N@50: Home for the Holidays

I could have titled this post, “How I spent my Christmas vacation.”

As newlyweds, we’re still figuring out how to handle holidays.  In the first two years of our marriage, we spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family.  This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with his.

That means Thanksgiving was spent in Atlanta with my mother.  We had a good time.  My mom and my cousin and her husband did most of the cooking, with my husband adding the ham.  I’m not usually called on to bring a dish because I’m not much of  a cook.   Things have only gotten worse since our marriage, since George is a much better cook than I am.

My mom is big on family meals so for Thanksgiving we ate in the dining room and we used the good dishes, or should I say, china. I was given the task of saying the Thanksgiving blessing.  Everybody laughed at me when I was done because I went on so long.  I laughed with them, but I stand by my prayer.  We had a lot to be thankful for and I didn’t leave anything out.  My cousin and I both survived breast cancer surgeries, my cousin’s husband had been hospitalized for something, my husband’s daughter had survived a second brain surgery, the rest of the family was thriving, and everybody was now in good health.  I think all that demanded a long Thanksgiving prayer.

The cousins spent the night at mom’s house along with us and we were treated by a visit from my brother from Kansas.  He was without his wife and three daughters this time, since he was on quick trip to take care of his aging father.  My mom was especially grateful to have both her kids under her room for a couple of days.  I should say all three of her kids, since my cousin is like a daughter to her.  We had a lot of fun, laughing and remembering old times, and being grateful for the lives we had.

My husband and I were teased a lot about not getting to places on time.  We have a bad reputation for not arriving at our scheduled time.  When we say we’re going to be somewhere on a certain day, our hosts joke that they’ll see us the following day.  It’s so bad that my mother and cousin debated telling us Thanksgiving dinner was going to be held the day before Thanksgiving.  It didn’t come to that though as we arrived in Atlanta on Wednesday just as we said we would.

We spent Christmas with my husband’s family.  To be honest, this trip came in the midst of some unwelcome long-distance family drama that I can’t rehash on this blog, but that I will certainly explore in a future book.  The good news is that God fixed our hearts so we could overcome the drama.

For our Christmas trip to Michigan, we didn’t tell anyone we were coming.  We just got in the car and headed out.  It’s about a 13-hour drive so we made our usual overnight stop at the Hampton Inn in Franklin, KY, about five hours from our home.  This spot is a regular for us when we’re traveling because we always use Hilton points since it’s only 7500 points a night.

After a restful night, we headed out for the remaining eight hours of our trip.  It went blessedly fast, with hubby doing most of the driving.  We arrived in Ann Arbor around 7:30pm.  Our first task was to check-in at the Sheraton Ann Arbor.  Again, we stayed there because we had hotel points.  Our 8-day stay cost us about $25/night.  We were able to get an upgraded room so we had plenty of space, along with a microwave, refrigerator and 42-inch flat panel television.  We were set for the week.

Our second task was to take care of a disabled car stranded on I-94.  No, it wasn’t our car.

Since this is getting to be a long post, I’ll tell the story of the car and the rest of our trip in a post later this week.