Merry Christmas! It's been a little more than a week since the last post but it seemed today was a logical breaking point for the week. Obviously Christmas was yesterday. Laura and Thomas are in an in-between year for visiting his family for Christmas, so they were here with us this year. They arrived on the 24th, coming from Michigan, and departed today bound for Chicago to visit Monica. Beth and the kids and I were at the Christmas Eve service at church when they arrived; as soon as it was over we (plus Mary Jane) went out to dinner at Texas Road House and spent the rest of the evening playing Wizard. They were staying at the Wyndham. Christmas morning, they came back to the house and we did presents (although the presents I got for them had not arrived yet, so I will hopefully ship them this week), then started getting the big Christmas meal together. Beth made a ham and we had enough other food to feed an army even though only 7 people were here altogether. Sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, cranberry salad, pumpkin fluff dip, key lime pie, and a bunch of other stuff. Then more Wizard. This morning we all went out for breakfast at Bob Evans before they headed out again. 

Last Friday, Beth and I and the kids went up to Michigan to visit for an evening with Stephanie & John. We drove up in the afternoon after Alex was out of work, got there around dinnertime and had a nice dinner out with the Pinksters. Afterwards we played a new game that we hadn't heard of before, called 'Ransom Notes,' in which you have a handful of those little word magnets (like on a fridge), you get a prompt card (like 'Explain to the interviewer why you haven't worked in 3 years') and assemble a response with only your magnets, then the judge selects the winner (Alex's: 'I did drugs also alcohol' Missy's: 'afraid') based on what s/he thinks is funniest/best. 

The last week before break I wanted to take off from work, but didn't really have a chance because it has been so busy. We've got a lot of validations going on an all the data coming in from those, other research projects, blah blah blah... anyway the result being I didn't feel like I could. So I compromised and did a sort of half and half. I went in probably every day for a few hours (like usual) and spent the rest of the time at home, working on the computer or not. I did quite a bit of work on the downstairs: the old wood paneling is all off, I've insulated the cold water pipes in the downstairs bathroom (so they don't sweat and drip onto the drop ceiling panels), and I replaced the stained ceiling panels in the downstairs bathroom (see previous job). My group at work also did another volunteering with Habitat for Humanity on Wednesday; there is a lake house on Waubee Lake that apparently recently sold, and the new owners donated most of the kitchen cabinetry and fixtures, and a homemade bar that was in the rec room, so we volunteered to uninstall them and haul them away. The cabinets were all installed with a large amount of screws with a varying head type and some were very well hidden, but we eventually got them all taken out and got the cabinets out with a minimum of destruction. Habitat had a truck that we loaded everything onto and then unloaded it all at the Re-sale shop in town.

So today, I've been getting everything in the house clean and we're getting ready for Beth's surgery tomorrow. Now it's close enough that she's really nervous.

Missy is home! Friday Alex and I drove down to Muncie to pick her up for break and to help her move! The roommate stuff got just unbearable and she got a transfer approved not long ago. She had been dreading telling her (now ex-) roommate but it was no big deal and she wasn't sad to see her go. The roommate was already gone by the time we got there, so I didn't have to intimidate her or anything, and we moved all the stuff that is staying at college over to the new room, and all the stuff that is going home (at least for now) into the truck. She doesn't really know the new roommate, but has seen her and knows who she is and said she seems nice. I sure hope so. Anyway her bed was disassembled, but Missy wanted to get away without staying to assemble it before leaving even though I offered to. She got a call from Petsmart on the way home, so she is all (re-)onboarded and all set to work there over break and make a few bucks. She got paid for an hour just on the phone in the truck. Alex is all set at Kroger as well (he needs the money more than she does).

Beth did not accompany us to Muncie because her knee is horrible. Her surgery date is coming up soon, but it's far enough away that she is still looking forward to it. The pain can't be as bad after TKR as what it is now. She didn't want to be in the truck for 4 hours, but ALSO it just so happens that Friday evening was the Zastrows' Christmas party at their house. Beth went there without me, and I went after unloading Missy at home. We got everything unloaded and into her room, and then I turned around and said bye. It was a fun time. We played a game I'd never heard of before, called RiffTrax, which is like Mystery Science Theater 3000. They play a clip from a terrible movie, then everyone logs in and provides the next line. Then everyone votes on the best one. Kind of like Jackbox, but different. Anyway, it was a fun time!

Otherwise, not much to report for this week. Work has been crazy busy. Beth's been working all week as well.

Couple big things this week. Because it was Natalie's birthday last Sunday, I texted her happy birthday and asked if she would like me to bring the couch and loveseat and her other things over to her new place (she's now living on Ohio with friends). Her answer: Yes!! So I told her I would make arrangements to get a truck and bring her things out this week. I reserved a 15' U-Haul truck for Wednesday, recruited a co-worker to help me lift some things into it, and Beth and I took that loud rattling bouncy thing over to the sticks OH. We packed up the couch and loveseat from the downstairs, her bike, the big orange dresser, her old coffee table, her I'm not sure what it's called mini-couch or whatever, end table, and several boxes of stuff. The GPS took us through some real back roads in the middle of nowhere, but we made it and unloaded/carried in/set up everything we had. She seems to be doing well, I'm not sure who of the 4 living there is working or what they are doing but she's going to try to get a job at a care facility nearby. We also got her for her birthday a bird feeder made of glass tableware cemented together that Beth found at the Wawasee show, plus some birdseed and a shepherd's crook, and she seemed to be really happy with that.

Since a lot of the downstairs is now empty, I took the opportunity to get the carpets in the house cleaned. Mostly spurred by picking up Alex's room in preparation for him being here next week, and seeing how gross the carpet was (there was cat barf and scoot marks!). Also, when we moved the couch from downstairs, I found mold in the carpet. Old mold. So I quickly rented a Rug Doctor from Kroger and spent most of Friday and Saturday cleaning carpets all throughout the house. Special attention paid to the places where there were still pet stains from Nat's dog or from Ruby (did pretty well). Everything cleaned up pretty well. 

Also on Friday Beth and I were in line at Starbucks when we saw a young woman pull out of the line with apparent car trouble. She managed to get the car into a parking space, but couldn't go anywhere further than that. We could see the right front tire of her car was turned around 45 degrees and the left was straight, and she looked like she was basically at a loss as to what to do. Beth called over to her to ask if she needed help... she didn't know what was wrong with the car, but I looked and could see a broken steering linkage. Also as it turned out, she needed to go right then to pick up her 2-year-old at day care, and then she needed a ride for both of them back to the shelter where she has been living. She didn't know who to call, the only one she could think of was an abusive ex-husband. She's been trying to get moved out of the shelter but because of the move she basically had no money right now for car repairs so she didn't know how she was going to get to a job interview she had either. Beth and I gave her the rides she needed and picked up her baby with her, then dropped her off with $100 cash to help her with a tow or repairs.

The Wawasee Holiday Bazaar or whatever it's called was this weekend. Since we went to Seattle over the Thanksgiving holiday, Beth has been way behind in getting soup made since we sold so much at the Columbia City show. So she worked pretty much all week on making soup, and by the end of the week finally had pretty much all she needed. We went there to set up on Friday evening, got it all set, and she looked everything over and said it looked like we hardly had anything. Which was an exaggeration, because we set another record. We sold 158 jars of soup. Admittedly, we hardly had anything left by the time the show was over, which is ok too. Beth is hurting a lot (knee, back) and making soup hasn't been as joyous this year as in past years. She's pretty glad to have the season over and isn't going to worry about getting more sales from the ladies at work or church.