I forgot to take pictures for most of the weekend–I was too busy socializing! But I did grab a couple of photos. Here they are…

Pipi lives in the sunglasses case in the car–she is always excited for a road trip!

Those of you who were curious about the giant present under the Christmas tree? It was for Dale’s dad. It was some Gorilla Gear for his car. It’s almost impossible to buy for him so we were super excited to have something we knew he might like–and since he put the gear in his car asap we think we made the right choice! It’s a heavy duty liner for the back of his car. He liked the Gorilla Gear we got with Betty.

The kids were rather excited to get Nerf guns that quickly turned into a non-stop game of finding the Nerf sponge bullets.

On Christmas morning we went to Wayne and Lisa’s house–and everybody got to play with the Wii, which was fun–Barb is obviously kicking ass here…

Lisa even made a turkey! We had a tasty turkey lunch before heading over to my Aunt Diane and Uncle Randy’s for ham and all kinds of family favorites. Amazingly, I never got around to taking any pictures there! Can you believe it? I’m super sad I forgot to do that. I got to meet my cousin Ryan’s little baby Riley–he looks like a Gerber baby! And got to catch up with the family. It was really nice!

The day after Christmas we stopped in to say hello at the bowling alley where Lauren and Ian were enjoying the annual “Day after Christmas Bowling” that everybody does. Right? Dale got some cute pics of the kids bowling.

That evening we took Dale’s mom out for dinner–the 27th is her birthday and so we feasted at a steakhouse called Lucky’s–it was good! I didn’t get any pics of that either. Gah!

Trying to take a serious portrait of the children is not the easiest thing to do!

Ian throws the ball pretty much straight up in the air–he’s lucky it doesn’t take out his toes. Even so? He’s still a better bowler than I am. Sad, but true. In other news, I got my mom’s bowling ball with the custom bag that my father made for her. So now I have my own purple ball with my initials on it and a leather bag with my initials on it! My mom and I shared initials for those slower kids playing at home…I got the bowling ball from my Aunt Judy. I met up with her and my Aunt Charlene for lunch last Sunday and it was so great to see them and hang out. I wish I’d had more time with them!

Dale and I took a little time between visits with people to check out the slowly-revitalizing downtown Flint. Very cool! The ol‘ town is lookin‘ pretty good, all things considered. I wish we’d have had time to check out the restaurants there.

On our last night in town we met up with our friends Meghan and Bravin and had a FEAST at the Japanese steakhouse at Great Lakes Crossing called Miyako. It was quite tasty! We really had a nice time catching up with those two and stuffing our faces. Seriously, that place is delish!

We wish we could have seen more people and spent a little longer with everyone we saw!

And, after several days of eating out, I’m ready for one of those detox diets or something. Wow, we feasted our way around Michigan and had a really great Christmas! Thanks to everyone for hanging out (and for the presents and the food, of course).

Dale and I are celebrating our Christmas together tonight so we can savor them over this long weekend. Is there anything better than having four days off with no plans but to relax?