Each year, I really look forward to Christmas vacation because we get so much uninterrupted time with the boys. This year, Kevin and I took off two full weeks and it was awesome! While we did the usual things like sleeping in, taking naps, decorating the tree AND baking way too many treats, we did some different things too. We finished up our shopping, I took Harmon to see Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, and we made our first family trip to the Henry Ford Museum. We planned to go because of the Lego exhibit, but we barely spent any time there once we arrived. Harmon was way more excited to see all the cars and trains so we spent most of our time doing that. On our way out, we also had a Bergquist boy hot dog!We spent with my immediate family where - among other things - Simon got Elmo and Harmon got a very cool Lightning McQueen remote control car. We got them in their jammies before leaving Waterford so we could just put them to bed when we got home. Then we collected all the presents and put them under the tree.
Christmas morning was spent at home and we were stunned that Harmon slept until 8:30 a.m. He was patient for a little bit, but once it got around 9 a.m. we had to wake Simon and get the festivities underway. They opened presents for a while in their matching reindeer jammies.
Later in the day, we headed to my Uncle Max's house to celebrate with my extended family. The highlight, of course, was the Thanksgiving-style turkey dinner, which Simon took full advantage of! We didn't stay long, though, because the next morning we had to hit the road to Peoria to celebrate with Kevin's family.
I've been making that trip 2-3 times each year since 2000 and it was never as bad as it was this year. We should have known it would be bad when it took us ONE HOUR to get from the east side to the west side of Ann Arbor! It snowed almost the entire way and it took us about nine hours to get there (it's usually 6-7 hours). The last two hours, I had to sit in the back seat with the boys because they were so sick of being in the car. We got there late on Dec. 26 and spent the next three days just hanging out. Kevin's brother, sister-in-law, sister and nieces came over every day to play with the boys, which was very sweet! They got LOTS of attention and way too many gifts, as is the norm! We headed back on Dec. 30 and made it home in record time, which was great because Harmon was itching to play with all his new toys.
As has been tradition since the year before Harmon was born, we went to Pizza House for dinner on New Year's Eve. It wasn't the best trip as both boys were nuts! I think they were pissed about just being with me and Kevin after almost a week of attention from so many other cool people. New Year's Day was ... well ... a bummer. No bowl game will do that to you. The rest of the weekend, we took our time getting ready for the week and wondering why Christmas vacation has to go by so damn fast! It was back to the grind on Monday, Jan. 4 - ugh!
