In more ways than one, we are back. Back from our Thanksgiving whirlwind family tour and back from the dead...
Stepping back in time, before we headed out for our Thanksgiving trip, we did a little trip down to Taos, New Mexico to participate in the Taos Balloon festival with Salida friends Doug, Trish, Lum, Steve, and Mike. Check out more beautiful photos in our gallery.
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Teresa and I successfully completed our Thanksgiving whirlwind family tour, flying to Atlanta for a week (photos here and here), then visiting everyone in Florida for the second week (photos here and here). We managed to visit nearly all of the immediately family within the span of two weeks. It was intense experience. Next year we may have to spread it out. Still, it was good to see all the family.
Our travels did include some fun stuff. We got to finally see the Georgia Aquarium with Teresa's sister Sue and her family who were passing through Atlanta. It was an interesting facility, with some beautiful marine life on display, but it definitely felt a bit commercialized (IE this exhibit brought to you by...). In some ways it felt like a celebration of Atlanta corporations as much as it was about the marine life.
We also made a side-trip to Solomon's Castle on our way down to Ft. Myers... in the middle of no-where Florida, an artist built his own castle in the middle of the swamp and filled it with his own eclectic artwork. The names of the pieces were pun-riddled and hilarious. It was a fun, kitschy detour.
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During our time in Ft. Myers, we visited Edison and Ford Winter Estates.
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On our way over to Boca Raton, we took the more southernly US-41 route, spent a night in the tiny town of Everglades City, and rode bikes through Shark Valley... it was a nice break between families.
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Unfortunately, upon our return, Teresa came down with the flu. I got it as well, but thankfully, I was 48 hours behind her so we could take care of each other on our worst days. I forgot how miserable flu could be. Each of us had one really bad day... headache, fever, chills... suicide seemed like a nice treatment option! <sigh> It seems nearly every time we travel now-a-days, we get sick on one end of the trip or the other. 
Now we are just dealing with lingering coughs. But we're finally back, and in reasonably good health.
While both of us were getting over the flu, Salida got hammered by some beautiful winter storms. Thank goodness. Our local ski resort opened 3 weeks late due to lack of snow, but they got 70 inches in 4 days and were able to open the entire mountain or so within a week's time. There is still lots of snow on the ground.
In other news, I've finally broken down a purchased a few web cams. We've got one we use for video chat with Skype. I even bought one for my family so we can video chat. I also bought one that that we've configured for our back yard web cam. Be sure to check it out around sunset/sunrise for the wildlife that wanders through our yard.
Tanda Enterprises WebCam
We'll leave you with some shots we took around our home...
It's good to be back home.
Happy Holidays Y'all!
PS Keep looking for our 2007 holiday e-card.