Happy Christmas and Merry New Year

I hope you enjoy all the pictures. We have had a wonderful holiday season. We celebrated early with Joe's family because Mike and Amy were going to Arkansas for Christmas. We ate yummy fajitas (a fun change from the typical Christmas feast). The boys had lots of fun playing and "wrestling" with their cousins and we got lots of great presents of course. Then on Christmas Eve we celebrated with my family. Joe and I got to go to lunch and a movie with Rob and Molly - it was lots of fun but the movie was a little weird (thanks a lot Rob ;) ). The boys once again loved playing with Zoe and got a super cool remote controlled truck. We had a quiet Christmas Day at our house and I actually took down the Christmas tree because we were leaving the next day for 6 days. Our big present to the boys this year was to finish the basement so they can play the Wii and wrestle (and I can have some peace and quiet). I will have more details and pictures on this soon. The next day we took off with Joe's parents to Arkansas. We stopped at Cataract Falls in Illinois to stretch our legs. It was way out in the middle of nowhere amongst little shacks and falling apart trailers. But it was a beautiful walk in the sun (in Michigan we don't see the sun from December to March - so this was a treat for us) and there was a cool covered bridge. The next day we got to Arkansas (Joe's Grandmother and Aunt Fran and Uncle GW live there) . The majority of our time was spent eating and sitting around talking. The boys were initiated into true southern cooking with fried okra, hush puppies, fried frog legs, crayfish, and catfish. We got home from our journey on New Year's Eve and spent the evening at MCYC playing games and yep you guessed it, eating with my parents.

And to explain the Sonic picture, that was from our trip to Arkansas. First off, there are no Sonics in Michigan and they have the BEST cherry limeade slushes. Grammie V., the boys, Joe, and I can't get enough of them - we know exactly where the first Sonic on the way down south is. So on our trip Grammie says, "We need to have Sonic every day that we are traveling." Then someone wonders if traveling just means being in the car and of course that is answered with a resounding YES! So we had cherry limeades (and other variations) each and every day that we were gone!