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We’re a little slow delivering the news, but it’s a boy! Jeff and Allison had Robert Langford Crane (they call him Ford) on January 2. Isn’t he cute! Some people say he looks like Jason, but I don’t know, Ford’s pretty handsome… The proud aunt and uncle are headed out to visit the little guy soon. We’ll bring back more photos. If you want to read more about him, check out Jeff and Allison’s blog at www.cranebaby.com.

The last time that it was snowing when our plane landed in Minneapolis was in April (seriously) a few years ago. This time around it was December, which made a lot more sense to the boy from Louisiana. Over the course of the next five days, it snowed about seven inches, with a lot of it falling on Christmas Day. It was Jason’s first white Christmas, and it was well worth the cold. Check out more photos from our trip.

Well, not really. But if you’re visiting the ice sculptures at the Gaylord Texan it is! They keep the exhibit at 9 degrees and give you wimpy little coats that don’t do much to keep you warm! They need to take a trip to Minnesota to research proper winter apparel. But, despite the chill in the air, we had a good time with Jason’s dad checking out the awesome ice sculptures. In fact the entire Gaylord was very cool with all of its Christmas decorations. The highlight was definitely the ice slide at the end of the tour. Almost as fun as a water slide!

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. We spent half of the day at work, but the better half was spent with some of our fantastic friends stuffing our faces! We had an early dinner so we could all (John, Helen, Dan, Jason and I) eat together before heading to the paper. I even made it out of bed at 5:45 a.m. to start the turkey! So far no word of anyone with food poisoning, so I think we can consider the day a success. And by the way, it snowed on Thanksgiving. Yes, it was in the 70s today, but it SNOWED on Thanksgiving! That’s a flake on his ear. And there were a couple more flakes that fell, but nothing stuck.

We recently made a trip up to Portland, Oregon, to visit our friends Sean and Christine. Three days of great hiking and four nights of great eating later, we’re back, and all we have to show is these pictures.

We went down to Baton Rouge to visit family and watch some college football in the rain this weekend. Doesn’t get much better than that. Just ask Kari.

We spent a lot of time hanging out with everyone in our nice condo a couple blocks from Tiger Stadium. It was a lot of fun getting to spend some time with our family, some of whom we haven’t seen for a long time. Thanks to everyone for making the trip, we had a great time.

Check out some photos from the weekend.

Just returned from a few days in Minnesota visiting Kari’s family. Got a lot more sun up there than we could down here. (Still soggy in Texas.) We tubed down one river, canoed down another, saw the Charlie Daniels Band and watched fireworks at the Taste of Minnesota (cheese curds, anyone?) and saw a Picasso exhibit at the Walker Art Center. All in all, a very nice relaxing time. And who knew I’d come back with a tan.