Holiday Travels - Overview

I figured since it was well past the middle of January, I should finish up the holiday posts. I know we still have our little tree up and all of our cards up (since we weren't here to enjoy them) but I think most of you have probably moved on by now.

We stayed at our home in Ohio during our visit, which was awesome. We really, really miss our house. The only hard part was that we lent out our television and DVD/VHS player and were left with an old TV that did not pick up the digital television signal (we sold our converter box) and a small DVD player. Oh, and all of our child appropriate movies were in California. So when my parents came to visit the first day back and asked if we needed anything (they probably meant food) we kindly asked to borrow a few movies. Xander greatly enjoyed Cars, Robots and the Incredibles a couple times each.

We made several day trips. On Christmas Eve day we visited one of Chris's uncle's families. That was one place we saw Santa Claus.

On Christmas Day we visited another of Chris's uncle's families. We found the greatest babysitter ever: someone else playing Nintendo DS. It's Killian who is Chris's cousin's son, which I think would make Xander and Killian second cousins. Am I off base there? Anyway, Killian was an awesome sport for letting Xander hover on his shoulder the Entire Day.


A neighbor also lent Xander a Leapster with one game. Xander carried that thing with him everywhere for the rest of the trip. And as much as Xander enjoys technology, I'm happy to have just have our blocks, board games and PBS online for now.

We spent a few days staying at my parents' house and celebrated a late Christmas with my family there. That is where the true chaos of gifts came in.


And of course the gift bags were as popular as the gifts. Also, Rowdy the dog was a big hit.

It worked out well that my parents, siblings, sibling-in-laws and niece were all able to make it and celebrate together. Xander and Josie were showered with attention and even now Xander will say he misses them. Just yesterday he says he misses Uncle Mark and Uncle TJ (at which point I kindly remind him that it is Aunt TJ). The day before it was Uncle Lee and Aunt Andrea and Rowdy (at which point he would sit down and scratch his ear with his foot, just like Rowdy).

Chris especially had a good time with our niece Adyson. He played 'Kerplunk' with her, which is always a hit with our kids. It's basically dropping her and catching her, but safer than it sounds. We also tried teaching her how to hold our hands and climb our legs and flip over. Hopefully she'll remember when we return in August.

We also managed to visit my sister down in Cincinnati. Most of our two weeks in Ohio were in below freezing temperatures with a little snow, but the temperature actually reached 60 degrees during the last couple of days. We'd planned on going to see the Fantasy of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo, so it was nice that the weather cooperated.