We're back in WV, landing yesterday evening at Charleston's Yeager Airport. It's a quaint little airport with two gates and sits on top of a mountain, which makes take-offs and landings rather interesting. The flight was smooth, and we slept in a little late this morning to recover from the travel.

This morning, we cooked Eggplant Parmesan, Key Lime Pie, Texas Toast and a salad with olives and feta cheese for our neighbors since two members of the family were having surgery that day. We also made this meal for ourselves and Mark's parents, as it's one of our favorites, and you can never have too much eggplant. :) Update: They loved it, and so did we. Yay! :)

In the afternoon, we headed out to visit Mark's Dad at work for a tour of the Nicholas Energy surface coal mine. We saw the whole process from blasting to hauling to sorting and washing to loading and reclamation of the site. The equipment is enormous and in constant motion. The tires on the large trucks cost about $20,000, and they were about 20 feet in diameter. HUGE! Dad says that the roads seem to change every week so it can be quite a maze. We took some pictures from inside Dad's truck, since even though we were hazard-trained at the gate, we did not have hard-hats, blaze orange stripped shirts, nor steel-toed boots, all requirements for getting out of the car. They take safety extremely seriously there, and we could see why.

To help us stay awake and see the New Year in, we rented Whale Rider, a movie of a young New Zealand girl and her tribe figuring how to fit into the modern world. We really like it, but you have to be in the mood, for it can be a little slow at times. We also watched Finding Nemo, one of our favorites that we recieved for Christmas from Laura's parents. The animation is spectacular and totally believable, and the comedy is hilarious, with so many different characters and voices we can memorize and imitate for a few months at least. Happy New Year, everyone!