Happy Holidays 2010/2011

Well, there are probably a lot of you reading this that have been waiting for several weeks for us to finally post our pictures of our trip back to Utah.  Well hold your horses a little longer ‘cause first you have to read through the obligatory Christmas Day stuff.

Well, we made it through our 2nd Christmas in Maryland.  With the trip to Utah scheduled for the day after Christmas we tried to keep the gifts pretty modest this year but Tyler and Reagan still seemed to love it.  It was really fun to see Tyler start to understand a little bit more about what Christmas is.  We found this site where you could enter information in about your kid then it would generate a movie of Santa Claus talking to your child.  When Tyler saw Santa and heard him say his name he was instantly mesmerized by it.  It was really fun.

We decided this year to get Tyler a little kitchen set.  For the last two months he had been walking around with Mr. Potato Head parts in a cup sipping it like it was soup and asking us if it tasted good.  Maybe it was all the times we had him help Thesha make cookies or something, but that kid loves to be in the kitchen.  Since we’re in a little apartment, however, having him in the actual kitchen with us is a pain because there’s just not enough room for us all.  So now we just let him pretend to cook in his kitchen and everyone’s happy.  Of course now I have to pretend to eat a plastic piece of pizza and say “mmmm, it’s good” but that’s better than potato head soup.  At 6 months old, Reagan was just happy to have something new to put in her mouth.  I could go on about what we actually got her but the reality is that we basically got her a bunch of different things to stick in her mouth or puke on. 

Here are some pictures of Christmas morning

Alright, assuming you didn’t just skip through that and jump to the pictures below, here’s the scoop on our trip.

It was kind of a different Christmas for us because once the Christmas morning activities were done we pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready for our trip.  As we started to see a few snowflakes fall we began to worry about our flight.  I kept checking and checking throughout the day and everything seemed fine until about 8:00 at night (keep in mind that we were supposed to get up at 4:00 the next morning to get to the airport in time).  With basically no snow on the ground we found out our flight had been cancelled due to the weather.  We spent the next 2-3 hours trying to get rebooked on another flight but the website kept giving us errors and when you called the customer service center you got a standard message that “Due to extreme weather conditions, we’re unable to take your call.”  I realize different locations have different uses for words and phrases, but I’m pretty sure that “extreme weather conditions” means something a little more than just a few snowflakes. 

After hours of frustration we finally got rebooked but not until the day after our original plans.  We assumed we’d probably end up stuck at some airport half-way across the country, but we figured we should at least give it a shot.  If nothing else it would give us some material for the blog.  When our direct flight turned into a flight to Minneapolis then to Denver then to SLC, we thought for sure we were screwed.  Then when our flight out of Baltimore was 40 minutes late and we only had a 45 minute layover in Minneapolis we pretty much resigned ourselves to the reality that we would be stuck in icy Minnesota for the evening.  Luckily we got there early enough that they were able to fit us on a red-eye flight from Minneapolis to SLC arriving at Midnight (that’d be 2:00 AM for those of us on the East coast).  Oh the kids loved that one.  Actually they both did really well.  And in Minneapolis we actually bumped into a pilot who was really nice and gave us a little more information about why our flight was probably cancelled even though our weather was fine.  Apparently he was still trying to get home to see his kids for Christmas and he’d gotten stuck on the East coast as well.  When he hadn’t even seen his kids for Christmas yet, we pretty much had to come to terms with our anger about the whole situation and realize that it could have been worse.

So at 2:30 in the morning on I can’t remember which day we finally laid down to rest at Thesha’s mom’s house.  They made it so nice for us and the kids absolutely loved being with their Grandma and Grandpa Checketts.

Here are a few pictures of us catching up with Thesha’s family.

It was so much fun to see Tyler and Reagan with their Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and Grandparents.  It was especially exciting for us to be able to introduce everyone to our little Reagan.  It’s great that we have this blog to be able to share pictures, but there’s just no way to share her personality except through first-hand interactions.

For New Years Eve, we got together with my family at the Spare Time Fun Center in Syracuse.  We were able to bowl, have some pizza, jump on the trampolines, play laser tag (which the guys totally kicked butt at, by the way), and just have a good time laughing and spending time together.

My favorite part of the evening, however, was watching Tyler climb in the inflatable jungle gym.  The first time through it was funny to see Corbin hoisting Tyler up the climbing walls, shoving him over the top, then sliding him down the slides.  It was fun to see him have a chance to interact with his cousins.  Although I’m sure Tyler enjoyed it too, I think he preferred going through the obstacles without a diaper-wedgie, however, so he quickly learned how to get himself up the climbing wall and down the slide. 

When he started up the climbing wall for the first time by himself I thought, “well, at least he’ll be falling onto something soft.”  I was pretty shocked to see him navigate up the wall all by himself, figuring out how to reposition his feet, reach up, then steadily move up each obstacle until he reached the top.  I spent time with 30 year olds that didn’t know how to climb up a wall when I was going to all those military trips a couple years ago yet here was Tyler figuring it out at the age of 2.  I was a pretty proud papa that night and I could have watched him do that over and over again. 

Here are some pictures of our New Year’s Eve party.  By the way, I think Reagan beat us all at bowling.  Whatever…

I know there are a lot of people out in Utah that we would have loved to see, but there seemed to be so many places to go and so little time to do it all.  Thanks to everyone who helped make this trip a reality.  We’re hopeful we’ll be able to get out there again soon – maybe for good if we’re lucky.  Until then, thanks for the memories and we’ll see you all again soon.