next up, java on the patio on Christmas
Our trip to GF for Christmas finally started around 10a.m on Sat. My mind was thinking we would be leaving earlier...no worries, more time to putter around the house before we were off to an evening of eating and laughing and opening gifts and later swimming in the hotel pool. I had walked myself out of a fit from the late start and sat in the passenger seat slowing letting my pursed lips and clenched jaw relax. Dana had asked something and I nodded or grunted or some short and not so sweet reply. When he asked the problem and I shared we both started to laugh at our differences. If we leave at 9 in the a.m (our original plan, so I thought) I like to be up and moving and last minute preparing around 6, Dana would like to be up at 8:39 and when we leave we leave tra la la. So we were starting to chuckle and I shared with him that some things that he does just makes me nuts. He came back with "I know Babe, and some things you do make me crazy." Me: "Really? Okay, bring it, like what? What about me makes YOU crazy". (We are laughing at this point because the chat we are having is ridiculous and comical). "Well, your high strung..." Pause. That is all I heard. I have no idea what he said before or after that. I'm high strung. Somewhere in there he did say something like "look at us now, we are laughing about it and it's fun". I asked "Why are we always laughing at things you have done to piss me off?". I thought it was quite clever and he was belly laughing. "Summer, right here right now we are my parents. We have become my parents." We tra la laughed and continued down the road with the feeling of how great this Christmas Eve trip was going to go.
Around Stanford we started to talk about how and why Autumn had been sick in the car a couple weeks before. Was it the drive, a bug, milk, empty belly? On and on about what it could be. I retold the story of us pulling over on mile marker 17 out of Geyser and whisking her out of her seat stripping her down, reloading her and heading on to GF. We both nodded a bit glanced back at her and asked her for the 100th time if she was feeling okay. "I'm fine." Then, it happened. About 3 miles away from the original puke place out comes the vomit. Not a little, a lot, a really lot! I turn in the seat, do the Mom thing "it's okay, good job Autumn, you are doing great, this is a big one Daddy, pull over Daddy, good job Autumn, what a big girl". Four times we go through this in about 20 miles. By the last throw up Autumn is exhausted and pale and there is nothing we can do but keep going. We are driving down 10th thinking "do we go home? do we stay at the hotel and skip Christmas?" We both hope it was bug and decided that rather than share it with the Graef/Meis house we will stick it out in the hotel. Boo. Thankfully we have a lot of the gifts with us and Mom and Dad came to see us and opened presents in our room and even brought snacks! The kids did not even notice that it wasn't the "traditional" Christmas. They played with empty boxes, wrapping paper, Papa, and later a quick splash in the pool. We are truly hoping that Autumn is not a carsick child. That we don't have to prepare a barf bag and change of clothes for every trip we go on. We stayed laughing the whole time. It was a rocky start (since Dana is a habitual pisser offer ;) ) but for the most part we did what we do best and laughed our very unusual Christmas Eve away.
Christmas day we drove back to Lewistown, loaded with new gifts, two tired kiddos, two pooped parents and said see you next week to my parents. Once home we dropped the babes at the B Goodans and rushed home to set up gifts from Santa, put away a few things, check on the dogs and head back up to spend the night with Mamma Jo and Papa Bob. We ate too much, we laughed more about the situation, we stayed up late and littered the room with more gifts. Christmas number 2 a success. Now one left at our house. Sunday we had a couple more hours to ready the house for the kiddos and when they came home to more presents they looked at us like we had to be kidding. All they wanted was each others toys and maybe some time away from one another. Later we came home and the stillness was almost uncomfortable. We looked around like wind blown chickens with our hair here and there, toys every where, crazy dogs, boxes everywhere. Whoah. Christmas 3 down, and a success.
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2 comments:
It was a success! Every one got some one on one time with everyone and we all had a great time! Not the way that it was planned at all but apparently you guys needed to be alone in your room with your wee ones and Graefs with their babies and Dad and I needed to be in bed by 7:15! :}
Great pictures, I remember those times when my kids preferred playing the boxes the toys came in too..Or looking at the others gifts to see if they had an equal amount, Hey they still do that!! Love you guys, Rach
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