Christmas trip Part 2

Christmas morning rolled around, but it turns out that some adults were up for the better part of the night talking, as they are wont to do. The result is that while the kids were up excitedly talking and opening presents, this is what I was doing


It was a wonderful Christmas morning, filled with holiday cheer and love, and a surprisingly little amount of Christmas morning greed--really we didn't even each much candy...by my standards. This was the first year that Stephanie was really aware of the situation with the presents and had interest in opening more than one. And boy was she excited!

After the Christmas morning excitement, we rushed down to Kansas to visit Ashley's family. While we were there we took some time to tour around KU, where she went to school, and check out the quintessential Lawrence food place, which Ashley had been craving her whole pregnancy: Yelo Sub. It's easier than getting watermellon and chop suey in the middle of the night.

While we were there, though, we let ourselves get real interested in what we were doing and forgot to ensure that Ashley got her typi
cal two gallons of daily water intake, of which we were reminded with the only physically rough evening of the trip. Always drink your water...


For a girl less than two months away from giving birth, she sure was a trooper.

We headed over through the snow and met with Ashley's Dad.

It turns out that he's a very perceptive man and has read a lot on our blog, so he knows us very well. He presented me with one of the most exciting presents of the season:


That's right, caulk! Which I went home and used thoroughly around all the windows, and then went around all the baseboards filling in holes (with the aid of some steel wool) that might be entrances for the dang mice. We may be forced to live in a huge metropolitan area, but that doesn't mean we have to be total city slickers and become useless in the art of handymanism.

It's weird, but there's something so empowering and fulfilling about improving your home. I guess I'm the one really nesting.

Anyway, we came home the way we went down, through Heber's house. Ashley taught us all a lesson in patience and perserverance by solving a 3D puzzle.


OK the picture doesn't do it justice. It's made of that hologram stuff that changes as you change your viewing angle. Very difficult to put together as a puzzle, and very impressive. Anyway it turns out that Heber's family are all dedicated puzzle completers, and now I know that Ashley is as well.

Heber and Debbie hooked us up with something we have been eagerly shopping for: a real crib!


By the way, see all the junk in the room? That was before the big dejunking movement that we went through. The room is immaculate and not junked up at all now. Just to make that clear.

We were really worried because Stephanie had been sleeping in the crib until the day they gave it to us. Was she going to miss her crib when we took it? It turns out she didn't, because she got a big girl bed. Great for jumping.



We had a lot of fun on the trip, and we topped it off with an impromptu dance party with the Farnsworths.

It turns out that pregnant girls can dance.