Christmas eve Tom spent the day setting up a computer for Mom and Dad Bozyk to join our email chats and photo swapping. We ended up at the 4pm Christmas mass and were stuck in the kids cry room. That was a whole new experience! We almost heard the choir and the homily. It felt like one big party! With screaming kids! Afterwards we drove through a nasty snow storm that popped up to my parent's friend's house, The Dugans for a Christmas Eve party. All of the Dugan family members get together every year on Christmas Eve to exchange gifts, eat lots of food and enjoy some yearly traditions like singing Christmas carols, reading the Night Before Christmas, listening to the Soldier's prayer and most importantly, acting/singing the Twelve Days of Christmas. I added to the program this year with a discount price list of all the items in The Twelve Days of Christmas. Normally those items would cost around $25,000. I found a discount price list of about $400! And it was fun catching up with all the Dugan kids and their children.
On Christmas Day we spent the morning opening lots of gifts. Big presents included new luggage for Allison and I since we have lots of trips planned this coming year. And Tom picked up a new printer for Allison for college next year. WE also bought Mom and Dad a 32 inch flat screen television. We had thought their cable guys had run a cable line to their master bedroom but that was not the case. Instead they installed the line in a second bedroom with the computer, so now Mom and DAd Bozyk are enjoying their new Media Room! The tv also came with a DVD player so they can watch movies. After opening gifts our family headed out to see Les Miserables. We tried a new movie theater called Emagine-they have a bar and seat side food service, but my favorite was the unlimited popcorn refills! Tom was not terribly interested in seeing Les Mis, but decided he really enjoyed it. He also decided Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman couldn't sing(and they do that a lot). But he liked the story line since he had never seen it before. And he still wants to see Djanga and Skyfall and the Tom Cruise movie. Maybe New Year's day. WE ended Christmas Day with a great dinner and a Christmas cartoon "Arthur's Chrismtas". I also made the family watch a few DVD series from the History channel called "How the States Got Their Shapes". We learned that Michigan and Ohio are big rivals because of the Toledo War where they fought over the rights to Toledo for the shipping on the river. They had lots of clips of the UofM/Ohio State football games.
Weds we stayed put during a snow storm. Scott, Grandpa and I did a lot of shoveling(not so much for Scott). He could not grasp the concept of shoveling while it was still snowing. Tom and I also snuck out before the snow early in the morning to do some post Christmas shopping. Tom was checking on Christmas lights at Home Depot-not much to choose from and not a great sale. I was interested in visiting the Hallmark for post Christmas ornament sales. Tom also spent part of the day doing some handiwork around the Bozyk house including patching drywall in the laundry room ceiling from old roof leaks.
Thursday the sun came out and we hit the Mt Holly ski slopes with our friends the Hejza's. Tom and Laura opted for a day reading in the ski lodge while the rest of us braved the slippery slopes and cold wind. And no one fell down or injured themselves! All in all a good day. Especially with our visit to the Hejza's afterwards, lots of good food and drink and presents.
We usually enjoy spending the night with the Hejza's so we can stay up late playing games and visiting, but this time we were planning on driving up to EAst Lansing to visit the MSU campus Friday morning. We thought since Allison was accepted to MSU, we should give her a true Michigan experience-shuffling around campus in the snow. Most of the buildings were closed, but we did the online outside driving tour. We also walked around the Beaumont Bell Tower(which apparently had not been working since Tom and I graduated), visited the MSU Union building(recently remodeled) and spent some time in the Brand New Modern Art Museum which looks just as bad on the outside as the art on the inside. It reminds me of a big chrome bumper that someone dropped off next to Grand River. The building probably would have worked on another site of the campus, but it just does not fit in with the traditional brick buildings. Guess that was the point. We also discovered the MSU store near purchasing and spoke to the Admissions staff to find out how Allison could be considered a Michigan resident to attend school. Unfortunately, she would have to live in Mich. for a year, work and pay taxes, but would not be allowed to take any classes during that time. And Allison was not so sure she enjoyed the thought of trudging through the snow to classes. But we did enjoy our unique tour of the campus, and the kids really enjoyed being attacked by the MSU ducks and we spotted a red tail hawk on the ground with a black squirrel snack. And of course lots of shopping at the MSU bookstores.
We needed MSU wear to attend the MSU hockey game at the Joe Louis Arena with Dad Bozyk on Saturday afternoon. Sadly they lost to Western in overtime. But MSU won their bowl game that night against Texas Christian in San Antonio. It was just on so late we could not stay up to watch the whole game. We did get to sing our MSU fight song though as the Alumni Band showed up at the hockey game.
On Sunday we decided to drive home to Baltimore(in between the snow storms). We took Cookie along on our trip-she enjoyed running in the 8 inches of snow that fell on Weds. I had plenty of time on New Year's Eve to run some errands, unpack the car from our trip and do laundry. We decided to invite our neighbors over for New Year's to practice playing some Euchre. Not sure that they caught on, but it was fun and kept us up until Midnite.
So Happy New Year! I am going to go watch the Rose Bowl parade. The kids are back to school tomorrow and I will head back to work. Tom is home until next Monday. He's already installed my new spice rack in the cupboard-very nice pull out tray to find the spices! Next project is a closet organizer.
Kathleen
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