Christmas 2011

This year we had a quiet Christmas at home. My parents had a big celebration in California which I hated to miss. But with the car trouble it just wasn't going to work out. Also traveling with two kids any time of the year is challenging. Traveling with them at their wiggliest, during the holidays, with presents, it's kind of overwhelming!

We bought a tree at the tree lot down the street a couple of weeks back. Last year we went to a nice tree farm in Windsor, but it seemed much simpler to just have them strap it to the roof this year. We used a ton of shiny red, silver, and gold plastic ball ornaments. Whoever invented plastic ornaments MUST have had a 2-year old!

The kids got some excellent presents this year from afar. And Santa brought Genevieve her first bicycle, and Alex a red scooter.

On Christmas Day we had birthday cake for Jesus with our friends Kim, Tom, and Dean, and Eric and Julianna. Then we quickly headed to the sledding hill to burn off said cake before dinner.




Kim, Tom, and Dean stayed for Christmas goose which turned out quite well.

This was also Genevieve's first crack at cranking on some homemade cranberry sauce. She quickly got the hang of it, while Alex learned how to shovel the fruit.




The recipe in a single photograph:

Hyundai Back On The Road

The guys at Summers Auto finished replacing the engine in 1 business day. They actually called Tuesday to tell me it was done, but I didn't return the call until Thursday.

Hole in Block #1

Hole in Block #2 (harder to see, but I promise there's supposed to be metal there where there isn't any)

The "oh shit" moment in Wyoming last month

And this afternoon, an extremely relieved owner of a very slightly used Hyundai motor, purring away in the parking lot

Hyundai Rescue Squad

Today Mike, Alex, and I made the trek to Rawlins, WY to rescue Dana's car from its Pre-Thanksgiving catastrophic engine failure. Tyr was kind enough to loan us his very stout Tacoma to haul it home.




It'll spend the next couple of weeks at the ICU at Summers Auto, and be back on the road around Christmas.