Christmas in the Midwest

Last week I flew out to spend a week with Ryne and to celebrate Christmas a little early with him. It's hard to believe that I have already been here a week and that I have to fly back to Raleigh tomorrow. Needless to say I am not ready to leave and I am going to miss Ryne like crazy.

The weather out in Nebraska has been FRIGID!! There have been several days with temperatures below zero and a few days with snow. This past weekend when we were at his parents' house we saw about 8" of snow fall in the span of a few hours. But now that I live in NC and have gotten used to southern winters I must say that while I do miss the snow, I do not miss the cold. Brrr!!

The past week has been a busy and fun one! Ryne and I had started watching True Blood together when I was last out here. For those of you who have not seen the show, it is pretty messed up. I had no desire to watch it alone at night so we decided we'd wait and watch it when we were together again. So we spent the first few days watching True Blood and catching up on it. On Friday we drove up to spend the weekend at his parents' house. It was good seeing them and as always it was so relaxing to be in the Black Hills. Ryne, his mom, and I all went shopping on Saturday and we were quite successful. I think that was one of the quickest and painless Christmas shoppingn trips I had been on in a long time. We also enjoyed lunch while we were in Rapid City. Sunday morning we got up and joined Ryne's aunt, uncle, and cousins for a big family breakfast at the Old House (the Old House is Ryne's grandparents's old house and was the homestead for the family farm). Breakfast was soooo good and it was fun catching up and visitng with everyone. While we were at breakfast it began to snow and it started coming down pretty quickly. It was at that point that we knew we would have to head back to Nebraska a little earlier than we had planned because of the storm. I was a little bummed because I enjoy being in the Hills but also because I hadn't seen any of the bald eagles hanging out in Ryne's parents' yard (I will spare you the details as to why they were hanging out there). But as we were pulling out and heading home I finally saw some eagles -- 6 to be exact! And let me just tell you, those are IMPRESSIVE birds. I could not get over how large they were. It was so cool seeing them in the wild.

Monday night Ryne and I headed downtown to see The Blind Side. It was such a good movie and we both really enjoyed it. After the movie we watched the last episode of season one for True Blood. Now we just have to wait for season two to come out on DVD. Last night we cooked chili for dinner and relaxed in front of our Christmas tree. It was such an enjoyable night. Tonight we will exchange our presents and have our own little Christmas celebration.

It's been such a wonderful Christmas with Ryne...I just wish I could last longer!