So I guess I'll start with Thanksgiving. Actually, I'll start just a couple of weeks before that with my trip to Utah for the birth of baby Cameron!!! He was born November 2nd on an early Sunday morning. Kami and Chad were nice enough to let me be in the room with them when Cam was born. It was great!! Kami was so brave and she did so well and everything went smoothly. I was able to spend a couple of more days in Utah visiting them in the hospital and I was even there when they first brought him home.
Kristi and the new baby Cameron - one of my favorite pictures.
It was too fun!!! He is now over 3 months old and getting so big and cute!! He is very healthy and happy. He smiles and giggles all the time except when they put the phone up to him so I can hear. Then he just gets too interested in the phone and gets quiet! What a little stinker!!
Andy and I got to spend about a week in Utah for Thanksgiving. We worked most of the days that the office was open so that we didn't have to take much time off of work. We didn't do too much besides hang out with family. I spent as much time as possible with Cameron. He was still so small, but so cute!! Thanksgiving day we had a small dinner with a few of the Hall's. The night before that Pat had us over for a big Thanksgiving meal as well. She wanted to cook a big dinner, but had to work on Thanksgiving, so we did that with the family the night before. Andy ventured out that night and went shopping for all the good deals they were having. He had to stand in line for a while, but got a great deal on all his wireless router stuff. Whatever that does! All I know is that he was happy, so it was worth it. Mostly, it was just a relaxing, fun week with the family and the baby!!!
Colored Christmas lights are the coolest!
Christmas was another fun week. We flew to California and spent about 4 full days there. Andy's entire family was there for Christmas which made it even better!!! Andy couldn't even remember the last time that his whole family was together at Christmas. It was also my first Christmas away from home. It was a little difficult, but we had a fun time in California, so that helped. We were able to get together with Brandon and Claire and Matt at the infamous Village Host and just eat and chat for a couple of hours. I think Andy was grateful to have some quality friend time. It was fun for me to have a kid in the house at Christmas though. I've always been the youngest at Christmas, so it was fun to have someone younger who was excited for the day. Julie went up to bed after giving Santa some cookies and the reindeer some carrots. I helped to eat the carrots which was very odd. I've never been the adult who helped eat Santa's food!!! Then Carol had an idea for me to go up and read a cute Santa book to Julie. We laid in bed together and read the book. It was very cute!
Christmas Day Andy surprised me by buying an Ipod for me!!! He and his parents chipped in together and bought me the Ipod for my main gift. It was awesome! Andy got a nice picture of me opening my present and having a shocked look on my face! Tricky little man!
Can you say "timing"?
It took a while for everyone to open their presents and then we had a breakfast that I am convinced is still sitting in my arteries somewhere. We ate the famous Stir-About and Grandfather Eggs. It was all very delicious!! Although, I can't explain the Stir-About since women aren't allowed to have the recipe. Oh well. The less I have to cook the better!
We left the Higham's house on Saturday so we could be in Utah for Cameron's blessing. There's quite an amazing story about our flight home too. Andy could probably do all the mumbo-jumbo, but I'll put the story simply and get to the good parts. Our flight was oversold so they asked for volunteers to go on a later flight. I've learned my lesson about that and you should always jump at that opportunity. Well, the problem was they didn't have any other flights that day, only on Sunday and we had to be in Utah for the blessing, so that didn't work. Andy is persistent and didn't give up that easily, so he talked to the lady again. She said we could get on a Delta flight that left 30 minutes later and she would give us flight credits. We thought we'd get like $200 each, and we were happy about that, but when we counted all the tickets she gave us, it came out to $600 each!!! We had to fly across the airport to get to the Delta terminal and then they said we couldn't get on that flight because it was booked as well. We decided to stand-by and go to the terminal just in case and we lucked out! We asked the girl if we could get on and sure enough, we got the 2 best seats on the plane. So, we got $600 each in credit vouchers, just for racing to the Delta terminal and leaving about an hour later. Not too shabby if you ask me!!!!
Anyways, we got to Utah and went straight to Tepanyaki for a yummy dinner!! It was (of course) great food and lots of fun. Sunday was Cameron's blessing followed by food at Kami's house. Again, great food and lots of fun. Then we just had Monday there and left Tuesday. It was a short trip, but worth it.
And now......"The Flood". We had the fire in July, and now we have the flood. Andy and I were sitting in our living room watching TV one Sunday night. All of the sudden we heard this awful sound followed by rushing water. It sounded like someone upstairs moved something large across their floor, and then turned the bathtub on. A few seconds later the fire alarms go off. Everyone goes into the hall and starts to file outside into the cold. Andy and I thought that since we heard a loud noise near our place, we should go check out our side of the building where our balcony is. We walked around the building and sure enough, there was water GUSHING out of the balcony right next to ours. It finally clicked that where the water was coming from was right next to the wall in our place. We raced back inside and saw that our floor was already drenched. Our adrenaline kicked in and we hurried to move all of our furniture and electronics out of the way. The water kept coming in as the firemen were trying to shut off the water. The apartment next to us where the water heater was looked like a swimming pool!! It turns out the pipes had gotten so cold that they froze and burst! Water came about half-way into our living room before they turned the water off and it stopped. It took them a while, but they finally came in and sucked up the water with their heavy duty wet-vac. We then ripped up the carpet and put a large fan in the room. Water had also damaged our wall in a couple of places. It took a couple of days for the floor to dry fully and for them to come and fix everything, but after about a week it all got taken care. What a pain!!!! We've lived in that place about 8 months and we've had a fire and a flood! A couple of weeks after our flood, another pipe burst in the entry way to the complex and flooded there as well!!! Yeah, we live in a quality place, what can I say!!!