The Holiday Season Comes to a Close

We finally took a picture of the family in front of our Christmas tree - granted it was NYE, but at least we got one good picture in before we take it down (which will be today). We had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas and NYE with my parents. I could not wait to give them their gift.

As you can see - Sammy was equally excited about the red toaster! My parents have recently added a red garbage can, red Kitchen Aid mixer, and a red tea kettle to their kitchen, so we thought we would add to the "redness". They have been wanting a long toaster for a while, so when I found out they finally purchased a mixer, I quickly hopped online and purchased immediately!

Uncas received a very cool gift from my parents:

A miter saw! Now I am expecting some great things to be built with it and soon! I received many cool things - some new shirts, the "ove glove", a new knife block, and some Wii remotes. We already had enough Wii-motes, so we returned them for . . .

Yup - Guitar Hero! It was fun to see my mom "rock-out"! It's been fun to play, although Uncas is the one with all the musical talent in the family, so he actually tries it on Medium, while I stick to easy.

As I mentioned earlier, we went to the CSI Experience on Thursday. First stop was lunch at Red Lobster - yum! Then we ran over to Lands' End Inlet (where Uncas and I both worked at and met) to do a little shopping. I found some slippers as did my dad, but the funniest thing of the weekend happened there. Two little boys were running around and one ran into me and started to cling to my legs. He didn't look up at me, but I was like "Hey, I am not your mommy". His brother kept saying that too "it's not mom", but he was just crying and clinging. So I am walking around, trying to pry this kid off of me while my mom and Uncas were laughing (my poor dad missed the whole event as he was in the bathroom). Their dad was just a few feet away and he was trying to tell the boy that I was not his mom and he finally had to pry the kid off of me and pick him up. It was sooo funny. His mom finally showed up and the little boy threw his arms around her so tightly. Poor kid!

Anyhow - back to the CSI exhibit. We first watched a little intro movie and then there were 3 crime scenes. We were assigned to scene #1. A car collided with a house. We had 4 minutes to view the scene and then we had all these different stations to go to, to review and analzye the evidence. Overall the exhibit was interesting, although if we had kids that were like 10 or 11, I bet they would have enjoyed it more. Surprisingly it did take about 45 minutes to go through the whole thing. We had to wait at a couple of the stations, but it wasn't too bad. After the exhibit, we walked around the museum for a while. When we got home we watched some tv and played Apples to Apples - which is alway hiliarous with my parents.

Friday we ventured out to the crowded Mall of America. We got some fabulous deals at Sears, including a $25 DVD player. We weren't at the mall for too long, but long enough to have lots of bags. And after we purchased Guitar Hero, we decided that we needed to go home because we had too much to carry. That night we played Guitar Hero for a bit as well as some bowling. My cousin Tyler came over from WI because he was leaving for Belize the next day and we were giving him a ride to the airport. We played some Rabbids with him before we headed to bed way too late.

Yesterday I was up early to the airport and then my parents left in the morning. Then I proceeded to do nothing for the rest of the day. I was completely exhausted. But I think I am caught on my sleep now. Today I have much to do, but I am going to attend my first professional football game ever, so I don't think I will get that much done. Oh well . . . I know I took a couple of days off from blogging, but now I hope to get back to the daily posting.

Cute Sammy picture from the weekend: