First we opened gifts.

And shortly thereafter is when the Plague overcame Chad. He spent a majority of Christmas on the bathroom floor.

No picture of that. That would have been mean.

So here’s a random shot of Ping on top of some lovely Christmas loot.

Our socks made by Aunt Ramona (mine’s blue).

And a platter of various Christmas cookies. It’s a good thing Chad sampled a bunch before Christmas.

On the 26th I had to leave Chad in Palmyra to be taken care of by his Mom & Dad so I could return to Morgantown and go to work the next day. That was the plan anyway. I managed to get to Morgantown all right, but by morning the Plague struck me down.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Before the family headed home I figured we’d take a few photos. Easy peasey. The Canon S90 has a 3-shot timer function. So we all lined up, I set the timer and took my place. Good thing someone suggested I check to make sure the photos were ok.

As you can see, Dad managed to hide behind Mamaw not just once…

Or twice…

But three times.

Fortunately digital media is cheap….so we took three more shots.

My Pap-Pap, pictured below in Italy

My Gramps, pictured below

And my Dad, pictured below in Korea

Anyway, after adjusting the brake and taking Edmund the Little Black Jeep out for a spin to confirm that we’d done everything ok and that the brakes still worked, Ping mentioned his back was bothering him a little bit. So off we went to have him looked at. Upon examination it became clear that he was going to need surgery immediatley.

He was rushed into pre-op.

And as you may imagine I was a complete disaster. Not because this is the first time Ping has had to have surgery. He’s an old hat at having gone under the sewing needle. But because this was the first time Ping needed surgery and I didn’t have Mom, Dad or Mamaw around. Ping and I were on our own.

The surgeon did a good job sewing up his wound and everything checked out ok. It took a steady hand, but I think the scarring will be minimal this time around. Which is good. Especially since we have a summer of fun in the sun ahead of us now that the Jeep’s e-brake is good to go.

Ping was only in recovery for a short period of time. He’s got no problem with the anesthesia and is a very good patient.

As you can see in this photo, he only has a small bandage which the surgeon said could come off within 24 hours.

So no more working on the Jeep or doing any work on the floor renovation for at least a week. The latter being pretty much done anyway, but Ping is such a perfectionist. I caught him trying to sneak a peak of the floor last night, some sandpaper in his flipper. Sheesh.

First things first: The caching. We had 3 kids, a sled, a wagon, a dog & four adults (and by adults I mean chronologically we are adults, mentally….I’ll leave that one go). The weather was unseasonably warm (way better than last NYE we were up here when it was wicked cold) so the sled presented some problems – mostly in the form of: it’s hard to pull a sled when the snow as turned to mush or completely disappeared and all you have left is rocks.

After a good long forced march, we headed back to the car where I decided to go after a cache in a tree. (PMD tells me this is pretty common in her part of Canada due to the typically large amounts of snowfall.) I got up all by myself. Back down was another matter all together.

While walking and talking, sidekick brought up the phenomenon of Endless Sushi. Yum. And so with a quick stop at home to de-snow-gear ourselves we headed out for Endless Sushi. Yum. This turned out to be somewhat of a mistake in timing since it was a late (and large) lunch and it left us more or less immobilized.  Totally worth it. You can’t get Endless Sushi at home.

After wallowing for too short of time we changed (yet again) and headed out for dinner.

And finally we managed to arrive at our final destination which sported some of the best people watching I have probably ever encountered. Once we secured our giant puffy sofa and got situated, we spent the night being entertained by an endless parade of …..let’s go with sights. And endless parade of sights. None of which (and you’d thank me for this…trust me) did we capture in photo. There was also a strawberry tree (cursed nemesis of height-challenged chocolate covered strawberry lovers like myself) and profuse amounts of cheese (but I didn’t get photos of those either…seemed a little tacky).

And just like that….it’s 2011.

Which is when we went home and passed out.

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Arriving safe and sound on the evening of the 29th we had a good night’s sleep and were ready to do what we do best. Well, maybe do what we do second best, which is caching. Because I’m pretty sure what we do best is have forced marches in foreign countries, followed by bed cheese and bathtub beer. Then again, geocaching does typically fit into the forced marching category. And for Chad and I, at least, we were in an almost foreign country. Where was I? Oh yes, geocaching. It was time to go geocaching.

So we loaded up all 7 of us (it takes two vehicles) and headed out.

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There was a profuse amount of puzzles. Mamaw loves her puzzles and it’s really hard to not stop by and help when the puzzle just sits there, taunting you.

I lost county somewhere around four puzzles being completed. In fact we had such a puzzle emergency that Uncle Dan had to run out Christmas Eve and purchase some more. You know, just in case. Turns out it was a brilliant plan. We needed those puzzles.

And since it’s never really boring in the Berry Family….well you can see how we entertain ourselves aside from puzzles.

Yes. That’s right. Cornhole. In the great room. That’s just how we roll.

That’s not to say we didn’t take time out for the regular scheduled, hum drum of daily life. You know. Like washing the dog. In the kitchen sink.

It was a great Christmas with the family.

That’s my Gramps (D.J. Romino) on the left listening to Sen. Byrd play the fiddle.

Well today, despite the evil heat and humidity, I managed to get it in gear and replace the window. Not that it was easy. And not that it ended entirely well.

First I had to scrape the window a bit because the 24″ x 24″ piece of glass would not fit in the slightly larger than 24″ x 24″ window.

Sure, I do all my home repair work in a sun dress, don’t you? Seriously though, I’d been out and about (and trying not to die from the heat – 90+ degrees) and in my typical form decided once I got home that  I’d work on some projects that needed finishing. Well why in the world would I change clothes? I was, after all, ONLY going to pop that glass in the window and secure it, right?  Oh and maybe paint an ammo can and perhaps paint the Wheel of Morality (the 5th Great MEAT-n-Greet at Coopers Rocks is coming up soon.)

Well after all that scraping, which turned into me sanding and scraping and then getting out my wood chisel. Which of course I could not find. But after digging it up I was not surprised to find that it needed sharpened. Which mean I had to find something with which to sharpen the chisel before I could make any progress. I was trying to not lose my patience since this was becoming quite a large pain. (The first window – predictably – went in without any drama, scraping or fuss.)

I think I must have put that piece of glass in the window about 20 times and it still did not fit. Of course it wasn’t me working non-stop. I had a few respites thanks to intermittent thunderstorms which were rolling through. But once they stopped coming and going and I no longer had to run for cover I finally (thought) I won! Yes the glass went in. The glass was secured. And then….the glass cracked. But you know what? By that stage I really did not care. And it was only a tiny crack. And the window is in the back of the garage.

Oh, did I mention I also had to tie on the weights for the bottom window? Well I did. And I had to free the windows from many years of paint. At the very least I know that the trim on the house used to be blue before the current mauve.

And so you are probably wondering why the heck anyone should care about me putting in a new window in the back of my garage. Well it’s a valid point to ponder. And so I’ll come clean. That particular piece of glass that I just installed is a particularly evil piece of glass.

Because yesterday while I was out geocaching with 89SC at The Jug WMA that evil piece of glass had a devious plan which it managed to bring to fruition. What was the evil plan you may ask? Well it just so happens that since glass is fragile I had placed this evil piece of glass on top of a small cart in the garage. And there it sat in wait, concocting a plan. Waiting…waiting for someone oblivious.

And since Chad lives here too, it didn’t have to wait very long. Sometime around 2:00 pm Saturday that evil piece of glass lured Chad in and sliced him up. Oh yes. It did.

And how did I find out? (Because remember I was out in The Jug where there was no cell service.) I found out via a short text message that Chad was at MedExpress. And that was IT. No more information. And why did this freak me out? Because Chad and Dad were at home with an industrial wet saw cutting flagstone.

Nicely played Mr. Evil Piece of Glass. Nicely Played.

WARNING! GRAPHIC PHOTO of Chad’s Injury coming up next. Not as gnarly as my summer destroying injury of June 2009, but still slightly unpleasant.

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It just happened to be on April 24. No big deal. Except that’s our annivesary.

Because nothing says Happy Anniversary like picking up trash.

And then we had dinner at Apple Annie’s in Point Marion.

Do we know how to live it up or what?