Laughing together

Laughing together
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

I have to write a quick note because it's been SO LONG since we blogged...and we are leaving in 13 minutes for the airport and a fun little jaunt to London (yay!). Not much time to blog anyway, since I just got back form a week in Idaho last night. You will notice that there are loads of new pictures of Cole in our flickr album. I love him.

(Luckily, Jenny is mad about him, too, so when I'm with her I'm not quite as silly as usual. :))

I also got to meet Baby Maddie May while I was there. Maddie was born two months early and is spending her days in the NICU, but she is a pretty good fighter. It was fun to see her with Laura and her big brother Jackson.

Most springish Idaho trips are also work trips. This was my first visit to the Boise office of Team Simpson, and it was really great--this new job is going quite well! I did the rounds with babies, meeting Sam and Kate, and I also got to stop by and say hello to the Governor...until we were interrupted by the Canadian Ambassador. Ah, well, what can you do?

Go ahead and enjoy smiling back at Cole. We'll post more when we're back on this side of the pond.

Christmas in the East

Missy tells me I should make a pre-New Years resolution and write a Christmas blog entry before the clock ticks midnight. Since we're heading out the door to Mezza Madness at Lebanese Taverna in less than ten minutes, here goes. We spent Christmas with my family this year in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Since I took the Thanksgiving week off work to travel to Idaho this year, I got stuck with the Christmas shift this year. So, we left the Wednesday before Christmas to make the 7-hour drive west across I-68, by far my favorite national highway. My parents packed an action pack 5 days for us, including a trip to the Longaberger basket factory (where Missy won a free basket and we both tried our hand at crafting our own), to Malabar Farms -- the home of famous author Louis Bromfield and the wedding site of Humphrey Bogart to his third wife, Lauren Baccall. One evening we traveled up the dark country road to Nashville, OH to take in the most auspicious house lights you can possibly imagine (signs of snoopy and Bart Simpson put most of us over the edge), ending with a drive-by live Nativity scene. The weather unfortunately was mostly grey and wet -- the snow seems to have located itself all in Denver this year. On Saturday, we visited some old college friends of mine, Jason and Erin Moorman (and daughter Grace, a loquacious 3 year old, especially with Missy), and Chris and Buffy Fleece and kids. Missy also attended her first Christmas Eve candlelight service. Christmas day was filled with turkey, gift-opening hilarity, and the traditional viewing of the classic film, Independence Day. Much more to say, but it'll have to wait until 2007. Happy New Year!

Class of 2001

Class of 2001
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

"Our Trip to Idaho," Part 2. We left McCall and drove down the mountain, straight to Nampa and the campus of Northwest Nazarene University. There we donned nametags and shared hugs (and introductions of spouses) with my old college cronies. I must confess, I'd been looking forward to our five-year reunion for quite a while, and we had a great time. It was fun to see old friends and reconnect with people with whom I'd spent four significant years of my life. I loved the moment when, watching "Grandma Dave" take to the drums just as he did many times starting our freshman year, Amanda turned to me and said, "Yep, it's still funny."

After our reunion lunch we spent some time catching up with old friends--cheering on the basketball team at the homecoming game, discovering new coffee shops in Nampa, drinking tea and eating at Red Robin, adding to the collection of "Senate Pictures" and dissecting "Tess" during our "reunion bookclub," confessing that I've been reading other people's blogs, and reliving ridiculous memories. I've said this before, but it is so wonderful to discover that you still connect with people you knew in a past life.