Whew!

Well a lot has happened and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it and figure out where to start. Christmas is over and it is always a little sad for me to put away the tree and decorations, but I know that Jason and I have an exciting year ahead of us.

Jason and I were able to go home for Christmas this year. It sounds like by his schedule our number of Christmas's in South Dakota are going to be limited from this point one, so we definitely made the most of this one. We were home for a total of two weeks, which sounds like a lot, but really when you try to fit everyone in to see, it goes really fast. We were able to go up to Aberdeen and spend a few days with his Grandparents. Which was good since we hadn't seen them since our wedding...two years ago. Jason's other set of Grandparent's actually came to us. His Grandpa had to have a hip replacement surgery so they drove down to us to have that done. So we got to see them during our time home as well. Not under the best conditions, but it was still really nice to see them.

We were also able to send a lot of time with our friends. We were able to see Dave, Emily and Colin a lot which was good, because Colin is growing so much and I'm sad that I am not there to see it all. We were also able to see Andrea and Tori, which this was my first time meeting Tori and she is such a cutie. Unfortunately Travis had to go back to Maryland before we had a chance to see him, but maybe Jason and I will make a trip out there to see them. We were able to see our friends Heeyoung, Dabbert and Phil as well. So I think for the amount of time that we were home we were able to squeeze in a lot of people. Yay for us.

Cooper did a great job during our driving trips. The trip out there was a little easier than the trip back, just because we divided it into a two day trip. He was able to sees almost all of the SD family which was nice. Unfortunately he wasn't able to play with the dogs like he normally plays. Jason's family dog Sam is 12 and wasn't to interested in Cooper and not to happy to have the crazy pup in his space. Abby which is my parents dog is a small dog and felt the need to defend her turf so wasn't really much up to playing. Sophie, buy sisters dog, she's just always a little mean so that didn't work out either. He made the best of it though and did get a lot of walks. We also made sure that he got to go play with Fred and Jessi's dog when we got back into town so it all worked out.

I am still trying to figure out which is harder though. Preparing to leave to go home or dealing with the aftermath when you get back. I swear our house is still a disaster and I'm not sure when it is all going to be put back together again. I was able to de-Christmas and get caught up on laundry so far, but that's about it. Hopefully I'll be able to get the rest of the cleaning done today...we will see.

Hope you all had a Happy Holiday and a safe New Year!