Home At Last

I looked at a calendar today and figured out that of the last 46 days, we have been away from home for 31 of them. It was all very good and fun, but we are glad to be home.

We spent just over two weeks in the valley over Christmas. We were busy nearly every day and every night. We got to bed at midnight or later most every night and battled the "I think I'm getting a cold" syndromes the whole time. But we sure enjoyed our stay.

We:

--went to movies with family and friends. We saw Blind Side, Sherlock Holmes, Avatar (in Imax 3D), and one of us saw Zombieland at "the dollar theater" (which is now the $3 theater).

--had dinner with friends

--had lunch with friends

--had coffee with friends

--went to pre-Christmas parties

--went to Costco and Sam's Club ...a number of times (one of which resulted in the purchase of a new futon for our loft. It's been on our list for a long time.)

--went to the Orpheus Men's Chorale Christmas Concert

--hooked up with friends we haven't seen in years:
* Jeff and Alicia (whom I had never met) are friends my husband met in Alaska. He introduced them to each other at Gwin's Lodge a couple of summers ago. They just got engaged on Christmas Eve. It was great meeting and getting to know them. They have honored my husband with asking him to perform their wedding ceremony. (...Now to research getting him licensed so he can actually do so.)

*Nathan and Kate are friends from a band my husband was in about 15 years ago. They moved all over the country but kept in touch every now and then. Now we both know where each other are and we hope to see them more often.

*Old high school friends of my husband's. Facebook is a marvel. It connects people who have been out of touch for years upon years. My brother-in-law got in touch with "the old gang" and we ended up at a New Year's Eve party where they reminisced and told one funny story after another. We had a lot of fun.

*I had lunch with one of my dearest and longest friends, Pam. I met Pam in 2nd Grade. Through grade school we seemed to be in the same class every other year. We drifted apart for a couple years but found each other again in high school. We were in each other's weddings. After years out of contact, several years ago we got together and it was as if we'd never been apart. Except for all the catching up we had to do. We are making a point of not letting so much time go by between getting together.

We also:

--enjoyed spending Christmas Eve with both families

--visited with my Dad and Becky (I did, anyway. My husband finally succumbed to the Battle of the Cold and went to bed right around the time I left for the visit.)

--did our first Christmas Day mountain hike

--visited with my husband's Uncle Duane and Linda in their winter home in Mesa

--hung out a little with my brother's family once they got home from their Christmas back east.

--had more dinners with friends

--I managed only a couple of blog posts during our few and far between down times. Actually, only I experienced much down time at all, during which my other half was out with friends. He was busy upon busy.

--went to three different churches over the three Sundays we were there. I had to laugh at myself when we came away from the last one just a couple days ago. You know about our search for a new church home in our mountain town. Well, driving away from the church we visited with our friends, Nathan and Kate, I said to myself, "I think we've found a church! Oh, wait...it's in the wrong town. We don't live here!" Then I said to myself, "Dang!"

We came home yesterday afternoon to lots of mail, phone messages, two happy cats, and a 37 degree house. A toasty fire was the very first order of business, after loving up on our cats, of course.

I sit now with a darkened sky outside the windows. The house grew dark on me in the last hour, the only light shining from my laptop and the burning embers of my late afternoon fire. Another winter night has settled in. Snow covers the ground outside and it's about 35 degrees out. But inside, we're cozy warm. There's nothing like the feeling of being safe and warm inside your house while it's cold and snowy outside. I'm glad to be home.