A few days off, a trip, and family.

Christmas vacation for school officially ended last Friday. It's nice to know I don't have to work during a holiday... and that I have a fair amount of time off.

I enjoy the Christmas/New Year Holiday, especially since we have kids. Aundrea and Tristan enjoy seeing presents under the tree. Getting them to understand the reason and purpose of Christmas is somewhat of a challenge. I think the stories that they're told make sense, at least to Aundrea. But application for her is a bit of a challenge.

This year Christmas came a bit early as we celebrated with mom and dad last Sunday. It was a lot of fun for all of us. Samantha and I had got a Wii from them a few weeks earlier. Although I've never been a "BIG" video game fanatic, I have enjoyed this little system as it has simple games that we can just pick up fairly quickly and play.

Aundrea and Tristan mainly received much needed clothes. Aundrea also got a kids style digital camera. She's taken an interest in taking pictures with our camera, her own camera seemed fairly logical. She also received a bed for her baby doll.

Tristan is a little more simple. If it looks neat he's ok with it! He got an RC Truck to tool around with. Right now he mainly knows how to go forward and backward. Running into stuff is his biggest enjoyment!

Koren is the biggest challenge. What do you get a kid that inherits everything from his siblings? We managed to find a few needed things for him!

Wednesday was an early morning for us. We got up a little after 5. Loaded up the final 2-3 things and the kids into the van and were on the road by 6:15 for Minnesota. The kids stayed in their pajamas until we were nearly to North Dakota. We arrived at Samantha's parent's time at about 7:30 CT. Not to bad of time. The kids did a great job with the trip. Thanks to entertainment systems... and headphones.

The trip was a bit of surprise for Samantha as she's only known for the past 10 days or so that she'd be spending Christmas at home, something we haven't done in at least 3, maybe 4 years. She enjoys to return home and catch up with her family. Living so far away has made it difficult for her at times.

I do believe we'll probably end up somewhere in this vicinity in future years. We would like to make the move this coming year, yet I'm planning for several scenarios. The worst of which would be to stay put!

We're here through Sunday. And we'll make the long trip back beginning early Monday morning.