Because we got into San Jose on the 31st (last Sunday), and stayed up for 22 hours straight - we kind of skipped writing our email that week. Which is unfortunate, because we had so much going on that it will be hard to keep it straight now. But we shall try.
Going back two weeks to Christmas Eve (was it only two weeks ago?), we put up my parent's family creche display with Camilla and Victor. Rebecca and I decided that we really want a large creche display so we can follow this tradition of talking about the events surrounding the birth of Christ by using a physical display (and a nice one at that!) - despite the fact that we were very silly on Sunday evening because there weren't any little kids around. The bad news about Christmas was that Rebecca spent most of the two weeks coughing with a nasty cold. It was most likely a cold with a heavy dose of a bad allergic reaction to the dog [or Michigan in general...]. But we read our family Christmas stories on Christmas Eve and then went to bed (took some Nyquil) and passed out for the evening.
Christmas day was great (as usual!) and we all had a good time playing lots of games of killer bunnies (wait, we didn't get THAT for Christmas!) with the family. Max and Karen came over for dinner and I spent a good amount of the day playing with Rebecca's box of K'NEX she got for Christmas.
Because Rebecca had finished the library book we brought with us, she and I stopped off at the public library in Ypsilanti to get some options for her to read. After selecting 10 or so books, she only ended up reading one over the next week before we had to leave. But she'll write a book review about that sometime later [when Wayne's done with the computer! -beck]. Boxing Day was nice and laid back, as it should be - we ate and played games and didn't do anything much.
It wasn't until later in the week that we stopped reading our books and went out into the real world. On Wednesday, we had planned to go to Frankenmuth for the day, but those plans fell through. Instead of leaving early to go to Frankenmuth, we spent the morning looking for some lost keys. Then there was only enough time left to go to BW3 and then Dave and his girlfriend came over for dinner and games. It is sad that we don't have a good buffalo wings place around here, but I guess every location has something good to offer "food wise." We just haven't found it yet here in San Jose. Thursday Rebecca and Camilla went with my mom to the fabric store; Rebecca got some really nice purple fabric from the store and is going to make herself a skirt.
So, instead of our Wednesday trip to Frankenmuth, it became our Friday trip to Frankemuth, including a delicious all german meal at the Bavarian Inn, not to mention visits to the local fudge and cheese shops. Rebecca was so giddy to go to the cheese shop and we sampled all kinds of cheese (from chocolate peanut butter cheese to swiss almond spread). Personally, I feel really gross after trying the bacon cheddar spread, so I don't touch that stuff.
One of the important trips we had included in our visit to my parents' house was a trip to the Detroit temple. We woke up early Saturday morning to learn that our plans had been foiled and the temple was closed that day. After mulling about without anything to do, we decided to go visit the Toledo art museum because it was free. Although it isn't a large city, the museum is really quite nice and I always forget how well stocked it is. Here's my big tidbit of advice about art museums: when you go to an exhibit and you like what you see, you should always buy the exhibition catalogue from the museum store afterwards. I'm finding that when I don't do this, the catalogue triples in price because no one wants to part with it (the old "limited edition print" ploy). I really shouldn't be so stingy about not buying a book on impulse from a museum store (I really wish I could go back in time and kick myself for not having bought that Rauschenburg catalogue from the MoMA). When we got back from the art museum, Rebecca went to work with my sister in making skirts and fixing her shirt: it had a torn sleeve from our airplane trip out to Michigan. And while I went over to Dave's apartment one last time, my parents played Nintendo games which is really funny to watch. We spent the rest of the evening watching them play.
Our flight left early Sunday morning, but on the way out the door, we decided to check if our luggage was under the 50 pound limit. We got out the bathroom scales and at 5 in the morning, we were busy weighing and adjusting our luggage to fit the limit. And eventually we ended up borrowing another piece of luggage from my parents to get everything home with us. The flights were (mostly) uneventful, minus a 2 hour delay in Minneapolis. I'm really not impressed with Northwest airlines - Delta has always been on time for me. Our friends came and picked us up from the airport in San Jose and then we proceeded to stay up until midnight (California time) with them to celebrate New Year's eve. It was fun and Rebecca found out that she really loves makingfiends.com; Chris introduced us to this cute cartoon and then Rebecca had to watch all the rest of them this week. Also, staying up for 22 hours straight really wears a person out.
So we took Monday easy: woke up late, cleaned up, packed Christmas stuff into boxes, ran errands (bought cheap Christmas tubs to organize all our Christmas stuff!) and then celebrated New Years Day by taking our friends out to dinner at Buca di Beppo, courtesy of Discover Card. We even managed to get the kitchen table and sat watching the cooks frantically keep up with orders. If anyone goes there, we'd love to know if you ever try the large lasagna: it is the largest brick of lasagna I've ever seen. The rest of the evening we spent playing our new games with Chris and Alyssa, and there was no football involved. Nope. Not one lick of it.
Then, painfully, Rebecca went back to work on Tuesday morning. But she couldn't stand it (being away from me), so she came home and worked remotely for the last couple hours. During the day, I started my week long project of refinishing the piano. Sanding down the old stain has taken up most of the week and I put in about 5 hours of sanding a day. After seeing how nice Camilla and Victor's piano turned out, I wanted to make this a priority to refinish our piano.
Wednesday night, it was really cold here and we decided to go see what our indoor apartment gym facilities were like. It is nice to have something indoor to do because it has been very windy and cold in the evenings this week. Rebecca worked remotely a few other days and on Friday, I convinced her to come with me to the Humane Society around the corner to pet some cats. I'm amazed at the sad reasons people abandon their pets.
So, yesterday we finally got to the temple. The session was very large and very good. By the time we got home, we were beat but still heavy cleaned the apartment. The next time we refinish furniture, I need to make sure we cover up our other furniture so the sanding dust doesn't get everywhere like it did this week. I'm already to the staining, so I had made a good dusty mess everywhere in our apartment this time. But next time...
That's about it for the past two weeks for us. Church starts really late for us now, we don't have sacrament meeting until one in the afternoon. I never like late church, it eats up most of the day. But have a great one and best New Year's wishes to you all!
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