Christmas Break

It was definitely hard to go back to work on Thursday and Friday this past week after having 12 straight days off (the benefit of actually taking four work days off, interspersed with weekends and holidays).  At least I was able to ease back in with a short week.

Everyone kept saying to enjoy our last "quiet Christmas" before the babies come.  No.  I felt like this was our ONLY quiet Christmas.  Tyson and I went to the Twin Cities and stayed there with my family for the entire twelve days.  All of our other Christmases together (all seven of 'em...including when we were dating) consisted of driving to the Twin Cities and Sioux City from either Ames or Madison and then being only a few days in each place with full driving days in between.  Not exactly relaxing when you're packing, unpacking, re-packing, packing more, driving, holiday celebrations, and seeing (or trying to see) approximately 34,897 different people that you don't usually see and/or are also home for the holidays...

Quiet, minimalist Christmas tree.  Pre-lit tree + ribbon = done.

Tyson before his Christmas straight shave/haircut (he's totally rocking what us Minnesotans term "hockey hair")...

...and after.  From bum to respectable citizen people.  Or actually from bum to looking like a 12-year old.  He's still cute.  :)

New Year's Eve Wild game.  Meh...we lost.  Scored our only goal in the last 8 seconds...not exactly what I would call a riveting game.

But the biggest excitement of going home was seeing mom and dad's new digs!  Designed by yours truly.  Remodeled kitchen, plus addition.  It's not quite done yet...and excuse the messes in each of the photos, which are a combination of Christmas things/Baby Shower Stuff/items not unpacked or put away into the cabinets quite yet.  I should have better ones when we are back in April and things are more complete!

Hard to believe this space used to be both the kitchen AND dining room.  Yeesh.

Sparkly countertop.

Two-way fireplace!

Dad chillaxin in the new space.  I think my mom has told me about three dozen times how much she loves her new place, and that it should be "featured in a magazine"...we'll see what we can do about that.

And now that we're on THIS side of the holidays, babies sure seem like they are coming soon.  Only 4-8 weeks to go!  We've gone from saying that the twins are coming "sometime in February" to saying that they are coming "sometime next month".  Plus having babies in 2014 sounded all far away when it was still 2013...but now that it is 2014...well, that's this year!