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Where to start, where to start? Well, I guess I’ll begin with the picture of Zeke that you see about 35 pixels above this sentence. This, of course, was Zeke’s first Christmas, which, by all acounts was fairly memorable. It started, as it should have, with us taking Zeke to the mall for his first encounter with a morbidly obese man in a red suit that hasn’t shaved in about 7 years. I was thinking the same thing that you’re thinking now: What could go wrong with that?

Well, it wasn’t but about two seconds before Zeke realized that the man whose lap he was sitting on was not in fact his father, which led him to a mild nuclear (I would have said nuke-u-lar, but I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I was running for President or Vice President on the Republican ticket in 2012) meltdown. The picture you see above was one of 5 that we took, and it was, by far, the best (so you can just imagine what the other 4 looked like).

Then, we continued our Christmas adventure by celebrating Christmas Eve with my parents and sister on Christmas Eve at our yearly Christmas Eve service at church. It was actually very nice, except Zeke (and about 14 1/2 other infants) decided to show off his vocal skills throughout the entire sermon… from the second row. It was entertaining to say the very least.

Christmas Eve came and went, which means that our favorite red suited overeater (may he just has a glandular problem) visited just in time for Zeke to open his presents on Christmas morning, which more or less consisted of very little paper tearing and quite a bit of drooling, but hey, he’s got the rest of his life to figure that one out, right? Overall, it was an extremely pleasant morning. We figured nothing could ruin it. We even spent the afternoon and early evening with my inlaws, and it honestly went better than we could have expected.

Then we came home.

Perhaps we had counted our chickens too early. Perhaps we got too far ahead of ourselves. Perhaps we put the cart before the ox (or is it a horse?). Which ever sounds best, we did it. Literally seconds after had we gotten home and put Zeke to bed, we started commenting about how great the day had gone, when it happened. Rachel said the words that still send a chill down my spine…

“There’s a rat on my coffee table!”

Yep, that’s right, we had a rat in our apartment. Now, before you get yourselves too far ahead of the cart (or the ox… or the horse), know that the rat in our apartment was not due to our own uncleanliness (which I don’t think is a word). It, we later found out, got in from a giant crack in the foundation of the building that just so happens to be underneath our kitchen.

Well, after two days and $50 zillion in rat traps and bait, we ended up moving to a new apartment. Oh, and if any of you might mistakenly think that those “sticky” rat traps do anything, here’s a quick snapshot to prove the opposite. It’s a picture of a rat climbing on top of a sticky trap in order to boost himself (or herself… I’m so politically correct) back into his (or her) underground lair (I would have said “fortress of solitude,” but I thought that was giving the rat too much credit).

So, anyways, it has been an exceptionally busy and eventful Christmas season, but now that we’re moved into a new apartment, I’m hoping that the new year will be both peaceful and rodent-free.

Also, on Dec 28th, I was priveledged enough to be able to preach at our church. If you’re interested in watching the video, just check out the “Great Videos” section of this site.