End of Christmas Vacation:

So we arrived home on Saturday night in time for dinner after negotiating another snowstorm coming through the mountains in West Virginia. Where did that come from?  On Sunday, New Years Eve, Allison, Tom and Scott headed off to Salisbury. While we were in Indy on vacation, Allison received a phone call from her Salisbury condo property manager. Apparently 4 of the condos were broken into over Christmas break. The thief/ves broke a side window and crawled into the condo on the 1st floor. They then walked out of the place through the sliding door. Tom thought it would be a good idea to go check on the place since the manager did not seem to be doing anything to secure the place.  Good thing they checked. Even though the window had been replaced, the sliding door was not locked. And the broken glass was all over the furniture and floor under the window they crawled through to enter. So Tom, Allison and Scott cleaned up as much glass as they could and then checked to see what was taken. Mostly Allison's large items including her flat screen tv and Nintendo game cube with 20 games, her Alexa and surprisingly, her Roomba vacuum cleaner. Fortunately they left other, more valuable items as well as Allison's check book. However, as soon as Allison heard about the robbery, she cancelled her bank account. So most of the items were used, and the Alexa is only registered to Allison, so no one else can use it without her account info. We did not get renters insurance because the items were valued less than the deductible. They did stop into the pawn stores and Game Stops to give them a heads up on the Nintendo game system and games in case someone came in selling the whole set. So Tom hooked up some security cameras and they headed back home with a pit stop at the outlet store to buy Scott some new cargo pants at the Columbia outlet. They also picked up a bunch of yummies at the Pepperidge Farm outlet since they are closing! Oh no! That was also one of our favorite stops.

I stayed home during the day to clean, wash clothes and do some grocery shopping. We decided to skip the New Year's Eve celebration and go right to celebrating New Year's Day with dinner and our neighbors. On Monday morning, I had the day off work for a Holiday, so after Allison and I enjoyed watching the Rose Bowl parade, I got busy cooking and cleaning. I put a ham in the oven, and headed off to pick up Mom B. Unfortunately, when I arrived, the staff told me Mom had the stomach bug again!  It had already been tough for the residents stuck in their rooms now for over 2 weeks! But now Mom had the stomach bug again, so I had to leave her there. Back I went to finish putting out the food for our party. I had made crab dip and everyone was starving, especially Tom! I finally got all the food out for our guests. The parents had fun chatting and the kids enjoyed playing video games.

But on Tuesday it was time to get back to reality. For some of us. Scott was off to school and I was off to work. Tom still had one more day off of work, but he was back to school himself. Allison was home keeping Cookie busy with walks, staying in shape for frisbee on the treadmill and sending out resumes. Scott had a busy week, even though it was shorter. On Wednesday night he was double booked for volunteer hours. Right after school he volunteered for NHS at the concession stand during high school basketball games. Right after, he volunteered for his NTHS service hours speaking to freshman students about the Engineering program at an Open House. He was very happy to have Thursday off for a snow day as we got a nasty storm up the coast. He even had a half day on Friday. He enjoyed the short week, but it made it a bit tougher to keep up with assignments. Each class was behind, and teachers were panicking as they near the end of the second semester and Midterms!  So Scott had quite a few tests and projects to wrap up the first week back from vacation. At least he had the weekend to work on homework.

I tried to talk Tom into taking us to a Hershey Bear Hockey game Saturday night, however, he had finally caught the cold that I had over the holiday. I had spent Saturday at work. I volunteered to come in and get a head start on the new week.  On Sunday

we finally had my mom over for dinner and to open her Christmas presents! I figured since we still had the decorations up, it would be nice to spend some time visiting with Mom and finally celebrating Christmas! Good thing she has no sense of time.