Christmas continued

Other highlights from the trip were a few home improvement chores. Mario shared his electric skills by replacing 7 light fixtures in my parents' house. My mom gave us permission to remove the wallpaper in the upstairs guest bathroom. But once that was down, we just had to finish the project by painting the walls and cabinets.

Also, we were sad to leave the feet of snow in Virginia, but managed to get snow after Christmas in St. Louis which turned out to be 2 great sledding days. We took the boys to sled on the old sledding hill I went to as a kid (my parents live in a neighborhood with a golf course...hole 2 has a nice big hill!) The second great snow-sledding day happened the day we planned to leave, but Mario let me take MJ out while he packed up the car. We still were able to leave by 11:30am and arrived at 3am in Ashburn, just when it started to sleet/snow there! So, we unpacked the car, and woke up to MORE snow (I'm in snow heaven this winter!)

And as a final note of fun, my parents bought us a Wii and sent it to our house (they did not seem happy with us doing renovations on their home for free). The boys' tried canoeing together. MJ got the nickname "strong-arm" and Joey "left-turner" as holding his oar in the water seemed to be his best move.

Merry Christmas!

This year we spent Christmas with the Keppel side of our family in St. Louis. The 15 hour drive is long but definitely worth it. We had a great time... poor Ceali had the chicken pox, but she may end up giving it to our family (I did not vaccinate Joey and Sheila in the hopes they would get it naturally and build up their own immunity to it). So we'll see how that goes. We had a delayed Christmas dinner b/c of the illness, but it worked out well b/c then Kathy was able to join us (she has been working in Japan and spent Christmas in Seattle with her boyfriend's family). Suzanne and Bobby hosted an AMAZING dinner and then we were able to exchange our family gifts.