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Christmas morning dawned and we packed up four adults, two small children, and lots of presents and luggage into the folks’ Suburban and headed up to Faith and Ernie’s home in Conover, NC. It was just about a 2-hour drive from Waxhaw - not bad at all. This gave Laura the first chance to meet her cousin Brandi, and oh, did they ever have fun. Brandi is almost 5. Faith and Ernie adopted her from China 3 years ago. She is a sweetie.

We opened presents and presents and more presents. Every time it seemed like we might be done, Ernie would find some more presents under the tree and we’d keep opening them. I can’t begin to keep track of what all I received; Becky is actually sitting right now documenting it all as I write this blog post… at least that way I’ll be able to write thank-yous! The one memorable thing I’ll mention here is a refrigerator magnet from Becky’s sister Cynthia; it has a cartoon of the Mona Lisa holding a fish in one hand, with the title “The DaVinci Cod”. Hehehe. [Edit: Becky corrects me that this magnet was given to her folks, not to me. :-( Still, it is pretty cool.]

After that came Christmas dinner, and Faith had prepared enough for an army. We ate leftovers again on Tuesday and there was still far too much left over. But it was sure tasty. The rest of Christmas day was just a crash day; we watched some football, took naps, and enjoyed watching the girls play. God has certainly blessed us richly with family, friends, and material goods. I, for one, need to step back more often and realize how blessed I am.

Day 4 of our trip (Saturday the 23rd) was a nice day to catch up. After sleeping in, we had a late breakfast with Becky’s folks. Or, I should say rather at Becky’s folks’ place; I’m sure they had eaten hours before we got there. :-) The girls had some time to play with toys, and we helped prepare some food for Christmas dinner. Then in early afternoon while the girls were taking naps, Becky and I headed in to Charlotte to do a little shopping.

Charlotte is growing like crazy these days. There are new Target stores and Harris Teeter grocery stores seemingly every 2 miles or so. We stopped at one of those Target stores to pick up a few things. While there, Becky and I were browsing the toy aisles and noticed a little girl probably 4 years old with her parents in tow. She noticed a large stuffed pink unicorn slouching on the lowest shelf and told her father she wanted to get it. Without missing a beat, her father replied, “oh, but it’s asleep. Never buy a unicorn when it’s sleeping.” And that was the end of it. No questions why, no discussion; I imagine the little girl had something to think about for the rest of the afternoon. It was all Becky and I could do to make it ‘round the corner to the next aisle before breaking into hilarious laughter. I can only hope I’ll be that quick on the mental draw when Laura gets a bit bigger. :-)

Saturday night after supper we put the girls to bed and then Becky’s folks came over and we played games for a while; first several rounds of Sequence, then a few games of Pass the Pigs, which was a new one to me, but is basically a little dice game with specially-designed plastic pigs in place of dice. Then it was off to bed in preparation for church on Sunday.

So how was your Thanksgiving? We spent the weekend in Wisconsin with my family at my parents’ place. It was the first time we’ve had everybody together in about a year. We ate far too much, shopped a little, played lots of Speed Scrabble, and I did some reading. We made it home last night about 5 PM, in time to get unpacked and get the girls to bed. It was a great time, wonderful to see everybody again.

Becky says we’re building up endurance for road trips over the next month or so. The trip to Wisconsin is only about a three-hour drive. Not too bad. Now this Friday we’re headed for Omaha (to see the Andrew Peterson Christmas concert!), which is just over four hours away. But those drives will all be wimpy in comparison to the road trip we’ll be taking in three weeks, a mere 20 hours to the great state of North Carolina. Fortunately, we’ll split it up over 3 days on the way down there, two 10-hour days plus a day in Nashville in between driving. By the time we get home on New Years’ we’ll be ready to stay home for a while, methinks.

I should note that I am not opposed to road trips - I have taken long ones in the past. But it’ll be a whole different experience with a 2-and-a-half-year-old and a nine-month-old occupying the two back seats in the van. We will get some mileage out of the portable DVD player for sure.

The road goes ever on and on…