NOTE: abbre­vi­ated post so I can get my life back I just want my kids back!

Christ­mas was good. We spent it the week­end pre­vi­ous at Hawar­den, where there was an early Christ­mas on account of Adam and Cari being unable to be in town on the 25^th. My big present there was a box of N* t-shirts. Holli did a good job of keep­ing me in the dark on it, and she con­tacted a num­ber of peo­ple and sold them t-shirts — thor­oughly under­cut­ting any profit I hope to make off these shirts in the future. Just kidding!

Between Holli and I, we got a bath­room for Christ­mas. I also got Born Stand­ing Up by (The) Steve Mar­tin from A&C. It’s super awe­some, though I haven’t had much time for it lately. Marissa got the big present: she got a new Mac­Book. She had to earn it, though. It was at the end of a long series of bogus presents, which was beau­ti­fully orches­trated by Larry “Pup­pet­mas­ter” Gregg.

After Hawar­den we went to Big Stone City. Bryce and Lind­sey were back, so we got to see them. We had the usual get together at Grandma’s which ended in presents. Sue’s gift for us all was a used pack of cards. And then there was an iTunes gift card inside. I haven’t used mine yet. I’m wait­ing for the per­fect moment. Holli and Lind­sey both got presents from Sue this year.

Then it was back to the Val Rausch house. I got a snow globe, Extras Series 1 DVD, a movie trivia book, and a Garmin GPS unit from Mom. I was a lit­tle taken aback look­ing inside the box because half the stuff listed on the con­tents was miss­ing. Then she men­tioned the word “eBay”, and I knew the score. Still, the device is neat, and I def­i­nitely need to devote more time to play­ing with it.

The big present here went to (the youngest) Brenna. She got Rock Band for PS2. Good thing there’s a large liv­ing room there. We hooked it all up, and we played for a fair amount of time. It works with Gui­tar Hero II gui­tars, so we were play­ing bass, lead, drums, and had a singer. We all took turns and Dan and David and Tom came over.

Christ­mas Day, Holli and I headed to Sioux Falls. And a storm hit. We were dri­ving 10 miles an hour at some points. We got to wit­ness a col­li­sion, but thank­fully made the trip just fine our­selves. The GPS brought us straight to Kevin’s place. There we had a great meal of prime rib and lob­ster tail. Holli and I were orig­i­nally going to head to Madi­son, but we scrapped those plans pretty quick. At Karin’s, then, Holli broke out Pop 5, and it was a hit.

I’m sure there’s plenty I’m for­get­ting. It’s late at night, and all this last minute wed­ding stuff has a lot of us over-tired. All-in-all it was a good Christ­mas. Let’s do it again next year.