Anna Grows

At long last, Mom finally had a free moment to get a haircut. You can imagine the excitement and relief at finally accomplishing this task, only to be greeted at the door by a two year old who takes one look and promptly exclaims "Mommy has silly hair. She needs a haircut." This was followed by hysterical laughter by Dad, who informed Anna she needs to be more diplomatic. Mom is left to assume this is not one of her best haircuts. To add insult to injury, Mom managed to squirt olive oil in her new hair while trying to refile the olive oil bottle. We will see what tomorrow's hair looks like.

Grandma and Grandpa were determine to visit Anna for Christmas and see the new house. Like the postal service, neither rain, wind, nor sleet and snow, or in their case two icestorms and three deer could keep them away. Grandpa decided early on that he would rather drive than risk an airline flight out of Detroit (and possibly a car buried in snow at the airport parking lot upon their return). After this trip, he may think differently. The problems started the week before their planned departure when Grandma and Grandpa hit two deer while on their way home from a shopping trip (probably with gifts for Anna). Fortunately, they were o.k; although the deer did not fair so well. The car was definitely not in good shape (to the tune of several thousand dollars in damage) and was towed. Of course this was the same vehicle they were planning to drive to see Anna. Grandpa decided that they would get a rental car. This task also proved challenging as the recent ice storms had left the rental car...

There is one word to describe Christmas 2008 - WHEW! We managed to pack-up and move to Anna's new house on December 19, followed by unpacking, cleaning the old house, mailing Christmas cards, putting up Christmas decorations, celebrating Christmas, journeying to New York and concluding with a visit from Gramma and Grandpa. The big Christmas present was the move to the new house. Mom located a small moving company and managed to find free professional moving boxes on Craig's list (this involved speeding down to Southern Fairfax county immediately after an ad was posted leaving a sick Dad with a sick daughter - but the boxes were free). After lots of packing, a team of Russian movers showed up at 9 AM in the rain to move our worldly goods. Incidentally, Joe noted that we have acquired many more worldly goods since our college days when everything would fit into the trunk/backseat of an economy car. This time it took a large moving truck two trips. Joe was skeptical of the moving ...