There's No Place Like Home

There's something heavenly about curling up in my own bed: no worrying about waking everyone with the baby or (heaven forbid) sleeping too soundly and drooling on someone else's pillowcase. Though we had a marvelous time gallivanting across the country for the last month and a half, I was singing the hallelujah chorus the moment we arrived back home.

Here's a little timeline of our holidays:

December 24th: Departed Indianapolis for Seattle by way of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, we made it to Washington with only a 1.5 hour layover and 30 minutes of plane "de-icing". Baby Girl was a complete angel and slept most of the way. Upon landing, we met up with the fam' and drove 3 hours to Benton City (arrived at 3am Pacific time Christmas morning--6am Eastern time). We then debated for 2 hours whether or not to just sleep or open stockings from Santa now--sleep won.

Elise with her Christmas gifts--spoiled girl!

Later we opened stockings and gifts and enjoyed a delightful breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy (thanks Grandpa!) and lounged around in Snuggies Clint and Melinda gave to everyone.

Cousins!

Grandpa with Charlotte and Elise

December 26th-January 3rd: Had a fabulous stay in Benton City. Saw a movie, ate carne asada burritos (twice!), shopped, ate, ate, and ate...

...moved Kim and Reid to their new home, took family pictures, played MarioKart, learned how homemade vanilla is made (thanks Scott and Amber!), went shooting...

Don't worry, the camera was on a timer!

...sang karaoke, played board games, and visited friends.

L: Played Risk until 4am and broke a chair in the heat of battle. R: Quelf.

The highlights were introducing Elise to her aunts, uncles, and cousin Charlotte, and being there for Charlotte's baby blessing.

Scott and Charlotte on her blessing day
January 4th-6th: Back to Seattle. Stayed with Clint and Melinda in their new apartment, tried a colossal apple pancake, saw Bungie Studios (where the video game Halo was made), ate chocolate sprinkle doughnuts at Pike Street, saw the very first Costco, walked along a moonlit pier, and toured downtown Kirkland, WA.

January 6th-7th: Flew back to Indianapolis by way of Chicago. Our flight from Chicago was cancelled due to mechanical complications with the plane, but we hopped the next one and made it to Indy just ahead of a gigantic snowstorm. We holed up in a hotel for the night and headed home the next morning. Thanks to several car accidents on the freeway we drove a white-knuckled 4 hours through the snow to West Lafayette (it normally takes 1 hr.) and finally made it home.

January 8th: Frantically did laundry and repacked for our next adventure babysitting our distant relatives' 4 kids (2nd cousins, I think? My dad's cousin's kids).

January 9th-13th: Became the parents of 5 children overnight, with ages ranging from 12 to 6 months. Started the second semester of grad school, drove a minivan, made after-school snacks, painted little finger and toenails, taught a 3 year old magic tricks, watched a 6 year old at gymnastics, shouted empty threats (i.e. "stop teasing, or else..."), attended a middle school sports banquet, made snow angels, kissed owies, read bedtime stories, wiped noses, cut off sandwich crusts, and realized 5 is a LOT of kids!!

January 14th: Crossed the threshold of our tiny basement apartment and collapsed from exhaustion. We've only barely recovered. This is just in time for Elise and I to fly to Nevada (Merry Christmas from Grandpa!) next week to visit the ranch.

So we've been busy. But for now--be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.