Our Christmas, part 5: Ables family

Our Christmas, part 4: Frazier family

Our Christmas, part 3: Bloomington

We spent a few days in Bloomington with Mom. Starting with a basketball game at Assembly Hall. After a dismal first half the Hoosiers rallied and ended up only loosing by four.Emily was a fan of the corn hole game at half-time.Then a little Christmas Eve celebrating with Mom.

Our Christmas, part 2: the Farm

Dad took Rob and I for some four-wheelin' in the great outdoors.

Then Rob did some shootin.'

Our Christmas, part 1: Madison

In order to have Christmas you have to have a tree. We didn't really cut this one down. But the tools were used to get the truck the right size for the base.
The second thing you need is a fire. We like ours with marshmallows and hot chocolate.
Thing number three is some music. Rob liked it so much he is now the proud owner of a guitar and his very own copy of "Guitars for Dummies."

Houston, we have landed

Over Thanksgiving Rob and I traveled to Houston for my good friend Shannon's wedding. Her parents graciously hosted us for a Thanksgiving meal on Tbhursday, then Friday we headed to The Johnson Space Center, also known as NASA. I thought it was a great day, and because it was a holiday and the shuttle had landed a few hours earlier we got to see the real Mission Control (because no one was working there at the time) That's us with a feed from the International Space Station above. Below, one of the rockets that actually did go to space. It's huge, I can't remember which one it is, but it had less computing power than the average cell phone. Kind of crazy to think we were going to the moon 40 years ago...Saturday morning we had a few hours to kill before the wedding, so we braved the mall. It wasn't too bad and Rob got some new jeans and a coat. The wedding was in downtown Houston. I really love weddings. Shannon was gorgeous, as all bride's are. I don't have a lot of good pictures because we couldn't take any in the church, and most of my reception pictures are blurry. The coolest part was the church choir, that walked in singing before the wedding party. I've never seen that before, so definite awe factor. The reception was a ton of fun, Rob and I danced the night away. Here are a few photos that came out.

(at cocktail hour)

(before the garter toss)

(Shannon and me)

Sunday I caught the stomach bug that was making its way through the guest list, so Rob spent the day taking care of me and going to a movie while I slept and tried to do some school work. and then back to the grind.

This year so does not feel like Christmas. I am unprepared. At least the tree is up. I am skipping the rest of the planned advent posts, but maybe we'll get a shot of the tree in.