Christmas and all that

Lauren and I went back to Wisconsin and Minnesota last week for the Christmas festivities. It was an eventful trip starting with the flight home. I, and Lauren, thought we were flying out of George Bush Intergalactic Airport (IAH) and it turns out we were supposed to fly out of Hobby (HOU). Stupid that those airports can't pick symbols that might actually distinguish which one is which since that are both International Airports. Thankfully, the lady that helped us wasn't already bogged down by the craziness that Christmas brings to airports and she helped us get to Chicago from which we took a bus ride home.

Further excitement came from Christmas at my Mom's house with my sister and her two kids.

The day after that, Sunday I think, Lauren and I met up with my friend Chris and we went skiing. Lauren and I are both pretty good skiers and apparently Chris had never skied before. We showed him the ropes, and how to fall. It was good times and we had Chris skiing some Blacks before we were done. Chris actually found out that skiing without falling is much more fun than falling continuously.

Monday we left for the cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) although we pretty much hung out only in St. Paul.

Tuesday we toured some potential wedding venues but we have not picked one.

Wednesday we had a joint engagement party with Lauren's sister and her fiance. It was quite a bit of fun, got to meet lots of people and then drive home in lots of snow.

Thursday brought us loads of nice packy snow with which Lauren, Buddy (Lauren's brother), Sasha (Lauren's sister's fiance) and I built a remarkable scene. Something sort of like this but not really. I will soon post pictures of our masterpiece.
We also had a big family Christmas at Lauren's on Thursday night, everyone was awed by the snow sculpture.
On a side note: Lauren's Dad hooked us up with iPhones for Christmas!

Friday we had Christmas with Lauren's family in the morning and then drove back to my house for Christmas at my Dad's. Getting pretty exhausted of Christmas by now but I persevered.

Saturday we had the big Barber family Christmas and it was great to see all of the family. I also saw my Grandfather who is quite ill, I sure hope he starts getting better.

Sunday we were supposed to fly out of Madison early (6:30 a.m.) but the plane was held due to maintenance issues. Oh well, we had iPhones to play on. Finally we got home about 3:30 - 4 and I raked the back yard. Random, yes, but our back yard sure looks good. Then we watched Idiocracy, dumbest movie ever made!

Sure

it's been a while since I've written and quite a bit has happened since then. The biggest news is that we got a sweet foosball table. It's definitely sturdy and I've been puttin' a whoopin' on Lauren ever since. Here is a picture so now, Mom, you can't say, "You never post pictures when you say you are going to!" anymore. Here are the pictures of the furniture we got:

Sweet foosball table!

Sort of a kitchen table

Big bookshelf

Little bookshelf and bike and desk. Need to organize a little maybe...


Other good news revolves around work, Seu, and Snow.



At work I've been in training for the past two weeks learning how to do geology, turns out it's pretty dang fun! Geophysics isn't so scary anymore and I found out people actually use Sequence Stratigraphy. Nice.


Seu, forcefully or not, was removed the breeding pool of dogs as of last Tuesday, he is still barking at a slightly higher pitch.


In case you didn't hear, Houston got snow last Friday. Exciting, right? We did actually get out of work early but not because the snow was piling up but because the already terrible drivers in Houston don't actually know what snow is so they drive around like the sky is falling, it could be also be caused when people see squirrels doing this. Chaos!


We did document this unusual occasion:


Notice Seu's look of displeasure, it's not from the snow or the cold.