christmas is over. the dreaded journey is over. i am very happy now. today i will take down the tree and put it all behind me. the trip to mikes parents was very uneventful. the weather was great, not a single flake of snow. for which i am very grateful. we rented a car because my car is unreliable..it runs well, but lately there has been a funny burning smell under the hood...is that a good thing? i think not, unless one is roasting weinies or marshmallows over the carburator. but the car we got was a pt cruiser!!! it was a very nice ride, plenty of room for booboo in the back seat. speaking of booboo, she was the hit of the party at the big family wing-ding. she got more pets and pats than a playboy bunny at a monestary. but, let me tell you about the BIG BUFFET!! it was incredibly disappointing. i did not lose any wieght and i just knew people were looking at me thinking "my god, what happened to her?" but i sure didn't gain any weight while i was there. we took down two 7 pound spiral hams and his mom said that was too much, so she only used one, then there was this little platter of roast beef and a little platter of turkey (when i say little i don't mean the platters were little..they were actually platters...there was just a little meat on them). she had a little chocolate cake and a cheesecake. then someone brought some cookies, and a tray of horsdeurves (sp?) ..they were nasty..cream cheese with a pecan on top sitting on a corn husky thing. all this massive(?) amount of food for 25 people!!! my mom puts out more than that for 6 people. mike ranted all the way home about how disappointing the buffet was and how he was glad tim didn't go with us after he had told him about the masses and masses of food there always was. and to top it all off, i wanted to bring the ham bone home for badger and berit, so when mike asked his mom about it she said she had it in the freezer to make split pea soup. personally, i think that she put it in the freezer so no one at the party would fight over it or break a tooth gnawing on it for just one more morsel. and then there was the big family photo, they do that every year. and me being one of the shorter ones, i had to stand in the front. but thankfully after that we got to leave, everyone else hangs around til 11 p.m. but i had the great excuse of having to be home christmas morning. so we went about 2 hours and found a nice motel 6, then got up the next morning and headed for home. we got here around noon, and the kids had the house looking really great (they really wanted those presents). then we ripped into those and in 10 minutes it was all over. i think everyone is happy with their gifts (i got them all the things on their list, so i guess they should be). and i know i am. mike got me a kindle, just like i mentioned before. and a case for it. i looked and looked trying to decide what my first book to download would be. then i went ahead and ordered the dome, by stephen king. i already have it in hardback ( a big 60 pound hardback), but it was the book i am reading. one of the really cool things on the kindle is the progress meter. it gives the percentage of the book you have finished. i have read 22% of the dome. this has to be about the coolest gift i have ever received. (it's right up there with the etch-a-sketch i got for what must have been my 6th birthday)and it really does only take about 45 seconds for a book to download. so, tim got the basketball book he wanted, a battery pack charger for his xbox and a new monitor for his computer (a very nice one..wonder if he would notice if i swapped with him). emily got 3 video games she wanted, a gift card for i-tunes and a wireless headset for her xbox (still being repaired by microsoft), and mike got a new flight jacket, a gun bag with hearing protectors, safety glasses and a years membership to the rifle and pistol club. i gave ben cash and grocery gift cards because he said thats all he wanted and he gave me 2 elvis collector plates, an elvis cup and an elvis guitar to put on my elvis shelf. they are all aloha 70's elvis which is my favorite. younger elvis is ok, but not the sexiest..and he tells me they don't make memorabilia of fat elvis....good thing he died, he would have looked as bad as me in the gardener family photo.