Quality time

Given how our schedules can limit our time together, I truly look forward to Colin's vacations during the school year. It gives us time to hang out, goof off and, most importantly, spend time together.

This past holiday break, which lasted two weeks, was no different. We bought Momma her birthday presents. He had cinnamon buns and lingonberry juice from Ikea. We went looking for trains. He went skating. We played street hockey. I got a fat lip.

Being the hockey hounds that we are, though, we also spent a quite a few days pounding the pavement supplementing the autograph collection. All told, we added 180 autographs, including one special puck, in four trips for five teams within eight days.

Here are some of the highlights:

~ Montreal's Carey Price, Atlanta's Ilya Kovalchuk and Tampa Bay's Alex Tanguay adding to the Threads collection;
~ Loading up on 2010 Winter Classic pucks from the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers;
~ Snagging signed sticks from Philadelphia's Jeff Carter and James van Riemsdyk; and
~ Colin getting 70 autographs on team sheets for Montreal, Boston, Atlanta and Philadelphia.

It appears, too, that we weren't alone in hounding over the holidays. An overwhelming majority (as in nearly 3 to 1) told us, through Hound Central 5.0's latest poll, that hounding would, indeed, be a part of their holiday break:

Question: Will you hound over the holiday break?

Yes: 29 votes out of 39 cast (74.4 percent)
No: 10 votes (25.6 percent)