Todd here, attempting to fill in the two or three month gap in our blog.  I'll see how much typing I have in me.

Because Thanksgiving 2008 was so late, we only had two more weeks of classes after the break.  This comes as a bitter sweet realization when you are thinking about what you need to be doing the Sunday before you go back to classes.  We were going to be done soon, but there was so much work that still had to be done, and so much studying we had to do for finals.  Ashlee and I were also trying to do applications for law school and graduate school, respectively.  When the semester was all said and done with, not all our grades were where we wanted them to be, and I missed a couple of the early December applications, but we were content.  It was a tough semester, and it was nice to be done.  This is especially the case for me because I'm completely done at CMU now.  Both my B.S. and M.S. were completed in December.

Christmas break was four weeks for us this year, which left no choice but to bring Titus, our cat, home.  Given the airlines' policies that charge per flight for a pet, we decided it was just too expensive (around $300) to fly home with him.  Instead, we packed up the car (which is a 2002 Mercury Sable, not Brown Sugar) and ventured westward.  

Winter driving is one thing, but my bright idea to go through Chicago was the icing on the cake.  Of course, traffic was terrible, and tolls caused further delay, but even worse was the failure of our the heater blower.  The blower does exactly what you would think, it blows the hot air through the vents into the interior.  Not only did we start to get cold, the windows were fogging up.  We pushed as far as Madison, WI, and stopped for the night.  We were extremely lucky to find a place that openned early on Saturday morning and could get us in to fix it.  

We were back on the road by noon, heading toward a blizzard.  We hit that blizzard about eight hours later, at Kennebec, SD, where -10 or -20 degree temperatures plus 30-40 mph wind quickly reminded us that Pittsburgh can be miserable in the winter, but pales in comparison to the West.  We stayed there for the night in a motel that warrants a blog entry of its own.  We woke up to a closed I-90, but checked on its status frequently, and were back on the road just minutes after it opened.  Given the extreme cold and high winds, the road was actually blown clear the majority of the way home, except for areas with trees.  We made excellent time, and were home by five.

For those of you wondering about Titus and his tolerance of three days in a car, you would be amazed.  He whines for the first 30 minutes or so, but then realizes there's not getting out of it.  Afterwards, he just sleeps, with his favorite spots being the back seat floor and our laps.  He would wake up now and then to move around a bit, but otherwise just snoozed the hours away.  He makes me jealous.

Christmas break was wonderful.  In terms of Ashlee's family, her niece Audrey stole the show when we spent time with them.  We'll be writing a post about her soon (actually, Ashlee will).  In terms of my family, we had a full house with my brother Eric and his girlfriend Margit being home.  We thank everyone for the gifts, but also for the fun and joy of all being home and together.  It's always a pleasure, and this year was no exception.

The drive home was less eventful.  We got a late start the first day, and had to stop early that evening for a bit of freezing rain.  This forced us to spend the next night in Indianapolis, arriving in Pittsburgh two days before classes started for Ashlee.

Well, that's it for this post.  Keep checking back, we promise to get the rest of the gap filled in soon.