of Boo's clever gifts was a party pack with silly hats & glittery masks & party horns & all that stuff. We broke into it on New Year's Eve & ran around the house making noise & being silly, but didn't stay up very late at all since we has an extremely early flight to catch on the first. Behold the wild partying.

We flew home on January 1st, which oddly had no bowl games, due to it being on a Sunday. I had completely forgotten, though, that we would be in the air during the bulk of the Kansas City Chiefs game -- oh, no! Playoff hopes were shattered when we landed & learned that despite KC trouncing Cincinatti, they missed out on the last wildcard slot when Pittsburg didn't oblige us with a loss. Nutty, your Lions let me down bigtime. :-P