Merry Christmas everybody…and if you don’t celebrate Christmas, Happy Holidays and a wonderful Thursday 😛

It’s almost 2am right now, for the second night in a row. We’re up in Humboldt, we made the drive, and I is the tireds. The pups are exhausted, so is the Ho, but it was a gooood day.

We started with breakfast at the Ho household, which was bacon and eggs with some Cinnamon rolls. Then, it was stockings followed by presents. It was a pretty badass Christmas this year for everyone. I got a really, really nice hoodie that’s lined with, like, sherpa wool, and a really nice shirt, plus some fun stocking stuffers. Liz’s parents loved the photo book that we printed out for our wedding. I know, that doesn’t sound like a major gift, but it totally was. 300 pages, printed and binded in professional coffee-table-book style, with the matte magazine-type pages…I mean this thing was legit and it took Liz *hours* to make.

Then, we all went for a walk with the dogs (Coops, Coco, and Rosie) as one big family, which was awesome. We made a stop over at the park, and Coops and Coco got to get off leash and run around. There was this re-sodding section of the little field there that was fenced off smack in the middle, and Coops did a lap around it at absolutely top speed as fast as he could run, all on his own. It was really freaking cute and fun to watch.

Then, we piled all our shit into the little Schnoops and we were off for Humboldt. We left around 2:30, which was a little later than we’d wanted to be taking off, but no matter. It was still going to get us up home before dinner. We did pretty much a straight shot without stopping, one pee break in Willits. We used Waze to figure out the best route to get out of the city, and it was actually going over the bay bridge, up the 580 and across the Richmond bridge on the east side of the bay (as opposed to the Golden Gate bridge). It worked. We were pulling into Market St. at 7:40. Pretty damn good.

Liz slept for most of the second half of the trip and I listened to that random CD I’d bought from Barnes & Noble, which was “Coldharbour Sessions 2004” by Markus Schulz. It was a CD never released in the US, but one that I’d had the mp3s of back then, and something that Liz and I had listened to when we first started dating. It was a trip listening to it, it brought back a lot of memories. Good ones, without a doubt — about college, and finding myself.

Once we got home, it was almost directly to dinner times (after a brief present wrapping session from the amazon items that we’d shipped directly here), and then it was on to presents. Once again this year, mom and dad made out like bandits (as they damn well should!). Mom got a kindle paperwhite, a new digital camera (which, let’s be real, is really a gift for both my mom and dad), some new walking shoes, and a crapload of this kitchenware set that she’s been coveting for many many years. My Dad wrapped himself an empty Macbook Pro box, since he’d already received his computer a week or so ago, and then proceeded to tear open the wrapping gleefully even though he knew exactly what was inside. That was hilarious.

Anyway, it’s now striking 2am officially, and it’s time for me to call it a night. Liz is stretching out on the floor of the bedroom from the drive up, and each of our dogs has carved out their own little space at the foot of the bed on the two new blankets they got for christmas. SO CUTE.

That’s all I have for today. More tomorrow, reporting live from Humboldt County. It’s nice to be home!