Home, Sweet Home!

We made it home Friday evening around 6:30pm. The roads were good and no bad weather. There was some blowing snow across the interstate when we got into North Dakota and the visibility wasn't the greatest at times, but we've driven in ALOT worse conditions, so we were thankful for the travel weather we had.


I hate the mess we have when we get home from vacations. There is crap everywhere. I need to get motivated to clean it up.

Gage and Emma have Christmas money burning a hole in their pockets. We went to Walmart this evening which turned out to be a huge mistake. We had both kids ticked off and crying as they left the store empty handed. It was quite embarrassing and I was trying to stay as far ahead of them as I could while I was pushing the cart to the checkout, hoping no one would think they were mine. I don't think it worked.

It's pretty cold here. While we were in Iowa I didn't even use my coat. I wasn't outside that much though. We can't get away without wearing coats here. It is -10 degrees outside right now, with windchills much colder than that.

While we were gone we had our neighbor, Dave, checking on our animals. Unfortunately, he did a good job and they were all still alive when we got home. I told him I wouldn't be upset if he just flushed the tadpole and salamander down the toilet. The cats might clog the pipes, so that probably wouldn't be a good idea. Speaking of cats, our yellow cat, Griz, was MIA when Dave came to check on them Wed night. Thursday Maggie called me at my Mom's house asking where he might be hiding, as they had been looking for him for over an hour and couldn't find him. Griz likes to get into cupboards and drawers and just about anything else that he can find. There was no way that he could have gotten out of the house, so we weren't worried that he had escaped. On Friday when Dave came to check on them, he heard Griz howling and found him trapped inside our dresser drawers in our bedroom. None of the drawers were even open, but apparently there is an open place on the lower backside of the dresser that he crawled into, then climbed up into one of the drawers and then couldn't get out. When Scott opened his dresser drawer this morning to get his hunting clothes out for his final pheasant hunt of the season, his black clothes were COVERED in cat hair. Unfortunately Griz is very neurotic and when I'm away, he pulls his hair out, literally. You can tell on his back half that he is missing quite a bit of hair. I guess a week is too long to be gone in Grizzy's eyes! Thankfully there were no stinky surprises in Scott's drawer, even after he had been in there for a couple of days! He may have been in and out of there and then finally couldn't get out and had to cry for help. He's sitting here on my lap with his chin resting on my arm as I type. He's sticking to me like glue to make sure I don't leave him again.

It was nice sleeping in our own beds last night and I'm looking forward to school starting back up on Monday!