Every time Courtney comes to town, it's a whirlwind of activity. She flew in on Saturday, along with half the US population who were also traveling to St Louis. Since the airport was a mad-house, we picked her up at the Metrolink stop and then whisked her off to Mia Ranchito's for margaritas and enchiladas. Notice Courtney's drink is twice as big as Bruce's, and hers is only classified as the "medium" size.
Since it was such a nice night, we decided to walk home past all the Christmas lights. I think the people in my neighborhood are more into Halloween decorations than Christmas, though, but there were enough figures to light our way home.
On Christmas Eve, we decided to go to the zoo to do some sketching. I don't know if the animals were getting early Christmas treats or if this was their regular diet, but they were extremely active in their pens munching on their food.
This orangutan, however, didn't think the weather was as warm as the rest of us. Someone must have crocheted him a new afghan to snuggle up in. It seems like a strange gift, especially made out of white yarn, but he was fighting off the other orangutans for possession. I guess when my sister finishes crocheting the afghan for Melissa's new baby, she can always make one for the animals at the zoo out of the leftover yarn.
We finally found some non-frisky animals to sketch. This is a takin (rhymes with rock-in). It's a goat-antelope found in the Himalayas. It was quite interesting to draw, because it has a nose like a moose, a hairy body like a bison, and big horns like a wildebeest. I was just happy it took a nap the entire time we were drawing it and didn't move around.
Courtney is pretty good at sketching standing up. She's even holding her paint palette and adding color to her sketch. I pulled out my paints, but I was petrified I was going to drop everything over the side of the fence. While the takins seemed fairly immobile, they were also quite huge, so I didn't want to have to reach my arm over into their pen.
On Christmas Day, Courtney and I went to Melissa's to see her new house. Violet gave Courtney a tour of her new room which has a window seat just like Courtney had in her room growing up. I brought Violet a little dog and a dog bed for her American Girl doll. I didn't get a picture of it, but one of Violet's presents was an LOL surprise doll. I'm not sure if they all work this way, but Violet had to dunk a big shell-shaped object into a tub of water. It fizzed for about 10 minutes until it revealed a small kewpie-like doll inside (I guess that's the surprise). Then you had to add ice to the water to reveal the doll's "clothes" (aka. color-changing plastic on the doll's body, somewhat like the mood rings we had in the 60's). I don't know who comes up with these ideas, but it was certainly unique (and a lot more work than just ripping wrapping paper off the box).
I gave Lincoln a
Greedy Granny game. I'd never heard of it before, but evidently the kids had seen it on TV, because Lincoln knew how to put it together while Melissa and I sat there trying to decipher the instructions. The granny is sitting in a recliner. You push the recliner back and "lock" it into position by pushing in granny's teeth. Then there is a button to push on the side to make the rocker spring forward and granny's teeth pop out. Needless to say, it has absolutely no educational value, but Lincoln seemed to love it.
Then we went over to Janet's for dinner with the rest of the family. She had barbecue ribs, pulled pork, and brisket along with all the trimmings... yum! I think I gained 5 pounds from that dinner alone.
We took a "sisters" picture about 5 minutes before Janet took down her tree. She waited until the last guest left, and then went down to the basement and hauled up all the storage bins. I kept trying to get her to just wrap the entire Christmas tree in a sheet and shove it in her closet like I do. It saves a lot of work from year-to-year, but she wouldn't go for it.
The next day we went to the
Trans Siberian Orchestra concert in downtown KC. We lost our good weather, but luckily the rain held off while we were waiting in line to get in (security-checks are always so time-consuming). Janet's been to quite a few concerts this year, so she's getting very good at the Facebook selfie.
The concert was very, very good. We were sitting right in front of the secondary stage where the musicians come out onto raised platforms. The black iron-work behind the guitar player is the Trans Siberian logo. When the musicians weren't standing in front of it, it shot out huge plumes of fire. Janet had warned us that the Sprint Center is often cold, but with that fire, we were nice and warm the entire time.
On our final day before going home, we met up with Roger for breakfast. Roger was full of funny stories like usual, mostly about our days in college (hard to believe it's been over 40 years since that took place). But then our time was up and Courtney had to head to the airport. Janet dropped her off before meeting Michael at Harrah's. I jumped on the freeway for the 4-hour drive home amongst all the semis. And I'm sure we all took a huge nap once we got back to our respective houses. But like usual, it was a very good visit.
