It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Everywhere you go...

And we did go everywhere, or at least it felt like it.

After spending a couple hours on the phone with Delta over Sunday and Monday getting my cancelled flight rebooked we were finally off to Michigan on leg one of our three leg Christmas journey.  Ben arrived in Michigan on his original flight on Monday morning around 11:30.  My rebooked flight landed me in Michigan at about 10:00 pm on Monday night.  First stop? Pizza House of course (Ben had already hit Panchero's for lunch).  It's probably ridiculous, but our first stop everytime we make it to Ann Arbor is to indulge in some of the college comfort foods we know and love. 

Finished up some Christmas shopping on Tuesday before we packed up and headed to the west side of the state to visit with Ben's dad and his wife.  We had a lovely dinner, complete with a yummy salad weighted down with goat cheese and a bottle of cab. Having spent the evening chatting and catching up we decided we needed more time and came back the next morning for breakfast.  Ben's dad's wife is a great cook and served up perfect, flaky biscuits with homemade jams and sugared bacon.  I really didn't know you could make bacon better, but you can, you really, really can!

The rest of Wednesday was spent wrapping presents back at my parents house, hanging out and playing games with my brother and his friends.  Thursday, Christmas Eve day, dawned early as we piled in the car again, this time to drive to Sarnia to pick up two of our favorite people, Alyce and Dave.  We didn't get a lot of time with them, but an hour in the car and the same over lunch were happy times.  These are some of our dearest friends and it was so good to see them, even if it was a short visit.

The rest of our day was spent with me doing deep breathing exercises in an effort not to beat my father, who refuses, no matter how easy I make it for him, to do his Christmas shopping for my mom until Christmas Eve.  After late afternoon stops at Best Buy, Target, and Bed, Bath and Beyond we finally finished and headed home to prepare for the onslaught of greek relatives.  Fast forward three hours and Ben is in the basement drinking whiskey with my godfather while good-naturedly tolerating the kooky ramblings of my aging uncles, my brother is trying to shelter his new girlfriend from the same and I'm running around plying everyone with booze to ensure the evening doesn't devolve into an opportunity for "the airing of grievances."  All in all, it was a nice night filled with family, food and lots of laughter.  Here are a few highlights.

My parents' god-daughter Sara ripping into the Hannah Montana Movie Ben and I got her (save your comments Hannah Montana haters, I don't like it either, but when that's the only affordable item on the Christmas list, you've got to run with it)

(My Aunt Voula, Dad and Tom - you can NEVER get everyone looking at the camera.  Oh and Tom's face is priceless, I think he's laughing at some less than helpful suggestion offered by my godfather)

(Helping Tom refresh his swing dancing skills)

Christmas morning came VERY early.  Like 515AM.  This was my mom's request to ensure we had a chance to do Christmas morning together before Ben and I jetted off to South Carolina to spend Christmas with his mom, uncle and siblings.  Still bleary eyed opening our gifts from my parents, Ben and I received two kitchen items we've had our eyes on for some time, a KitchenAid Blender and a KitchenAid ProLine 6-Quart Stand Mixer.  Being the huge cooking dorks that we are, we were thrilled with these incredibly generous gifts and can't wait to test them out (product reviews promised!).  But better than getting gifts at Christmas to me, is giving them.  So while we opened ours, we also got to see my parents and brother opening the things I had so much fun selecting!  I was really glad to see my brother liked the watch we'd picked out as this kid has EVERYTHING and we were really at a loss as to what to get him.  Fast forward 30 minutes and, unlike when we were kids, the wrapping paper is all bagged up and, much like when we were kids, Tom is taking inventory of his haul for the year and both he and my dad are decked out in their new MSU (Sorry Wolverines!) snuggies.  All in all, a really nice (and very early) Christmas morning had by all.

While it would have been lovely to stay put and not have to brave the icy roads of the morning, we wanted to make sure we spent some time with Ben's mom and siblings too.  So we packed everything up that would fit into our bags and headed out to the airport with my dad as our chaffeur.  After more hang ups with Delta we were able to flout our miles and get into the preferred security line allowing us to make our 9AM flight to Charleston.  The rest of our Christmas tale in Charleston will have to wait for another post as the pics from Ben's uncle have not arrived yet!