I got to meet my nephew for the first time over the holiday weekend as a "person". Prior to being 3 months old, babies are not really like people, in the sense that most people can recognize faces, have control over their expressions, and react emotionally (other than just scared & happy). I may not be explaining it well, I don't mean it in a cruel way, I guess I'm just saying you can really enjoy a baby after it's 3 months old. Easton is a sweet boy, his older sister was much more of a rascal when she was his age. He makes a little crunched up face, and apparently will do this if you ask him, "Where's Chucky?". He doesn't actually know about Chucky (tm) who spawned a series of horror movies, but with people always asking him that, it's become conditioned (yay! usin' that psych degree!). It is a cute little face, though. :) The bad thing about having cute nieces & nephews? You will spend too much money on them. You will also give them the last of your yogurt/ice cream/cake, and you will be only slightly jealous when your parents spend 4 times as much money on their birthday gift than they did on yours. Slightly, I tell you.

My parents house is still being constructed, so the whole gang of us (7 adults & 2 children) had to share one bathtub (no shower yet). There weren't any sinks in the bathroom, so my dad temporarily installed a laundry tub into the kitchen space. The benefits of having a laundry tub in your kitchen on Thanksgiving is that there is room for a lot of dishes, as well as it being too deep for someone in a wheelchair to do dishes from very ergonomically (my family won't force me to do something painful, so I got to slack off. Oh yeah!).

There is one negative aspect about the house (that won't be gone once they are done) --weird acoustics. Some of it will get better once they put in curtains & finish up the edges of the windows, stuff like that. But they are only installing granite tile floors, so the sounds are still going to bounce around a lot. We may be doing some ceiling tapestry hanging! They can't put throw rugs down because they have radiant heat floors (as well as being a pain for SIAW*).

My sister brought two of her dogs, and they had a little adventure....the night before everyone was leaving they decided to run off. My dad and my brother in law (Johnny) searched for hours, but no dogs could be found. We worried that they might freeze to death (they live in a warm climate normally), when we all went to bed it was 20 degrees, and getting colder. The next morning my dad went to visit the neighbors to see if anyone had seen them, and back at the house we were making "Lost Dog" signs (just before leaving). Just after we broke the news to Kaitlyn (niece) they came running down from the woods behind the house. Both were unbelievably cold to the touch, icy paws & noses, and so tired that they just came inside and collapsed on the floor (outside dogs usually are running around with all the running). I took some cute pictures of Easton crawling around on top of the doggy floor mat.

All-in-all, it was a pretty uneventful trip. Very nice to spend time with the family, and to not think about school or my porfolio for a few days. Now I'm working on getting motivated again. 1.5 weeks of school left, then finals, then I bust out a fantastic portfolio in 2 weeks. It's that time of year.... Anyhow, this is hopefully as boring as I'll ever get here. I'll try to post some pictures later, they brighten things up quite a bit! :)

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*Someone in a wheelchair (you can take this to mean whatever PC/non-PC phrase you like "wheelie" , "crip", "wheelchair bound", "roller", "person who uses a wheelchair"). Perhaps later we'll have a quiz on what's PC & what isn't. ;)