Better late than never, right?

I know this is a bit overdue, but Merry (Late) Christmas! I'm still trying to get everything up to date but things have been a bit crazy lately and it seems like every time I blink another week has slipped by.

Mark and I both had Christmas off this year, so rather than run around like crazy we decided to stay home, relax, and enjoy the holiday in our house with the dogs. We set up my Lego train around the bottom of the tree; it drove Bacon nuts!

I had seen pictures of those Air Swimmer helium fish balloon things and thought they were pretty crazy if they worked the way I thought they might. Mark surprised me with two of them! I got a shark AND a clownfish.

Mark also surprised me with not one, but TWO Cambridge satchels. They're really nice British leather satchels that come in lots of different colors and sizes, but they're hard to find in the US. He was sneaky with the second one...I was on the couch, watching the part in A Christmas Story where the father points out the secret present hiding behind the desk, when Mark snuck up behind me with the last box. Sneaky sneaky!

I spent most of the afternoon putting together the swimmy shark while Mark made some Christmas ribs for dinner. I love putting things together - Legos, furniture, whatever - but this was by far the most frustrating thing I've ever assembled. The directions were vague and the parts weren't well labeled, plus it's not exactly easy to accurately tape things to a four foot long helium balloon. Several hours (and drinks) later, I had a remote control shark!

I tried to swim it over to attack Mark, but since it's not exactly speedy I can't say the attack was successful. It handles pretty well, though...you can steer it left, right, up, down, and forward. Fun fun!

Since we had the next day off, too, we packed up the car and drove up to NJ for a super quick trip. The weather by us was pretty cruddy (we weren't on the road five minutes before we saw the first person in a ditch), but it got a bit better as we got closer to NJ. We got to catch up with our families and a few friends and finish giving out presents before driving back the next morning to be at work in the afternoon. Oh well...with our low seniority, I'm just grateful we even got the holiday off!