Yeah, I'm still alive...

I know, I know...it's been FOREVER since I posted something. There has just been a boatload going on here and I haven't had a moment to write for awhile. But I've received some emails from you asking if I'm still alive and all, so I just want to say it's good to know you haven't forgotten about me. :)

So much has happened in the last 2 months (I'm really wondering if I should back-date this so I have at least one entry in January), I don't know where to start. I guess I'll start with Christmas and just give you some short stories about what's been happening.






Christmas 2006
As many of you know, I ended up going back to Illinois around Christmas. It wasn't planned at all, but my step-mom's dad died so I went back to the funeral and ended up staying about 10 days. It was really nice to have some time with the family (including aunts, uncles, cousins, grandma, etc.), and there is one little story that just CRACKED me up. And, of course, it's about baby bro.

So Christmas Eve (or at least the eve when Santa came to our house), baby bro and I were playing cards. Now, he's a bar back in Columbus, so his hours are like wake up at 2 PM, do whatever, go to work at 4 PM, and leave work at 4 AM. Something like that. And I can usually stay up quite late myself, so we ended up playing cards until like 2 AM. As we got ready to go upstairs to bed, he said, "Ok. Let's fix this stocking situation." I said, "Stocking situation? What's the stocking situation?" And he said, "That's not my stocking. I'm getting out the real one."

When baby bro was about 4 or 5, he got a new stocking as a gift one year for Christmas. At the time, the stocking was bigger than he was; it's about 4 feet tall and 2.5 feet wide. (I really wish I could post the photo of him standing inside it when he first got it...too bad we didn't have a digital camera at the time.)

Anyway, so he starts rummaging through boxes looking for his "real" stocking, not the normal-sized one like the rest of us have. And he actually finds it, takes down the normal sized one, and puts up his "real" stocking. It was so heavy that the stocking holder was barely able to keep it up on the mantle. (See photo below.) I was laughing so hard just thinking about my dad's reaction when he saw THAT (which I knew we would unfortunately be sleeping through.)

So we went to bed.

The next morning, we got up around 9ish and walked downstairs, of course forgetting about the whole stocking ordeal. We sat down at the table to have some breakfast, and I walked through the living room to get something. As I passed through, I noticed something different, but I couldn't quite place what it was. I turned towards the fireplace, and saw this:

Oh my goodness. I could NOT stop laughing!! And my dad came out laughing his butt off as well and said, "I was thinking that I was really sad I wasn't going to get to see your faces when you saw that!" And I said, "That's what I said to Jeff last night before we went to bed! That we weren't going to see YOUR face!" Memorable.











There is information about the cyber cafe and photos of the final world map here if you're interested.