Baby its Cold Outside

Its been awhile, I know. All I can say is, reporting on progress in Xbox games wouldn't be that interesting of a read, so I left you all in the dark.

Bri and I have been back in MN for 8 days now, celebrating Christmas with our respective families. It has been an altogether interesting/stressful/strange/happy/reflective holiday. Time spent with my family was made quite interesting by my parents preparations to travel to Texas for a month starting this coming Friday. To say the least, they were a little distracted. Dispite having to help install a new washing machine in the RV and change a few of its tires, I was able to find some time to relax and enjoy the time spent with my family.

Bri and I headed back up to the cities yesterday in a wonderful little snow storm. We avoided a nearly disasterous accident in Mankato through some divine intervention that was unbelievable. We actually hit the cement guard rail on a bridge and completely avoided damage to the car. The snow packed up on the bridge saved the car and our drive. All in all the drive took us an hour and a half longer than usual, but we managed to make it up.

I have been trying to adjust to Christmas with another family, and I am finding it incredibly exhausting. I love kids, but I am just not used to being around them. After awhile, I start to get surprisingly claustrophobic and find myself looking for the nearest exit. Good times.

It has been wonderful to see old friends while we are back, and I am looking forward to more of that starting again tomorrow. I am realizing just how much I have missed these people and what a profound influence they have on my life. It is going to be very hard to return to NY on one hand and leave them all behind. On the other hand, I am desperately looking forward to spending time with my wife again. I find that we exist in the same house here, but things are so crazy, that it is impossible to acutally enjoy the holiday together.

All that said, I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season and are enjoying time with family and friends. Bri and I will be in town through Monday morning, so give us a call if you want to get together.

Maybe if you all are lucky, I might post my new rant on why I want to stop celebrating Christmas for a couple of years to see what it is like.
You can all hope!