Connecting With Home

Since this was my last weekend in Minnesota I drove up to Bemidji to spend time with my family before I embark on my journey to India. My Mom & Dad (Tom and Yvonne) still live in Bemidji after 41 years (in our new house since our original home burned in 2002), and my sister, Becky; my brother-in-law, Jim; and my nieces Nicki and Natalie drove over from Erhard, Minnesota (a cozy little town over towards Fargo) so we could all be together.
It was a typical family weekend--we just hung out, ate Mom's great cooking, ordered Dave's Pizza (mmmmm...), watched football (wow-the Vikes actually WON!), played 2500 (our latest card game craze), and just visited with each other. I love going home! We are all such good friends and really enjoy one anothers' company. What a gift family truly is...
Since I am going to miss our family Christmas together this year we even set up the Christmas tree and did a little "early celebration". Nicki, Natalie, Louie (the dog), and I played with my new camera-- total blast. Check out his tongue in this shot.
Since I've been in the routine of driving up to Bemidji every month I am going to miss my visits... but I bought M&D a webcam, loaded up Skype, and showed them how we can do video conference calls with VOIP. Excellent :o) I'm in no mood to pay $2.00/minute for AT&T service--yeah, I think not!

Okay--time to finish final packing. Off and flying in no time. India--ready or not, here I come.