Carbondale, Illinois
As time passes here, we've come to find that this is a great place for us to be. With the hope of adding another member to our family sometime in the near future, it is nice to see the number of family-friendly events that the city holds.
One of these events is called, Lights Fantastica. 
Our downtown is transformed into a WinterWonderland (minus the snow), including a Polar Express train depot (real train depot, mind you), a workshop to help you write your last-minute wish list to Santa, and a parade of lights! Since Liz and I still consider ourselves kids, you better believe we found our way there for the parade.
We ate at a great chinese place (New Kahala) before the parade and then found a spot to enjoy the parade. It was a bit cold, but besides that, it was a lot of fun. Almost all of the local marching bands came out and a lot of businesses had created some type of float to enter into the parade.
After the parade, we headed back to our apartment (only minutes away, another perk of our location), had some hot chocolate, and watched a Charlie Brown Christmas.Other highlights before heading home included an Ugly Sweater Party for our professional Res Life staff. Our white elephant gifts were the rave, and we were happy to find out a little girl got our Mr. Potato Head.
Also before going home, we had some awesome cookie-baking. I think the highlight of the baking was the gingerbread cookies Liz made from scratch that we decorated. Every family member was given a cookie and we made some fun extra cookies to eat when we came back home.
Lowell, Indiana
When we got home, we were suprised to see our entire family, including us, were transformed into gingerbread cookies (From top-left to bottom-right: dad, mom, Steve, Liz, Jen, Alec, Erick).
A couple days before Christmas, we packed up and headed to my parents' house. This was our first time actually seeing a large amount of snow and ice; while it was nice to look at, it was a bit colder than we enjoyed. We did, however, have some fun trying to break up the ice in the driveway.
While at home, we went to our neighbor's house, the Beneckis, and did our annual Under-$5-Gift Swap. Liz and I received two amazingly soft blankets. The best part, of course, was the company and the jokes. We like to laugh. A lot.
Also, Jen and Erick invited us over to finally get to see their place! After driving around and looking at Christmas lights with my parents (we found a couple standing on their porch dressed as Santa and Mrs. Claus waving at passing cars...kind of strange...), we headed over to my sister's place. Here are just a few pictures of their place that I have decided to put up without ever asking permission.
Christmas morning came with cinnamon rolls and gifts. One gift will hopefully (sometime in the next few months) turn you Readers into Viewers occassionally. We received a digital video camera that transfers directly into the computer. We might be able to post video tours or other interesting (and possibly not-so-interesting) recordings.
Lafayette, Indiana
After Christmas morning, we packed up the goods like a Santa that changed his mind and headed to Liz's parents' house. God must have been hungry and hit the Gingerbread Button again, resulting in the following family photo. (From top-left to bottom-right: Wade, mom, Steve, Liz, Kelly, Donny, Crystal).
The Lego Indiana Jones game was the addiction this trip, which was being played on a new XBox 360 when we arrived. Later that afternoon we exchanged gifts. Throughout the remainder of the trip, we often found ourselves in front of the screen playing that game.
The next day was filled with shopping. We decided to spend some Christmas money on a gift that makes me feel old to be so excited about. You know those massage chairs that you sit in at the store and press the "demo" button on? Well...now we can press demo or any other button we want and not worry about some stranger stepping on our feet while we enjoy it! To be specific, we have one of the Homedic massagers with shiatsu and it also does shoulders. Oh, yeah. That got hooked up in the recliner in our bedroom as soon as we got home (and it was hooked up even sooner at Liz's house).The most chaotic part of being in Lafayette was trying to sell our Sunfire to Liz's brother, Donny. The trick of it was we only had one day to get to the license branch and we didn't have the car with us. We attempted it at the local branch (Frankfort, where Donny and Kelly live) and all was going well. Until they realized that the title did not have all owners' signatures. Once upon a time, my mom had signed off on it. The lady helping us was far too kind, and the opportunity to lie evaded both Donny and myself. She says, "that's too bad, your mom is probably up in Lowell." And BOTH of us say, "Yeah..."
Well, crap. So...we leave calmly, and then run. We had to find Liz and Kelly and then drive to Lafayette with only about twenty minutes until they closed. Liz forged my mom's signature...unless you're an agent of the BMV. We got there just in time (they locked the doors by the time we sat in a chair) and were able to pull it off. So we celebrated with a couple cheesy photos.
Back Home
Upon arriving back in Carbondale, we found that Liz's secret ingredient in the cookies resulted in the ability for Gingerbread people to repopulate. It might be something like Gremlins, but these are the only ones we were able to capture for testing (From top-left to bottom-right [these are the names they gave themselves]: Picasso, Elwood Blues, Poison, Brittany, Wonder Woman, and Bar Fight Bill).
So with the families visited, and duty calling us back to campus, we headed back to Carbondale with Donny and Kelly in stow. They stayed with us a few days, laughs were had, haircuts received, and they drove off in a really good car leaving us with only one and no "multicar discount (we don't think its a big deal, but our insurance agent did)."
So with the families visited, and duty calling us back to campus, we headed back to Carbondale with Donny and Kelly in stow. They stayed with us a few days, laughs were had, haircuts received, and they drove off in a really good car leaving us with only one and no "multicar discount (we don't think its a big deal, but our insurance agent did)."And all lived happily ever after. Except the gingerbread cookies.
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