Our Christmas season plans did not come off without a hitch. After celebrating an early Christmas with Mark's family (last week's post), Nancy and I returned to Huntsville where the plan was to spend Christmas day relaxing at home and to fly to Phoenix on the following day. But it rained, and it wasn't long before we discovered leaks in our new roof (ref our post from 2 weeks ago). So there we were trying to get ready for our 5:30 AM Saturday morning flight from Huntsville while battling water on the ceiling, walls, and floor of our recently remodeled TV room.

I stayed up all night. I picked up the water with towels, ran the towels through the spin cycle in the washing machine, and dried them in the drier. Over and over. The rain stopped around 3 AM Saturday morning, so we took a deep breath and drove to the airport. Our wonderful neighbors said they would look after the house. So Saturday morning, just before 11, Melissa and Savannah picked us up at the airport in Phoenix. Tomorrow morning we'll be returning home. I don't even want to think about what we'll find.

But we've had a great time during this past week. Melissa has done a very nice job decorating her new house, and, I'm not kidding, she built most of the furniture herself. We enjoyed good food, took the whole family to Star Wars, and watched a bunch of football games, although most of those were not "games". Savannah is a college sophomore and Ian is a junior in high school. I snapped this picture on Thursday.

Now we're getting ready to return home. Wish us luck. However, we do wish everyone a very happy and healthy New Year.