What We Did During Our Christmas Vacation

We spent four tranquil days in South Carolina with Rebecca's family:





We spent two short days at home:





We spent three hectic days in Indiana with Tim's family, where he lost his voice trying to shout over the din of eight kids and 12 adults:







Then we came home ready to relax from our travels and greet the new year. Rebecca promptly got a terrible cold/sore throat/flu that she shared with Tim two days later. (No picture available.) This sickness has incapacitated us for a week, and although we're mostly recovered, we still occasionally set each other off on coughing fits like competing bullfrogs. Oh, the phlegm we've seen! (No picture available.)

In the meantime, the weather got really cold for a few days (between 5 and 15 degrees), and the pond behind our apartment froze in a cool S-shaped pattern:



To see more pictures of our travels, see our Flickr page.

Rebecca went back to work this week, but Tim still has four days off before the new semester starts. What does a librarian do on vacation? He:

• Re-arranges all the books in the house. (This had to be done. When we moved last summer, we unpacked them all willy-nilly onto bookshelves throughout the house. Now all our books are integrated, categorized, organized, and in some cases, even alphabetized.)
  
• Prints out and organizes pictures from the last four months. Posts them to his Flickr page.
  
• Starts a new blog
• Cleans out the bill & mail credenza for the first time in eight months. ("Hey, here's the receipt for your birthday present last June. Can I throw that out now?")
• Watches movies in an attempt to make a dent in his Netflix list. (Currently 68 movies.)
  
• Plays a lot more tennis.
  
• Vacuums! (More on this later.)