whew.okay. so yule party '08 has come and gone, and, if you're reading this, you are among those who came through the gauntlet still in one piece. on this end, the houghs are doing well - we have no casualties to report this time around. this year we focused on the task at hand and stayed away from all manner of shopping centers unless absolutely necessary. the result was an awesome christmas, and our first one with dependants.
as you know, we didn't opt to brave the cross-continental, overland adventure up to michigan this year. last year we did, and it took us about 20 hours driving straight through (with the exception of a unsuccessful 1 hour nap session at a rest stop in tennessee). not fun. we reached central michigan on fumes, after consuming nothing but energy drinks, coffee, and gas station food for 1,200 miles. that stretch of asphalt - through the boring states like georgia and ohio, through the pass of caradhras -is hell enough without the snow-pounding of the century reaking havoc all over the midwest (right through our otherwise projected route). we really didn't feel like driving 15 mph in such weather through appalachia and the smokies. bad things happen to people that fall to the wayside in the back-country of tennessee. and, to top everything else off, now we'd be making that trek with a grump-ass 6 month old screaming in the backseat the entire way.
yeah, i'll pass on that one.
seeing how we were doomed to spend christmas alone in central florida, the ever-vigilant hough clan circled the wagons and set up a webcam on a tripod.
from 7am - 9pm, we logged in over 13 hours of video-conferencing with my dad's side and mom's side of the family. for those of you who are away from family and friends, i highly recommend you look into this if you're computer is somewhat non-crappy - throughout the day, it helped out a lot.
i won't go into what everybody got for christmas, as that'd be incredibly tacky of yours truly (and yours truly is by no means a tacky person, as we all know), but i will say this: we did pretty well. the cannonball, however, did really pretty well. and that's cool - the whole presents-under-the-tree thing is really for kids anyway, and about 8 out of 10 gifts under ours was for her. by my figuring, she won't need any more gifts until she's about 14 or 15.
we seriously deserve a 'thank you' card from fisher-price - those jerks owe us big time.
anyway, thanks again for all of your well-wishing and gifts this year, folks - we had a good time. hopefully next year we'll be flying up to the glove so we won't have to rely on computers for family time, but, worst case scenario, now we know its at least doable.in closing, here's a crap-load of pictures. enjoy...
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