I'm home!

[Alika]

It's been a long weekend. Believe me when I say I am very glad to be home!

We started out on Saturday by driving to see my Grandma, in another Utah city about 30 minutes away. She fed us lunch and we exchanged gifts. She painted me an amazing picture of Hayden, the GW macaw:

After leaving my grandma's, we headed to visit my parents in Wyoming, just north east of the Utah/Wyoming border. We stayed the night there, and had a big prime rib dinner that night and a big Christmas breakfast the next morning... so lots of eating and gift giving.

Later that morning, we headed deeper into Wyoming to visit my inlaws. Theirs is a huge family... so big, they have to rent a church hall to fit everyone. Again, we ate a lot and exchanged gifts. It was nice, but I wasn't exactly in my comfort zone there. There were an awful lot of people trying to touch me...

Around 4pm, we headed even deeper into Wyoming to our final destination... the city we moved from about 18 months ago. We have friends there we wanted to visit for Christmas. Again, there was a lot of eating and gift-exchanging. We stayed up late playing a game called "Apples to Apples" before calling it a night and retiring to the guest room of my friends' house.

We left this morning at 12pm and drove all the way home... a good three hour trip, which, I know, isn't far compared to what many drove this weekend.

It was so good to be home! The birds were sooooo happy to see us. Xander, the iguana was so good and didn't poop in his cage all weekend. He waited yesterday for my pet sitter to arrive and poop him in the tub, and then waited for us to get home this afternoon.

I missed them all so much! Yesterday I called my sister's (my pet sitter) cell phone when she was at my house feeding the critters, and she let me talk to Beeper on speaker phone.

Anyway, I'll end my story there. The short version is this: we had a lovely weekend, but we are very happy to be home!

[kathleen]

Welcome back Alika. I'm glad you had a good weekend. The painting is beautiful. It' was very quiet here without you. I'm glad your back.