ShannonAlbert.com - June 2009

We arrived at my mom and dad's house on December 23. Their house is so lovely at Christmas with their gorgeous tree, beautiful Christmas dishes and my mom's villages that she has setup.

Blake is enamored with the villages.


We got unpacked and then it was time for me to dive right into a dreaded task: wrapping all the gifts I had shipped to my mom's house. For probably 10 years, I've ordered gifts online and had them shipped to my mom's so we don't have to transport all of them. It also keeps them out of the kids view and prevents snooping. Downside is that I have to wrap a lot once we get there. I spent hours in their basement wrapping and bagging and taking inventory of what gifts we had.

I discovered 4 gifts had not arrived. Phone calls were made, packages were tracked and soon Andy and I were off to Lawrence to pickup my mom's main present from us at a Fedex facility. Turns out the package just had a name and city on it but no address. The place I had ordered the gift from had omitted the address line from the label. No wonder it never made it! One of the other gifts was delivered while I was wrapping. The other two never arrived.

I had already hoped to go to Lawrence with Andy this night because the Liberty Hall movie theater is my absolute favorite. Old, beautiful, shows independent films and cheap. Perfect. We saw Slumdog Millionaire and it was great. Beautifully shot, interesting storyline and look at the slums of India and the music was even good.