It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

And not a moment too soon! It's been hard to be away from family and not have all that many friends here yet. It's been a very quiet Christmas so far. No work parties, not really even a ward party, neighborhood party was on a Sunday, so we haven't done much that feels like Christmas. But it's getting better! Kemery sports a loverly reindeer hat that blinks.

We got a lovely, very homey surprise last night. When snow is in the forecast here everything shuts down. Even the malls closed! You couldn't buy gas unless you had cash only. We have heard that snow doesn't come very often and when it does, it's usually a light dusting. So we were happy to wake up with power that had gone out the night before and about 3-4 inches of good solid packing snow! And wouldn't you know it, the one time we have enough snow to use the snow blower, it doesn't work! Brian was hoping to be the hero of the neighborhood and the blades wouldn't turn. It was hand shoveling instead! But the kids had a ball sledding down our side yard, making snow angels, and having a snowball fight. For just a few minutes, it felt like home.

At the Bristol Motor Speedway, there is a light display that you can drive through. We are not huge Nascar fans, but what guy hasn't dreamed of just dropping the hammer on a professional race track? I know Brian has always wanted to drive as fast as he could! So this was a fun opportunity to at least see the track, and for a brief time, drive on it! There was one spot on the drag racing strip you could let the car in front of you go ahead a little ways, then floor it and drag race the lit cars on the sides. Towards the end you drive into the stadium and onto the actual track. On the first side we went all the way up the bank...that thing is steep! But it's only so cool doing it in a minivan. But it was still a lot of fun. The kids had a good time and that's probably as close as Brian will ever come to living his dream of driving a race car!

Where else would you see Santa lounging in front of a camper while the wife does the cooking on the BBQ? It's a southern thing I think.

(This video is kinda long and boring, but this is the second half of the track with just a small bank. We could have let the car in front go ahead and gone faster, but we feared the van would have a hard time on the bank at a higher speed.)