Happy New Year y'all! How was your Christmas? Did you make any resolutions?
This holiday season was especially busy for me and Brendan. We had originally planned, before we got married, to spend our first Christmas alone, with just the two of us. Those plans changed when Brendan got a new job (and, subsequently, a few more vacation days) and my family decided that I really needed to come home (I did too-I was so homesick).
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Because what else do you do while you're waiting for
the show to start? |
The week before Christmas one of my best friends from nursing school, Bethany, flew all the way to Houston just to see me. And we got into some shenanigans! The first night she was here we stayed up till probably one in the morning watching Psych and funny youtube videos. We had tickets the following day for Houston's First Baptist's Celebration, a Christmas show. I was really impressed by the quality of the show (and I rarely am-comes from being in theater since I was a child). They really went all out and held nothing back. I need to get in on this show next time they do it!
The following day Brendan had to work and we started doing damage to our bank accounts. We went shoe shopping, clothes shopping (multiple times that week), got manicures, went out to lunch, drove around Houston, recorded a song using nothing but garage band on my iphone, went out to see Christmas lights, went to Christmas parties and anything else we could find to do. I felt like I was back home and back in my first year of college. What we did that week were all of our destressers (is that a word?) from those first two semesters of trying to get through our pre-clinical classes.
We also baked (what's Christmas without Christmas cookies?) and made a gingerbread house. The cookies we made are called Italian Knot Cookies and I encourage to try the recipe (found
here) because they are so so so good! Probably not good for your New Year's resolutions, but we won't talk about that. Our gingerbread house was a kit we got from Walmart on a shopping run later that week. I've never made a gingerbread house from scratch but I have a dream to someday do it! And if I get really good at it, my mom has an old Christmas cookie book that has the recipe and pattern to make a Notre Dame cathedral gingerbread house (would it still be considered a house at that point?). I've been wanting to make that thing since I learned to bake as a teenager. So one of these days, possibly in the far, far future, I will make that gingerbread house/cathedral and then probably refuse to let anyone eat it till it goes bad or falls apart. I mean, you wouldn't eat artwork, right?
At the end of the week, both of us had a flight back to Baltimore. Our original problem was that we were flying out of two different airports. Bethany's was north of the city and ours was south of the city. Thankfully, Bethany has an aunt who lives in Houston and she spent the afternoon with her and therefore had a ride to the airport.
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| One of my terribly cute traveling buddies |
Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:30pm. It was our first time flying with our dog so we decided to leave an hour earlier just to make sure we wouldn't have any problems with checking him in and getting him through security. We arrived only to find that our flight had been delayed to 9:20, giving us about three hours to make it through security and to our gate. There was a storm literally cutting off the west side of the country from the east side of the country from Canada to the Gulf. So we picked up some dinner from a wonderfully overpriced airport Wendy's and then settled in to our gate to wait armed with iphone games and a magazine with health studies in it for me and a novel for Brendan. And so we waited. And waited. And waited.
We assumed that we would begin boarding around 9pm. That time came and a plane, full of passengers, came into the gate and started off loading. And so we waited some more. Boarding began around 9:30 and, being in the last section to board, we probably got on the plane around 10. Once we had finally found a seat (I'm not sure how much I like Southwest's open seating policy), I took a nap and Brendan (probably) kept reading his book.
We landed around 1:30am and made it back to my parent's house around 4 in the morning. And boy were we exhausted. We settled in for about 6 hours before we woke up for church. I was excited to go back to the church I had been attending since infancy and I thoroughly enjoyed the worship and sermon, that, strangely enough, didn't feel so much like home any more.
On Monday, my older sister Sarai, Brendan and I took my two littlest sisters, Eliana (age 5) and Sofia (age 3) out to Chick-fil-A for lunch and then to the mall for last minute Christmas shopping and a movie so mom could play Santa and wrap up their gifts. We all met up at the Chick-fil-A were I got to see some of my old coworkers and Eliana and Sofia got their much loved nuggets and fries. After lunch we went across the street to the mall where we sent Brendan off to do his own shopping so I could get him his Christmas present, a new wedding band. He lost his a couple months ago and I couldn't get him a new one in Houston because he checks our bank account almost daily and I didn't want to tip him off. But at my parents' house, where his use of the internet is more limited, I was able to pull it off.
After we finished our shopping, we took the little girls to see
Frozen. I highly recommend this movie. It's very well done, great for smaller children and bigger children alike, and the songs are terribly catchy. It was my little sisters' first time to the movies so they were a little scared when the lights went out and Eliana was too light to keep her chair seat from popping up, but all in all I think they enjoyed themselves.
On Christmas Eve my family drove up to Connecticut to spend the night at my aunt and uncle's house. Brendan and I went and had breakfast at IHOP with Jaimie and Bethany before spending the day relaxing and watching Christmas movies. That night we attended Sarai's church for the Christmas Eve service before heading back to my parents' house to finish present wrapping and put them all under the tree. Our family is continuing to grow-my brother is on his second child and I got married this past summer-so there were quite a few presents under the tree. It took us a good few minutes to bring them all upstairs from the basement and get them all in a spot where they wouldn't be tripped over or fall and break.
Christmas morning didn't have much to remark. Brendan and I slept in for the first time since our flight and Y'shua, Katie, Dixie, and Sarai all came over. We opened a few presents from each other before they headed off to Katie's mom's house for dinner. We started working on Christmas dinner and watched a DVD Brendan had gotten me for Christmas. My family finally made it back around 4pm and while dinner was being finished, the mania of passing out presents and opening them began. It's quite an event at our house and takes two or three trash bags to keep the mess contained. There were quite a few squeals of delight from the babies as they opened their gifts and got things they really wanted. My favorite gift was one from Brendan-a Canon Rebel T3i that I had been wanting for a really long time.
Dinner was when things got really interesting. Between in-laws and "adopted" family we had about twenty or so people and not enough seats to put them in. So we just got really creative. Refer to the following pictures.
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| This is the normal dining table (most of it) |
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| The foremost end of the table |
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This is one of the kitchen counters.
Tony built it to be like a bar but it only has
three chairs. Everyone else was standing |
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Sarai and Keturah grabbed the chairs from the office
and used the counter to hold their plates and drinks.
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| Houston Zoo Lights |
We spent the rest of the week doing various different things. We went ice skating with Bethany, had doggy play dates with Henry (Sarai's dog), ran errands, went to see
The Desolation of Smaug, I got my hair done by the best hair stylist ever (Jen who works at La Bella Vita) and played with the little ones. All the while we anxiously waited for Katie to go into labor. We would still be waiting when we left that weekend. Saturday came and it was time for us to go back home to Houston. We packed up most of our things and I ran over to Jaimie's house to drop off a Christmas card and present. We sat and talked about various things for a while before I had to head back to finish packing before it was time to leave. We made it back, safe and sound, on another delayed flight around midnight and that night I thankfully collapsed in my own bed.
Delaware has been my home since I was born. I traveled but always came back. When I moved to Houston almost 7 months ago, I was terribly homesick and had a large amount of culture shock. All I wanted to do was go back to Delaware. But this trip made me realize something-my roots may be in Delaware but, and I never thought I would say this, Texas is my home. And there truly is no place like home.
That awkward week that separates Christmas from New Years was uneventful for us. Brendan went back to work, we tried to catch up on errands, and I did what seemed to be fifty loads of laundry. But New Years Eve we all got what we had been waiting for. Katie had her baby!
William Levi was born at 11:23am at a whopping 8lb, 7oz and 22 inches long. He's the first boy in my immediate family to be born in 25 years! Unfortunately he had swallowed something called meconium before he was born and it got in his lungs. He has spent his whole life in the NICU thus far but God has answered so many, many prayers that were raised up for this little boy and his is now off of his oxygen, IV and draining tube and just remaining there for a few more days to make sure he's all right. If everything turns out fine, he gets to go home tomorrow! He's a little fighter and thank God for answered prayers.
So this is how my family rang in the New Year-worried, anxious and praying for this little boy's life to be spared. Nobody wanted to lose this precious little one. But I know, just as God has worked a miracle and saved little Will, so will He work so many more miracles in this coming year both for you and for me. I've already gotten my first one-I got into Microbiology after fighting with the school to let me in the class for several months! So as we go into 2014 all I can say is praise God for all His marvelous works!
