We picked up Mom & Dad on Wednesday the 22nd. They had been delayed a lot due to weather and wound up there a couple hours late, but beat the snow here, of which there was about 4 inches on the ground the next morning. We took them out to breakfast at American Table Thursday morning, then down to Maple Lane to get some desserts for Christmas dinner. I wonder if there are Amish people who can't cook or are lousy at woodworking? Anyway, Beth asked if the jewelry chest she had seen there months ago was still there...I just said nope. Hee hee hee! Alex got to play in the snow with Grampa. (Interestingly, he calls Gramma and Grampa both something sounding like "cammer" and if there's a difference I can't hear it. But if you say 'take this to Gramma' he goes to mom, and if you tell him 'take this to Grampa' he goes to dad.) On Christmas Eve Beth and I left my folks at home and headed up to Michigan to spend some time with Beth's family (it's part of the deal). They went to see "National Treasure." We had a very nice visit, chased after kids a lot again. And we accidentally put the presents for Mom K in the pile of stuff for Mom G, so we had to steal a couple things back... oopsie... the kids got a pretty good haul, including a doll for Missy that she absolutely loves. She reaches out to it, and gurgles at it, like with no other toy she has. When we got back, Laura had arrived, and everyone was working on assembling a big ol' Little Tikes playset for Alex's present. Nobody could get this one piece in place. In the interest of not making a lot of noise with the kids now asleep we left that until Christmas. We did stockings and presents in the morning, Alex LOVED the playset, even not fully assembled, and he and Missy both got a large haul of stuff. Then, I got the hard piece in the playset in place by myself without any trouble. I don't know what the problem was. We had a big Christmas dinner in the afternoon. The day after Christmas, we went to Fort Wayne for shopping the sales and doing the returns and cashing in of gift certs. I exchanged a very nice Land's End parka for a similar one that fit, traded in a shirt from Penney's for two that I liked, and Beth got a bunch of stuff from CJ Banks. We were all going to go to dinner at a Japanese tabletop restaurant afterwards, but the kids were fussy by 3:00 and weren't going to last that long. So we went home, and looked for a babysitter the next day, when we returned to Takaoka for dinner without the kids. I must say, going there without the kids was an excellent idea. An excellent idea. We hit the Olive Garden afterwards for dessert.