Merry Christmas!

Wow, has it really been a whole month since the last time I wrote in my journal? Where does the time go. In that time we went to the Outerbanks for the twins’ birthday party. We celebrated Thanksgiving. We decorated for Christmas. And we painted our guest room to a color other than blue. Yep, a lot sure has happened.
Going down to Salvo to visit Karlie, Bryan and the girls was a great time as always. I really love their house. I’ve always said, if you can’t stand a house with solid construction, built out of quality material, then you’ll probably hate their place. Everything in that house just feels so solid that it makes me feel like my house is going to blow away is a strong wind comes through. We’d like to thank the Philips’ clan for having us and giving us such a wonderful time. The highlight of the trip: Brad ate seafood. I keep trying to tell people that it’s not that I haven’t tried it, but I just don’t care for it. I ate some smoked wahu that Bryan was cooking up, and it was ok. At first it was pretty good with a nice smokey flavor, but then the fishy taste comes out and that’s what I didn’t care for.
Thanksgiving was also another wonderful feast. Kay and Mama Bea had us all up to their place where we feasted on turkey and stuffing and sweet potato casserole. I was particularly proud of myself for not over doing it and actually leaving room for dessert. Normally I just get so stuffed on turkey that I skip the dessert part. We then went to visit Judy and Darrell for dessert and they had a first class spread of sweets. Judy did not hold back in her pie baking and they were all tremendously delicious. I have to admit though that I did stuff myself on dessert.
The day after Thanksgiving was spent putting up Christmas decorations. This year it was a lot easier for us to fit our 9’ tall tree into our house since our ceilings go well about 9’. We didn’t have to do the engineering miracles from last year just to get our tree to fit. We also put up some of the Christmas villages that Kara had. Though, since we have a toddler running around the house, the places where we could put them were somewhat limited.
Now we’re getting ready for Christmas, but I’ve got to tell you that it’s hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it’s 75 degrees outside. I find it strange to be wearing shorts and tapping my sandals as I’m singing Let It Snow. Fortunately, for Christmas we will be heading up to Chicago and hopefully they will still have some of the snow that they are currently blessed with. If you pray at night, please keep us in your thoughts and pray that we get snow for Christmas. Kasia would really love it. It has nothing to do with Kara or I wanting snow, but it’s all for Kasia. That’s the kind of selfless parents we are.
Oh, and we did get our guest room painted. It’s now a color called “Peanut Butter.” That’s kind of the fancy name for brown. It looks really good though, and once we get everything cleaned up in there, I’ll post some pictures.
Merry Christmas and a have a happy New Year!