Happy Holidays!

A great holiday season is about to wrap up here. Monnie and I made it to many great parties this Christmas season.

Leading it off was the Halberg Christmas, on Saturday 12/23 , with my grandparents in Ripon - it was great to see my grandparents along with my Uncle Dan and Uncle Roger and family. Claire and Sheila made it back to WI in time for the even too!

That night we hosted Carissa and Niki who were in town for the holiday. We finally got to check out Sardine and it lived up to expectations.

The next morning 12/24 it my parents hosted a Christmas brunch featuring some early present opening and delicious food. Monnie and I got the "DVD upconvertor" that we've been wanting ever since getting our new TV (as well as the chord for the thing which somehow costs almost as much as the unit itself!). We also took home some really fun Pez dispensors - mine featured the cast of "Orange County Choppers" (and it looks like they returned the favor).

Next up was Milwaukee to celebrate with Monnie's family. Monnie's brothers joined us at their parents house for Christmas Eve for some low key fun. The next morning after mass we were all back in the living room to see what Santa had brought us. I'm not going to list everything out here but Santa was very good to me this year. Some magazine subs, a Rollie Fingers autographed pennant (!), new snow pants, gift cards, and a new Sudoku travel game were among the highlights.

After all that Christmas fun it was back to work for a few days before heading up to Green Bay 12/29 to see cousin Timmy and the Michigan Tech Huskies were in town to take on the Phoenix of UWGB. It was a hotly contested game but late in the second half GB was able to pull ahead for the victory. Tim played a great game though - leading the team in scoring, rebounding, and assists as well as making several key defense plays including a rejection that landed in the first row of the fans! This also gave us a chance to see a lot of the Fitzgerald relatives that we hadn't seen over Christmastime: John, Kate, my parents, Sheila, grandma, Martha and JR, and loads of kids made for a great group!

From there it was straight to the UP for our annual New Years trip at Powerdorn Mountain. This year we had a much smaller group (Nate and Ericka, Geer, Jon Palmer, Monnie, and I) which was a welcome change from the last few years. Having a bigger group is tons of fun but sometimes it's nice to scale it back a bit. Our first day the conditions were nice - they had a few inches of snow the night before and the hill was in surprisingly good shape given the complete lack of snow and mild weather that we've had this year. The next day was a bit rainy but that didn't ruin the fun - we just took in a bit more football that normal. Great times and I'm already looking forward to next year.

After the 4.5 hour trip we went to pick up Howie from his vacation destination: Burlington, WI. Howie spent his New Years at the home of Myra and Darryl - some other WAAGR members. He had an AWESOME time there with 7 other dogs that either belong to, are being fostered by, or were just visiting their place in the country. Howie got some much needed socialization and exposure to some other dogs and got a very good report as a well behaved puppy. He sure is tired today though!

Today we went over to my parents for lunch to see my brother who has made it into town. Mike had to work (in Maine) over Christmas and wasn't able to make it back until now. Great to see him and we'll still have one final Christmas event when we get together later this week for dinner and to exchange gifts.

Wow! I knew we had been really busy over the holidays but now that I've written it all down - that's a lot of fun and travel! Some fun coming up soon but we're also looking forward to a little downtime here to catch up!