Merry Christmas and such…

I just read a mammoth post from Jen about all their travel and doings and I’m tempted to respond in kind. I don’t know that we’ve really done all that much – mainly I’ve rested. I slept almost fourteen hours on Saturday and then we went to Kim and Rob’s party in the evening. We had a very good time meeting lots of Truman grads, and Kim’s coworkers, one of whom used to work for Mary at the radio station (KTRM?).

Jes met the curator of the Edwards art collection (soon to be the Wachovia collection) and got an interesting perspective on the merger. Jes’ father Gary worked for Edwards and his wife Sue still does, so we maintain an interest in all things related to the recent deal - where the family owned Edwards has become a dissolving subsidiary – dissolving into the giant Wachovia.

Elliot was a star party guest and had zero fussy moments as he was passed around to the friends and family there. We want to have a social and tolerant baby who doesn’t go into hysterics the moment his parents are out of sight. He may have some genetic predispositions to the social as that gene is… prominent on my side.

Jes and her mom were busy baking hundreds of cookies over Saturday and Sunday. We will be in sugar and carbs for some time to come. Perhaps they will vanish at our holiday parties. We’re having a New Year’s Eve party and a party for my work department a few days later. I’ve started on some of my break to-do list by cleaning out the garage and unpacking a few essentials that we haven’t seen since we moved in back in July. I still can’t find my sander; it’s a Black and Decker Mouse. Did you borrow it? I want to refinish our coffee table.

Monday afternoon / evening we went to Pontoon Beach/Granite City for Jack and Bonnie’s party. Santa made an appearance and so we have a video of Elliot’s first visit with the pagan deity. Our headlights on the Forenza have gone out, so we made the return trip with our brights on –eek! I replaced the fuse for the headlights yesterday, but got nowhere with that, so we’re taking the car into the dealer tomorrow. It smells of ozone, so they will have to track down the short for us.

Christmas Tuesday had us back in Illinois for a turkey dinner at Gary and Sue’s followed by a return to St. Louis and another turkey dinner at Mira and David’s. We did a few gift exchanges – Elliot made out well – but having gotten a house and a baby this year… Jes and I don’t really need much else. We got a little money towards a new computer and one of those digital picture frames to load all our hundreds of baby pictures on to. We set up a slide show yesterday. Jes did a photo shoot on Monday of Elliot in front of the tree with all of his Christmas apparel, so that is all cute and will be up on flickr soon.

Today has been task filled. We did some plumbing and got our wet bar in the basement operational for the coming parties. I had to cut out the old metal drain with a Dremel, going through three blades and getting a few spark burns in the process. I was glad of the safety glasses and Jes’ heavy metals ventilator – she uses it when mixing glazes. Elliot is wiggling in the Pack N’ Play to my right. He has started doing frog kicks while giggling and it is very cute. Jes and her mom are out running errands, spending the gift certificate to the yarn store that I got Jes, no doubt.

That’s about it – taking it easy – getting a few things done – enjoying time off with wife and child.