Weekend report

We wanted to help Brent with the house on Saturday. We really did. We got up early, bundled and bundled and bundled up, fastened our tool belts, and off we went. But we hadn't been there more than 15 minutes when Jan began coughing and hacking. He's been quite sick, if you remember, and we decided it would be bad news if he stayed outside roofing a house and caught the bug all over again. So we waved good-bye and abandoned Brent. We both felt awful [and we still feel awful - sorry, Brent-o :( ], but we promised to be back in early January. We spent a very enjoyable morning with Jan's parents instead, and then all afternoon we stuffed ourselves silly at a Christmas party with our friends from WWU.

"Stop taking pictures of me, woman!"
Derek is a cutting and gluing expert!
:)
:) :)
I decided I can't keep cropping myself out of pictures just because I look like a doofus, especially when Jan Michael looks so darn handsome, so here we are. I plead not having taken a shower and wearing my stupid house-building get-up as the reason for the doof-dom.

And now, on to the Christmas party....
This is a ridiculous picture, because obviously you can't see many faces, but I post it to show the annual boys-only gift exchange, which involves the purchase and trading of the very same video game. There's a lot of "Oh, it's just what I wanted" and that kind of posturing. I think sometime this week they'll all be playing together online.
This is very reminiscent of the thousands of hours we spend in the dorms together....
with some very important additions :)
This one makes me laugh because Mike seems to be the one enjoying the story most, while little Gabe appears to be watching somebody else play a video game.
I don't know about anyone else, but I ate continuously from approximately 1:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
1. Mike & Kristin are very cute, don't you agree?
2. They are very gracious hosts. They're always inviting everyone over, and they don't mind when Jan Michael and I accidentally show up an hour early.
3. Kristin is a fabulous-o cook. She made us ham and corn pudding and fancy gingerbread with candied apples and lots of other Christmas desserts.
4. They are leaving at the end of January to spend AN ENTIRE MONTH galavanting around Europe. I'm so excited for them, I can hardly stand it.
I'm mad that Jenny's face is hidden, but Todd is so happy that I'm posting this anyway.
This is what Mike used to look like when we were steeling ourselves for physiological psychology with Professor Prim. When we see you on the 29th, Mike, I'll expect you to draw a diagram of the sodium-potassium pump.