Greetings family and friends!
Well, Christmas, OneThing, and New Years have all come and gone and we've had quite a ride.
Joanna, Mom, Michael Fuller, Tony, and Joel all joined us for visiting and attending the conference. (We also bumped into Pamela Hooker on a daily basis :)
I can't even begin to start telling about all the craziness and goodtimes that we endured, so I'll just give the usual pictorial tour and comments :) The Conference was amazing...so good to have family here to experience a taste of Why We Came and Why We're Staying. It was awesome to laugh and eat and worship together...

Below we have the tree on Christmas eve - I wish I'd gotten a better picture of my new train! The Pennsylvania Flyer :) Jo and I adventured in downtown KC to find a trainstore that might have a station. Of course, they were all out, but Jo had the brilliant idea of just getting a platform this year...smart kid.






Christmas Eve we brought the Dell's presents over - made the tree look merrier :) We spent Christmas doing the usual delighted in activities - opening presents, eating, playing games, watching movies. (Mikey enjoyed the wrapping paper even more then the presents, as is common with one year olds!) He got a cool tool set that was instantly utilized by mom and dad to turn the lad "over to the pookle torturers!" as his father is so fond of saying! Joanna looked very cute in her hat and scarf I made her, clutching her legos :)









Tony was the next to arrive, two days after Christmas. We roped him into playing Risk, (he was willing...the 1st time!) which ended with great relational angst, as Joanna and I grew tired and decided to blitz both boys and split the world. (This, the boys were very disgruntled by and offered up such accusations as "Not THE GAME! NOT HOW YOU PLAY! NOT EVEN REALLY WINNING!") Joanna and I say, hey, winning is what the players define it as being, and if we can reach a mutally beneficial arrangement then so be it! We see the game as being about relationship - war is, primarily, motivated by politics.



After Fuller arrived, a day later, we taught him Farkle - an excellent dicegame via the Sholars. (Blowing on the dice while wearing a dogrestrainer thing seemed to do the trick for him, though, as he committed the travesty of beating Tony and nearly got himself kilt.) We also enjoyed some mad good bbq at Arthur Bryants in KC...world famous and I can tell you why!






The most popular game of the trip, however, is what I call "Throw stuff at eachother." Simple in conception, it involved nerf guns and Tony's amazing ability to draw blood with playing cards. (I'm still finding aces and random 7's of spades in light fixtures and vents :)




Mom and I spent New Years cooking a sumputous feast. Amazing....



Here is one of the best Mikey pictures of the trip...what a guy :) Sitting back on the couch, enjoying a bottle :) Mom and John took this while they were watching him while Hannah took me to the doctor. (I came down with a wicked sinus infection - living "mostly in my throat" during OneThing. Miserable. Really Miserable. And I don't care WHAT doctors say. A sinus infection is CONTAGIOUS! Because Izzy gave it to Mikey who gave it to me and I gave it to Hannah...) The little guy is particularly drooly at the moment, as he's decided to forego teething in two's and is doing it in 7's.
I WISH I could post my favorite picture of Tony...but since it involves nudity...yes, yes, John and I almost laughed ourselves sick when we discovered the 13 odd pictures left for us on our digital camera. Ah, the mad cavorting of youth. (I figure it was payback for the mistakenly viewed picture of myself and two unnamed friends BACKSIDES -skinnydipping-, that was accidentally left in iphoto for the viewing of john, jo, tony and myself during a christmas picture slideshow :) I SAID I WAS SORRY!





After everyone left, John and I took a few days to unwind...played a little scrabble by the fire, slept late, slept later.
We also watched Mikey this past weekend, while Hannah and Mike went to downtown KC to celebrate their anniversary at a poshe hotel :) I snapped this picture of the little guy while he was in midsentence. We also discovered this lego man trying to make a get-a-way.





And finally, not like anyone hasn't already heard, John and I got to stare into the face of the future.

You read it right. We're gonna be parents! Mind blowing!

It's been quite a month...we look forward to seeing everyone back home in the next few weeks...we're going to try to leave before this weekend in order to beat the arctic front moving in....

love,
Kristianna and John