Christmas Update

Yes, yes, I know... It's like 2 months after Christmas and I'm just posting. The overall rate at which I post is steadily increasing though, right? I can see why most people post weekly/daily/bi-weekly or somewhere in between... I can hardly remember Christmas! Doesn't even feel like it came and went. Well, where to start? Rachel and I spent most of our Christmas break with 2 goals in mind... Find time to relax after the incredibly rough Fall semester and get everything caught up and ready for the Spring semester so that we wouldn't be so stressed. Thankfully, we accomplished both of those reasonably well. We had left a bunch of little, unimportant things on a to do list because we just couldn't get to them during the semester....well....when you do that, for an entire semester, things really pile up.

So, where to begin?

I think the most major thing that happened over Christmas was the fact that Rach and I got a digital camera finally.... yes, we are finally into the 21st century with everyone else. As sad as it is, I think we were the last people in the modern world to get a digital camera. This makes posting pictures much easier! For those who don't know, this was the necessary outcome of some stupid thief. I don't just mean he/she was stupid because they stole my camera while we were on vacation, I think they're stupid because of the whole pile of cameras, mine was definitely the cheapest, non-digital 35-mm there.... At least go for the digital, right? Anyway, so now we can post pictures without having to scan them in and the whatnot.

insert random picture here.....

Something that had to be done, but wasn't all that fun, over the break was Corey's house flooding..... twice. So the first time it flooded and killed the laminate flooring in the kitchen. We ripped it out, and laid tile. Then the laminate in the living area was doused (both due to the poor plumbing of a refrigerator line by the crappy previous owner) and that floor was ripped up, partially replaced, and laid back down. So, moral of the story...... when buying a house, ask the owner to list EVERYTHING that they did themselves. Then, immediately inspect and fix these things. Especially if the owner was under 30 years old. Check out the tile we laid though, we were pretty proud of it....If anyone needs tile that you know....let us know, we're pretty cheap too!

Also, one of Ryan's mom's bathroom just for measure.

Rach and I did a little seclusion exercise after the semester ended....it was great. We went to Daniel's Summit Lodge for 2 night before Christmas. Wonderful. There were only 4 rooms filled when we were there, so we pretty much had the run of the place. Since it's geared toward adults, it has a separated spa/pool area that is open 24/7. Oh, and cell phones don't work there very well.... especially when they are turned off! ha ha. So we slept about 14 hours, watched several movies a day, went to the pool, hung out at the restaurant, and tromped around in several feet of snow. It was so perfect. I think after each semester we're going to implement this practice. Find somewhere to go that gets us away from everything. We could've just done that at home, but we wouldn't have.... we have to force ourselves to do nothing by putting ourselves in a place where we can't do anything.... it's great.

Rachel also got her wedding 'storybook' for Christmas. She loved that, it's been on our to do list forever, but her mom and the photographer got together and really did a nice job on it. Unfortunately we didn't have our camera yet, so I don't have any pictures of her opening it....sad.
Another major event that happened was my dad earning his scouting wood badge and another award. These are pretty big time scouting awards, taking years in leadership positions to earn. He really changed the scouting program here in our home ward.... basically from non-existent to thriving. It's all related to the potential number of eagle awards that could be obtained verses the number that are obtained. Anyway, I thought I'd throw in a couple pictures of that because it was really neat to see all the people who came to support him... mainly, his friends, which I haven't seen for awhile in a setting other than the deer hunt or at the cabins....so that was really cool.

Well, I think the next blog is going to be focused on everyone that we saw over the break, and I'll get it up soon. As for now, I'm off to judge an elementary school science fair!