Christmas and New Year's

I know it has been a while, but I am back! This year's kettle campaign was the most difficult of my 10 years of officership. I would love to go into details, but due to our policies on blogging, I will decline!

After kettle were brought in on Christmas Eve, we loaded up the Sienna and headed north to Maine. I made record time and didn't even speed excessively. The cruise was set at 75 and due to minimal traffic, we pretty much stayed at that speed the whole 191 miles. However I think I did increase on the ever fast, I-495 to 77 mph. I was going 75 and being blown by!

Upon arrival to my parents home, we quickly enjoyed a family tradition of having cheese fondue for Christmas Eve. Added to the lineup this year were BBQ chicken wings, chocolate fondue, mozzarella cheese sticks, and other finger foods that I cannot recall at this time. Soon the cookies and milk were left for Santa and Jay and Sam went to bed.

Lucky for us, they slept in reasonably well the next morning. I think we all woke up around 8:30. Below is a picture of the sight we witnessed after being visited by Santa during the night.

Santa was good to all of us, The kids got a lot of what they wanted, For Jay, this included Star Wars toys, movies, and nice clothes. For Sam, Hannah Montana Stage, MP3 player, CD's, dolls, great clothes and all that good girly stuff .

Elaine got a Vera Bradley purse, a leather coat, and plenty of nice clothes. I got a 8 game season ticket plan to the Yankees, some clothes from Mom, Dad, and Tracy. Mom however, bought me a special gift....an i-Pod. In fact, I am listening to Billy Joel right now as I type this post on my silver i-Pod classic. Thanks Mom! I cannot forget to mention another great gift from Tracy, although it truly can be a shared gift for Jay and I. She bought me the original Star Wars Trilogy on DVD. Jay and I have already enjoyed numerous showings in these last couple of weeks. Jasmine and Taylor (mom and dads dog) made out well with gifts as they each got biscuits and dog blankets from LL Bean. Our dogs are loved!

That evening we did something most people don't do on Christmas Day...we went shopping! Yes we made the short trip to Freeport to buy Jasmine the aforementioned dog blanket. She loves laying on blankets that the kids leave around, so we bought her a heavy blanket designed for dogs to lay on. Below is a picture from LL Bean Christmas night.

After a quick day on the 26th visiting and loading songs on my i-Pod, we loaded up the car and headed to Oneonta, NY to visit Elaine's parents. It was a about a 5 hour trip, and in Albany we hit a nasty snow squall that had me a little nervous, but I knew we would be fine for the last hour. The snow quickly stopped but not before my clean car was dirty again! We arrived in Oneonta, opened more gifts and again, I was busy dealing with unpackaging the toys for the kids.

The next morning my father in law and I headed over to Cooperstown to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. I had not been there since 1993, so I was excited about this. We spent a few hours there and had a good time. One thing to note is the evidence of the steroid era in the records room, particularly in home runs, and since the Mitchell Report...pitching, specifically, Roger Clemens. Below are a couple of pictures from the Hall of Fame.

It is nice to visit family, but it is always nice to come back home. We came home on Saturday the 29th, and then celebrated my 34th Birthday on New Year's Day. I cooked one of my specialties, Baked Stuffed Shells and we had a good day at home. For our birthday's, Elaine and I went to see Wicked a few weeks ago in Hartford. It was an enjoyable evening and Wicked is a great show. Its no wonder why it ranks up there with Hannah Montana tickets on Stub Hub and is considered a sold out show on Broadway.

Well that summarizes our holiday festivities, I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year's!