Counts & DeJongs reunited (again)

On our way to GA for Christmas, we stopped by Knoxville for the weekend to visit with Jerod, Liz, and JD (yet his parents still call him Jonathan David) in their new home.  We left CHI after Zach's Christmas party, at noon, thinking we'd be in around 9-10pm...not too bad.  Oh no.  Some SERIOUS winter weather, snow snow snow, and we made it into Knoxville around 1am. Ick.  We chatted for a short bit, then off to bed.  Saturday dawned ugly and snowy, so we spent the day at the house, just playing and hanging out.  All 3 boys went down for a nap in JD's room with no problems.  Unfortunately, Zachary woke up with a croup-like cough which ruined his and Wyatt's nap (and mine to be honest), though Jonathan went back to sleep.  After a relaxing day, Grammy and PapaBill (Liz's parents) graciously came over to babysit so the 4 of us could go out to dinner.  Liz and Jerod found a great authentic German restaurant they wanted to take us to.  That we we could relive our vacation together in Germany/Holland...especially the great food in Duesseldorf's Altstadt.  So. Much. Fun.  We were there about 3 hours or so.  Excellent food.  Then we all got a little silly with the camera.  I was telling them a story about the ladies cookie swap party I went to w/ my small group, and Colleen tutored us on how to slim your face for pictures.  We spent a good 30 minutes trying to perfect the technique...and were very very silly in the process.  Proof:

Art, Jerod, Liz, Shayna

SILLY GIRLS

SILLY BOYS

Before and after

Jerod Before and After

And silly of course

Then, if all that wasn't silly enough, it was time for the live, roaming band!

One word: awesome!

They did show tunes, Christmas tunes, and some good German oompah!

We got back around 10:30 or so.  OH YEAH, and our ride for the evening was a Porshe SUV, compliments of Jerod's work.  Sweet ride.  For some reason, when we got back, we thought it would be a good idea to watch a movie.  It was almost 2am when we finally went to bed.  Needless to say, everyone, even the kids, slept seriously late the next morning.  We all missed church, which was pretty sad, b/c we had been looking forward to seeing their church they love.  Next time.  We had pizza for lunch, and then took off to Tante JaJa's house in Athens.  It was a great, enjoyable visit.  And we LOVE their new house...so so cute.  Perfect for them!

I'll end this post with a picture of our laptops: Liz's sweet new desktop replacement size, Art's Macbook, and my cute baby 10" netbook.