Family, Friends, and Snow

Merry Christmas everyone!! We had a superb Christmas at our house. Slept in to about 8am, opened gifts, got everything I have always wanted and more! It truly was a perfect day. I hope yours was as well.

Last weekend my sister Barb flew to NYC with her husband Scott. He was attending a medical conference and she came along for the fun. My friend Ellen and I hopped on the train last Friday....


and had lunch with Barb and a friend of hers. We ate at Manhattan Deli and Produce. Kind of a combination of a deli, small buffet, and grocery store. They had a nice seating area in one corner. Very common downtown. One deli/produce shop we checked out had the seating in the dairy isle of the grocery area. Not quite the ambiance we were looking for.


After lunch we hit a few candy stores - Lindts Chocolatiers and Dylan's Candy Bar pictured below.


Saturday brought the East Coast snowstorm. It took Charles, Nick and I 2 hours to dig out! Charles and I ate ibuprofen for three days after that! This picture was taken on Wednesday so what you see has been melting for three to four days already.



Made for a very nice white Christmas! It rained all day here the day after and every bit of snow is gone. Makes me regret all the shovelling!

Happy Birthday Charles!!

Yesterday was Charles' 42nd Birthday. Charles had a nice relaxing day at home.


We had a low-key celebration. Made his favorite meal, opened a few presents, then we went to see the movie "A Christmas Carol." Even though it is an animated film there are some scary parts. At one point in the movie Isaiah sat up and loudly asked, "Is this rated PG-13?" Overall a pretty good flick - I'd give it a 3.5 or 4 out of 5. After the movie we stopped at ColdStone Creamery for a treat on the way home.

You know it's been too long when...

You know it's been too long when you can't remember your password to post again!!! But I was persistent and prevailed as you can tell.

I want to finish up with some pictures from our visit to MN of some good friends of ours from Forest Lake - the Gemuendens. We had supper together at Pizza Hut while we were in town over Thanksgiving. Bob and Carol have four girls the same ages as our four. Carol and I were destined to become friends as we often ran into each other at Scandia Elementary where our kids went to school together often being in the same classes together. I'm sure there were a few teachers who groaned, "I have a Causey and a Gemuenden again this year!"

Nick and Maddie G. have a friendly rivalry as to who is the tallest. I think when we squished Nick's hair down it was a tie. They also arm wrestle but that's another story for another day.


Maddie C. and Megan are quite a pair - inseparable! Megan had the advantage in this card game. Megan!


Hannah and Amanda are also special friends and enjoy each other's company. I think Amanda is drinking more milk than Hannah.


Isaiah and Katie have been competing losing their teeth. They are tied right now but I think Isaiah just mentioned he may have another loose one, Katie!



Shortly after we got back to NJ, Uncle Nathaneal came to visit. We had a little early birthday party for Uncle Than.





I know that there were many games played that weekend beside Risk such as Acquire, Masterpiece, and Lost Cities and football outside in the rain.



Everyone had a great time. We probably stayed up too late visiting but we sure enjoyed having Uncle Than around.

Belated Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving! I trust you did as well. We made the annual pilgrimage to the frigid state of MN and had a wonderful time. I was going to do a quick post but now realize that I have more pictures than I thought and we packed quite a lot into a week. On the way out the kids had a treat! They went flying over Columbus, OH with our dear friend Jo Kirk (Charles' bosses wife) in her small plane. Chaplain Kirk and Jo are pictured in my previous post. The kids had an incredible time!



Once we all arrived in MN we started the week visiting many great friends in the Hugo area. Again I did a horrible job remembering to take photos. If you have photos from our visit please email them to me and will put them on my next posting. I have been sent pics from Carol G. already and would love to have more from the rest of you! Carol - tell the girls I hope to put the pics up next week.

We then headed up to Alexandria for the rest of the week. Everyone made it to Mom and Dad's! Of course we had a fabulous meal.


Kids from L to R: Jake A., Isaiah, Luke O., Nick, Maddie, Hannah, Ava O., Maggie A.

We also managed to squeeze in another Rookfest. For some reason I only have pictures of these two teams. You can check out Barb's blog for the winners and losers (the two teams not pictured.) We had a Veggie Tale theme this year. I was Larry the Cucumber, Mom was Madame Blueberry, and Sara of course was Laura Carrot.


Barb was Petunia Rhubarb and Andy was Mr. Lunt. See any resemblances?


The cousins played and played,






the big guys got some hunting in,



and we made the most of a light dusting of snow.





On the way home we made a slight detour through Chicago to eat at one of our favorite restaurants - Giordano's Pizza. It was awesome!



I leave you with a shot of a typically beautiful sunset in the midwest with too much to be thankfulful for!