Where did it go?? Did anyone see 2005? These last few months have been very busy (as evident from my lack of bloggage). So what have I been doing?

Let's see, Thanksgiving was spent in Bridgewater, with the Pollards. Jeff had a very busy weekend planned, so we came back to Richmond Thursday night. He spent all weekend doing some upgrades and changes to CustomTacos and in the process found out that he had damaged his ulnar nerve. After this self diagnosis, he decided to check with a doctor to be sure. Now he has to wear a 'sock' with a padded elbow during the day to prevent putting pressure on the nerve. His checkup this week was good, supposedly he's making good progress.

The first week of December brought our first good snow, and some snow days! Well, a day of leaving early a couple of delays and a cancellation after a delay, for rain. That's right, rain. We're not exactly sure what happened that day, it was snowing/sleeting through the night, but was going to warm up and change to rain by the next afternoon. Since we have multiple campuses, not all of them had the same forecast, so we closed because the roads were still slick. Didn't bother me much, I got a lot of my Christmas shopping done that day!

Somewhere in there I took a day to get my 'hair did.' This will be the third time I've done it in this shade of red, yet everyone seems to think it's a completely new color. Maybe I wait too long between appointments?

I'm not really sure what I spent my December weekends doing....Christmas shopping, Christmas decorating, stuff like that. Jeff & I ending up ditching both our office 'Holiday' parties. But we did go to Kelly & Jon's! Theirs was much cooler, they had an ornament exchange and hot cider!

Work has been crazy busy. Before Christmas was the worst, with everyone trying to get as much done before our extended Holiday break. I ended up working a half day on the 22nd so we could go to Fishersville and celebrate Jennifer's birthday.

We went ahead and packed for our Arkansas trip, including luggage, gifts and the cat, taking it all to the Pollards before meeting up with everyone for dinner. Dinner was at the Mill Street Grill, a very popular local restaurant; it was very good. We passed on dessert and went back to Jennifer's house for cake and gift opening.

Friday morning we left Bridgewater about 8am for the 12 hour drive to Arkansas. (Leaving from Bridgewater cut down a little on our time) We only stopped a few times for gas and food and got to my parents house about 10pm (that included the one hour time change); not too shabby.

Our time in Arkansas seemed to go by so fast, as it always does. We had quite an animal farm since my parents have 2 dogs and 2 cats, we brought Gizmo and my brother brought his cat, Mogwai, for a day. It was quite interesting, but worked out pretty well. I think Gizmo actually enjoyed being around other animals. Betty, a very boisterous beagle just wanted to play, so Gizmo got a little exercise running from her.

Bruce only had Christmas day off, but we got to spend some time with him and his girlfriend, Jenny. Later in the week we decided to see more of the area and drove north, with only a vague idea of a plan. We stopped at the Mystic Caverns up in the Ozark Mountains. It was really neat to be in a cave again, but felt weird to be taking a walking tour, not a crawling one. :) After that we continued up, past the state line, to Branson, Missouri. Jeff & I had never been there before, so my parents gave us the grand tour. It's a little like Vegas mixed Myrtle Beach, without the beach. And without the beachwear shops. And the casinos. And since it was winter, a lot of places were closed. We didn't really do much there, stopped at a Go-Kart track, went to a couple of shops in the downtown area, and then ate dinner. We got back to Arkansas pretty late, and we all slept in the next morning.

The next couple of days we just relaxed around the house, did a little more shopping, and got my parents hooked on Lost. We left there Thursday and drove the 14 hours back to Richmond. Maybe next year we'll host Christmas at our house.