Don't give up on us yet!

Many apologies to our faithful checkers...I know things on this blog haven't been very exciting lately. :) Hopefully we can do better this year, but I won't promise anything!

We just returned from our cross-country Christmas tour...two and a half weeks on the road with a dog and a loaded backseat! Jasper was really sick of being in the back by the end of the trip. After stopping to let him pee, when we tried to get him to hop back in, he would often just stand there and look at us with sad brown eyes as if to say, "Do I have to? Do you understand how small this space is and how large I am?!!!??" And we would say to him, "Yes, buddy, we're all cramped. Just a few more hours. At least you can lay down to sleep--we're stuck sitting up!" And then he would hop in as if he was satisfied with that answer. We have such a wonderful dog.

Okay, but the trip wasn't all about the dog, it was about family. It was so good to be at home (both of them) and see all the family again. We didn't have long enough at any place (no time would be long enough!), but we will take what we can get! Neither South Dakota nor Wisconsin nor anywhere in between had any snow, so it was sort of hard to actually feel like it was Christmas (funny how mere precipitation can make or break the holidays sometimes), but there were some familiar seasonal things that really helped it set in...Christmas Eve church services, for one thing, billions of Christmas cookies everywhere for another, and of course Dad's Christmas village/ski resort. I'm not even kidding. The thing grows every year and takes over a bit more of the basement than the year before. It is all very impressive, of course, but I have to say that the highlights are the completely functional chair lift (that moves and sounds just like a real one!) and the snow cloud that gently dusts one building with snow flakes. I pointed out to Dad that it seemed kind of phony to have snow dusting only one building while the building two inches to the left got nothing...he just looked at me and said, "Small cloud." I wouldn't be surprised if next year the whole village has a cloud...ah, the power of suggestion. :)

Back to the point, again, this Christmas was more special to me than any other I can remember because this year I didn't become trapped by the presents and food and other Christmasy things that are nice but not really important. This year, I realized over and over how precious family is, and how priceless and immeasurably wonderful time with them is. I seized every moment of this trip that I possibly could and hung onto it for everything it was worth...understanding that each one was such a gift, a gift that I could never know the whole value of nor be thankful enough for. Family, each and every single one of you are so precious to me and to Nate; there is nothing we could say to make you understand how vast and deep our love for you runs. We are far away from all of you and don't see any of you nearly enough, so please know that our love is so much bigger than the few words we can say in a few days of visiting. When we look back on this trip, we see how blessed we were to be with all of you...not because you took us skiing or shopping or watched our dog while we were out...but because we are family and having each other is the biggest blessing we could ever have been given.

Love to you all--