Time out for a vacation

We are anxious to finish up the small bits and pieces of our kitchen, but we were also quite ready for a break for our Christmas vacation.  We decided to drive this year, so we could save a little money (the two of us could drive for less than the cost of one airline ticket), and it also gave us a car to use while we were in Indianapolis.  We had a fun adventure on the way out -- we left on Dale's birthday and decided to take pictures at every state sign along the trip. 

We'd just gotten to Arizona when we talked about how notorious they were for catching speeders -- so we were driving carefully, but still got pulled over! It turned out that we had a headlight out, which we hadn't noticed, but the policeman was nice enough to wish Dale a happy birthday and pose for us, which we posted to Facebook (as we reported our whole trip)!  The 30 hour drive turned more like 42, because we ran into some bad weather here and there, but it was still a lot of fun and we were glad to arrive in Indiana early in the morning of the 21st.

We were anxious to greet this cutie!

We had lots of fun playing with Parker, and getting ready for Christmas.  We enjoyed watching Parker open presents on his first Christmas. Here he is, waiting with Zoe, his doggie:

And here he is taking a brief nap with Grandpa:

And we made some cookies together:

Leslie and I did some sewing projects and we spent a lot of time catching up with friends.

But the time goes by quickly, and before we knew it, time to return home. 

Our trip home was a little more leisurely, but still we buzzed on through. We started off with bad weather in Missouri and Oklahoma, but the next morning, the sun was shining and it was smooth driving all through Texas (where we stopped to check out Cadillac Ranch:)

and New Mexico, where we checked out some petroglyphs --

And Arizona, where we looked at the Petrified Forest --

and of course, the Grand Canyon --

(Dale's been working on perfecting his selfie skills).  We did brief stops at both the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon, because in the spring, we are going on another road trip with our friends Eric and Herbert, and those are two of the stops we plan on making. We stopped this time because it seemed like a shame to pass on by without looking, and also to get a National Parks yearly pass.

Well, that's it, about 4100 miles and now we're home sweet home.  On the way home, we discussed what we want to work on next, and after doing the small touch ups in the kitchen, we're going to work on the living room ceiling!  Probably get started tomorrow, but we need to take a couple of days to catch up.  Hope you had as much fun (and a lot more relaxing time than we did!) on your holidays!