Happy 2009

Happy New Year! I've had a busy start to 2009, and as such I am behind in my blogging, responding to emails, and finishing up my thank you cards for Christmas gifts. I'm hoping to have some extra time this weekend to take care of the latter two of those things, but figured I'd put a quick blog entry out now while Oli is entertaining himself with his stuffed flying squirrel.

L. and I went to Missoula for Christmas with his parents, and we took Oli with us. It was a really nice week with them and Oli traveled well. We stayed in Eastern Washington with my grandparents on the way over and back to break up the trip. One of my grandfathers was in the hospital, so we spent some extra time with him and my grandma. He has congestive heart failure and lung cancer, but has been managing pretty well for a 88-year old man. However, a few days before Christmas he started having some trouble, so they brought him in for observation and put him on some antibiotics as they suspected an infection. Luckily he got out of the hospital on Christmas day, so we got to see him at home on our way back from Missoula.

We had a quiet day in with L.'s parents for Christmas. We woke up and slowly unwrapped gifts. We grilled steaks and asparagus for dinner. We then watched A Christmas Story and played games. It was very relaxing and a change from most holidays. Because it was just the four of us, there was no rush for anything and none of the usual urgency to get things unwrapped and setup for kids to play with, etc. The only thing we had to worry about was Oli making it to his papers to potty, which he succeeded in doing well. He only had two accidents the whole week, which isn't bad considering we moved him around a lot between my grandparent's house and L.'s parent's house.

The passes were more difficult coming back from Missoula to Seattle. Through Lookout Pass in Idaho, there was one car behind L. that was acting like a total idiot - tailgating people and driving too fast for conditions. He started tailgating L., so L. changed lanes and the guy did the same. So, L. changed lanes again, and the guy sped up fast to pass. His tire then caught the snow buildup off of the divider, and the guy spun out and around back toward us. L. quickly steered around him. We're so lucky that we didn't hit. I'm thankful that I was taking a nap or I probably would have had to change my pants. In any case, it solidified the reason that I, personally, do not drive in the snow. L. is comfortable with it, considering his roots are in Montana. But I don't feel comfortable driving and I certainly don't feel comfortable sharing the road with people who do crap like that.

L. and I both started back at work this week and as it always is with vacations, there is a lot to catch up on. Because of the economy, there are all kinds of worries about layoffs and such, but we just pray that things start to pick up and such measures are not necessary. But we sat down and drew up a budget for this year to work on saving as much as we can to weather out any downturns. And if nothing ends up happening, we'll have the savings for something else like my condo assessment (which has still not begun) or an improvement to our house. We know of a couple of maintenance things that we'll need to do in the next few years to keep things in good working order. We finished paying off the wedding and honeymoon at the end of December, so it is nice to have that off of our plates.

I'm optomistic about 2009, especially considering we'll finally be rid of president shrub. I worry that some people are too optomistic about Obama taking office. I think he will prove to be a great leader, but it will take his admistration some time to work our country out of the hole we're currently in. FDR had four terms to bring the US out of the great depression and world war, and it involved a lot of programs and government action. So, we'll just have to be patient because I'm sure that there are many things the president shrub administration has done that have yet to be revealed to the American public. There is a lot of poop to scoop before we get to the bottom of all of this.