….go check out my sister-in-law’s etsy shop. Aside from all her play food, she also has some new produce that is sort of food, sort of a doll and very cute. Think Christmas shopping people…

We’re back from Kansas. We woke up around 4:30 this morning, left at 5 and got home just a little after 5. The trip home was pretty uneventful, except for the part when Lexi threw up in her carseat. And of course it happened just outside of Kansas City which meant 8 hours of traveling with that lovely aroma. Her carseat now smells like bleach.

Kansas was fun. I’m sure Kevin will be posting stories and pictures soon. He’s in the process of downloading his camera and I think he said he took over 300 pictures. He also scanned a whole bunch of his Grandma’s old family photos so I’m sure those will be up on flickr as well.

I always go to Kansas with the mindset that there is nothing to do. (And if you know where we were, there really isn’t that much around.) But every time we go we run out of time to do everything. We rolled into town around 6 pm on Wednesday, ate dinner and then opened Christmas presents with Kevin’s parents, Grandparents and his brother’s family. Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving with everyone - aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents…-. Thursday night we hung out, Kevin scanned pictures, ate more turkey. Friday we went to Uncle Junior’s house to visit and went out to dinner. Saturday we went to Kevin’s Grandparents’ house for lunch and to see more family. By the time I realized it, “nothing to do” had turned into “time to go home.”

Ethiopia, like any other country, has several religions and holidays, but the majority celebrate Christian holidays. This is probably due to the age of the country. Ethiopia is said to be the Beginning of Civilization. Ethiopians claim the Ark of the Covenant is housed in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. Many believe that Ethiopia was converted to Christianity when Phillip met the Ethiopian traveler (the traveler was an important official of the time) in the book of Acts. While others believe the overall conversion of the country happened later when a ruler was converted.

I’ve been looking into the customs and holidays of the country, trying to see which ones we could adopt into our family. For the most part, they celebrate many of the same holidays we do - Christmas, New Year’s, Easter - but the dates are slightly different because Ethiopia and most of the Western world are on different calendars. One of the holidays that they celebrate is Epiphany (which is when the Magi reached Jesus as a baby).

I think Epiphany is one of the holidays I would like to add to our family’s celebrations. Partially because it’s not a completely foreign holiday to me. It feels like a good way to bring the 2 cultures of our family together and celebrating a holiday that is already a part of our family’s beliefs.

For what seems like forever, Kevin has been telling me of the joy that is Web 2.0. He’ll tell me all about the cool stuff and what it can do and how it works and who it connects you with and….and….and….and….and….and I usually respond with “uh-huh. that’s cool. i guess.” Basically, I wasn’t interested. I don’t use Facebook, I can’t stand MySpace and the other stuff Kevin has described (but I can’t even remember what it is - that’s how not interested I was - sorry Kev.) didn’t really seem useful to me. Until now.

I am totally addicted to Geni.com.

Kevin has always been interested in family trees and family history - his grandparents have kept really good records - and has wanted to find a way to put it all together. Geni does that. It lets you create a family tree with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, stepkids, ex’s, in-laws, pretty much anyone you could ever be possibly related to in any way. It’s really easy to use and you can invite other people from your family to use it so they can add their side of the family as well.

We’ve only been on the site for a couple of days and I think we are over 300 family members although that does include in-laws and their families as well.

I can’t wait to get my hands on my grandma’s geneology book. That should add another 200-300 people.

Here’s how I spent Memorial Day Weekend:

Friday
Staff development day at work and I was sick. I went into work at 7:30 got done what needed to be done (which means my disaster of a classroom still needs to be cleaned but I’ll make the kids do that on Tuesday.) and went home by 10:00.
Slept from 10:00 - 12:00. When I woke up I thought I was feeling better so I went to Home Depot to buy paint. While waiting for the paint I realized I did not feel better so I came home and went to bed until dinner time. Kevin and his mom took Lexi for a walk and I spent the evening watching Law and Order re-runs and then went back to bed.

Saturday
Woke up feeling better for real. Around 11:00 decided to tear the wallpaper off the bathroom walls. The wallpaper came off pretty easy - the glue, well, not so much.
Saturday night Kevin’s mom babysat and Kevin and I went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and saw Pirate’s of the Caribean 3. (Not a bad movie - not as good as the first, but way better than the second.)

Sunday
Went to church. Came home and tried to wash the glue off the bathroom walls. That sucked. And made my arms hurt. Then we went to REI and out to dinner. When we got home I spackled all the holes in the wall, taped everything off and cleaned up the bathroom a little bit.

Monday
Painted the bathroom blue. It looks pretty good, but it’s still all torn apart so I think it will look better once we put everything back together. I’ll post before and after pictures on flikr once it’s all done.

Say hello to Ari Alexander. He was born on December 23, 2006 at 1:00 a.m. Joanna and Gabe are very excited about their early Christmas present.

I’ve always liked playing games. When I was younger board games were a highlight of almost every family gathering. I remember being at my grandparents’ house at Christmas time and playing pictionary or trivial pursuit. My grandparents never played but my parents, aunts and uncles, my cousin and I (we were the oldest cousins, all the younger ones either were rollerskating in the basement or sleeping) sat around the dining room table playing games. Grandma and Grandpa usually sat in their respective arm chairs reading and watching the news - or watching us.

Pictionary was always my favorite. It was fast, loud, and I kicked butt at it. Trivial pursuit was harder to play until I got to high school, then I knew more about history to be able to answer some questions. Although my family had so many expansion decks that you could almost always find a topic you knew a lot about. When we played you could pick from the original edition questions, the baby boomers edition, M.A.S.H. edition, baseball, rock and roll, television, Jr. edition, and about eight others that I can’t remember.

At my house, we have piles of games. There’s Life, Sorry, Clue, Scrabble, Super-Scrabble, Rummikub, Phase-10, Cranium, Trivial Pursuit, Jenga, Taboo, Yatzee, Monopoly (which nobody will play with me), Scattegories, Simpson’s Trivia, Pit, Soloman’s Temple (don’t ask), Carcassone, KIller Bunnies (and all of it’s available expansion packs), and Settlers of Catan.

Although, out of all of those, there are only a few that we play on a regular basis. Killer Bunnies is one of my favorites because it’s easy to learn and there is a rule in the rule book that basically says you can do whatever it takes to win just shy of out-right cheating. Any game that allows bribing, bartering and black-mailing is a fun game to play.

Settlers gets played a lot in our house - I like this one because the board changes every time you set it up - you can have a great game one night and nothing the next.

Tim and Nicole got a new game the other day called Ticket to Ride. You basically build trains from city to city across Europe. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorites.

So if you are looking for some new games to play, here’s what I recommend:

Two player - Carcassone, Phase-10, Rummikub, Ticket to Ride

Three - Four players - Settlers, Ticket to Ride, Sequence, Trivial Pursuit

Four or more players - Killer Bunnies, Scattegories, Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, Taboo, Monopoly

Well, we’re back from everywhere. The wedding was fun. Very small and simple, but it was still fun to hang out at Jo and Gabe’s house, see family, have an early Christmas and all that jazz. The best part of the weekend was I got to wear a cape. When I get a picture of it, I’ll post it. It was very cool. It was a huge floor length black velvet cape with a hood. I felt like one of the Elves.

Our trip to Kansas was great. Since I didn’t have to head straight back to work this year, we were able to stay longer than we normally do which made the drive a little more managable. Christmas was very fun, Everyone except for 2 people made it to Christmas dinner so there was a houseful - which is my favorite part of Christmas - a huge house full of people.

We went to see The Incredibles (again) with Kevin’s dad. That’s a great movie. If you haven’t seen it yet - go. Go now.

We met Linus the Chihuahua who was very cute despite his need for an attitude adjustment.

Since we’ve been home, I’ve been spending my time helping walk dogs at the kennel in the mornings, taking a nap in the afternoon, cleaning things I haven’t had time to clean in forever (like my office), and wearing pajamas as much as possible.

It’s going to be rough going back to work on Tuesday.

How have you been spending your Christmas vacation?

This week is the start of an insane amount of traveling for Kevin and I. We are going to Indianna on Friday for my sister’s wedding and coming home Sunday. Then we are leaving the following Thursday to spend Christmas in Kansas with his family and coming back here on the 28th. The trip to Indiana should take about 20 hours round trip and the one to Kansas is 24 hours round trip. That’s 44 hours of the dullest scenery on the planet. But I am excited for the actual vacation parts. We get to stay in a hotel in Indianna and I LOVE staying in hotels. The hotel also allows dogs (YAY for the Ramada Plaza Hotel) so we don’t have to deal with finding a dog sitter. Although the hotel clerk did tell me that the dogs were not allowed in the pool (duh) or the fitness room (um..duh). The hotel has a hottub which I am very excited about using after the wedding is over and my feet and legs hurt from standing around in high-heels all day long.
Kansas will also be fun. The thing I love about Kansas is that there is absolutely nothing to do. You go there and there is no place close to shop, not many resturants, no close movie theaters and not much stays open late. So you have 2 choices - 1. Go and hang out with family you haven’t seen in forever or 2, Do nothing and relax. Both of these choices require little driving, little money and little effort. Except for the long drive there and back, it’s a great place to spend a vacation. Oh and the added bonus this year is Kevin’s brother got a chihuahua this fall so Speak will have a playmate when we go down there.

We went home to Green Bay this weekend. My brother graduated from high school last week and so we went back for the big shindig. It was fun to see people again. I don’t think I’ve been home since around Christmas time.

The highlight of the weekend was not the graduation party, however. The highlight was getting to see the kittens that my mom and brother rescued from a window well at our house. She found 4 kittens and with the help of my brother and his girlfriend, they nursed them back to health (well, 3 out of the 4 survived) and found them homes. Two of them were getting picked up the same weekend we were in town so we got to play with them for a couple of days. They couldn’t stand Speak at all - it was really funny to watch them around the dog. But other than fighting the dog, they were pretty cute.

Here’s a couple of pictures. The black and white one was named Kit Kat but her name is now Belle and the other one was named Mittens but since the found out it was a boy it’s name has been changed to Boomer.

Watching the dog through the glass table.

Boomer pouncing on his shadow.

Discovering that dog food tastes really good.

Discovering the dog.

Curled up on the couch.