Merry Christmas!

Weekend in Memphis

In an unprecedented move, I am actually writing two blog posts back to back. Ironically, Tom's Christmas leave from work started on Monday and here I am still HARD AT WORK and single-handedly maintaining this blog. Okay, there are only a few exaggerations in the previous sentence. 1. Tom is on leave from flying, but he has still been working as my live in "Manny" while I continue to work this week. 2. When I say I am HARD AT WORK, what I really mean is HARDLY WORKING -- still awaiting assignments. 3. If you think that I actually know how to format the pictures and do all those fancy drop down letters in my blog posts, then you are sorely mistaken --- Tom is also my personal blog post stylist.
So, we made a quick trip up to Memphis this past weekend to visit my very good friend, AmyD and her husband Nic Morrison. Amy is pregnant with their first baby (Little Peter!) and is due any day now. Amy was kind enough to take Tom, Marin and me to the Pottery Barn and William Sonoma outlets that are just a few minutes from their house. You would have thought that we'd never shopped before -- that is how deprived of decent stores we are here in Meridian. Just short of completely draining every last ounce of precious pregnant energy out of Amy, we returned back to their beautiful home where Nic had been hard at work putting together a delicious dinner for us!! We had a great time visiting with them. Amy and I mostly talked about how if 8 years ago, when we graduated from KU, somebody would have told us that by the year 2007 we would both not only be married, but also with little children and LIVING IN THE SOUTH -- we would have immediatly spit out our mouths full of Freestate beer and laughed heartily at the idea. But alas, here we are....and life is good.
Here is a picture of Amy and Nic in front of their home in Memphis:

and here is a picture of my favorite present ever along side my perpetual lump of coal (Cal):

Newsflash

Well, this may be "news" to most of you, but after much deliberation I made a last minute decision to return to work at ICON. Two weeks ago I put in a call to basically find out who to write my letter of resignation to and the good people at ICON ultimately said "please don't leave us -- we will find you something to do that does not require travel (at least not TOO much) and you can still work from home." To which I obviously replied "Yipee!" So, I officially started back yesterday and so far things are going well. We are lucky in that once Tom finishes his instructor training(sometime next month), he will better be able to build his schedule around my regular business hours. For the next six months, or so, he will be flying almost exlusively night flights which will allow for him to be home with the Squeaker while I am working. I am not sure exactly what I will be doing for ICON, but I know that I will be working in the Contracts Dept. I am still waiting to find out more info and in the meantime I will be getting my office organized and catching up on the general annual training I am required to complete. So, enough of this boring rambling! That is our plan for right now and of course, it is subject to change at any moment. However, if the new job doesn't pan out, I have a feeling that we may be forced to start eating rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hey, I figure Marin eats rice cereal at every meal and she seems to be doing just fine, it can't be that bad! Of course it is mixed with breastmilk.........yeah, that probably wouldn't work out so well.

Anyhow, just so that this isn't THE most boring post in the history of the blog (it still may earn that title) here is a picture of the crazy 3-D gingerbread cookies we baked last night (thanks Grandma Cronley!). Tom loves them so much that he insisted we display them on our mantle and then he took this video(I am living with a crazy man!!)

I hope that everybody is doing well and enjoying the Holiday Season! Here is video of the Christmas carolers that visited our house on Saturday night.

Oh Christmas Tree!

This past Sunday, we drove out to a local tree farm and like the Griswold's of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation we kicked off our fun old fashion family Christmas by heading out into the country in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols--The Tree!
We nearly froze Marin right out of her purple snowsuit, but we found a tree and chopped it right down. Check out the action here and here. Oh, and check out Tracey's new hairdo! She loves it and so do I.
In other news, Marin made the bulletin at St. Patrick's in Meridian and we all ran the Meridian Jingle Bell run. It was 20 degrees at the start of the race, so we were happy that we didn't jump in the car as we passed it (twice) during the run. Also of note, in the results section here, I am in the Male 24-29 grouping, Tracey is in the Male 70-99 grouping?!?
Also, here's a nice failed Christmas card photo attempt. Check out my Zoolander-esque pose. I think I'll call it "blue steel."