home again

We are home from the west coast, happy and tired, and after two days, still adjusting to east coast time. We had a nice relaxing vacation, full of lazing around and playing video games (I finally got to try Nintendo Wii, and it's as fun as everyone says -- and good for the kiddos, too), playing board games, watching movies (mostly kids' or family movies: we saw Happy Feet in the theater, and at Greg's parents we watched Cars, Over the Hedge, The Fox and the Hound (which still manages to make me cry after all these years), The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, The Sword in the Stone, Wallace and Gromit's Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Batteries Not Included*, which we found in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart [which I only shopped at for lack of other options, really] along with Short Circuit. Score! And let's not forget the quintessential Christmas movie, A Christmas Story.), eating lots of delicious unhealthy food, and other things that probably contributed to a significant holiday weight gain. It was nice to see Greg's family again, and always fun to hang out with his siblings.

The holidays were nice, too. It was a Star Wars Christmas -- the boys got cool gifts such as Star Wars Transformers (which impressed Greg's friends as much as our kids), Star Wars blankets (made by Greg's sister), a lightsaber video game, Star Wars potato-heads, Star Wars action figures... am I forgetting anything? It was a lot of Star Wars stuff. George Lucas makes his living off of people like us. And New Year's was nice, if not terribly exciting. We spent it at Greg's grandparents' house with his family, where James had his first taste of champagne (accidentally! I thought it was sparkling cider!) and Greg and I stayed up long into the night playing games with his brother and sister.

The other notable event on our trip was the flight home. We hit the worst turbulence I've ever been in , and it was actually really scary. Three times I had the stomach-dropping feeling you get on a roller-coaster, and I wasn't the only one, because the third time was accompanied by a collective gasp from my fellow passengers. Greg comforted a slightly freaked-out James while I held on to a sleeping Evan for dear life during the shaking and jumping around. Scary. But obviously we made it through safely.

I didn't take many photos, mostly out of laziness, but the few I did take, I'll try to post on the Yahoo site this weekend. I'm probably forgetting to mention a lot of things, but now that I'm home I have more time for the Internet and I'm feeling an urge to blog after my short break. Of course, every time I say that my mind immediately goes blank and I can't think of a single thing to write about. But Kim's latest post has inspired me to write a similar post soon, and I'm hoping to get together a review of 2006, and James' birthday is coming up in a few days, so as long as I take the time to sit down and write, I will have things to write about.

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*Guess who wrote Batteries Not Included? Brad Bird, of The Incredibles and Iron Giant fame -- two of my favorite American animated films. And I thought he couldn't be any cooler.