I Need a Vacation from My Vacation

I have been on the go since December 14th. Last night, we drove home from a New Year's Party at 2:00 AM just to be able to sleep in our own bed. Yup, I'm ready for routine to start all over again.

OK - Let's give some more detail. On the 14th of December, my other half and I flew to Tacoma, Washington, to spend Christmas with his sister. His mother was also coming to visit, but also to scope out some jobs to be able to move back to the area. It was not our intention to go that early. With my other half's job, he accumulated a lot of frequent flier miles. Lately, Northwest Airlines has made redeeming these miles more and more difficult. We've been operating under a "use them or lose them" mentality. We've been trying to use the miles before Northwest drops the program altogether. One of the big restrictions is around Christmas. So, the only available dates were to depart Minneapolis on December 14th and returning on Christmas Day.

We had a lot of fun. We went into Seattle twice. Once, we brought the kids to see The Sound of Music at the 5th Street Theatre. Wonderful! It was the kid's first musical theatre experience, so I felt like I was introducing them to something. The second time, we drove my other half's mother to various job interviews. My other half also lived in Seattle, so we visited his old stomping grounds - Capitol Hill - AKA "The Gay Area".

We were really curious who would be able to/want to pick us up from the airport at midnight of Christmas Day. We had a friend who volunteered. As it turned out, she was going to be getting up early, so in her place, she sent her mother. To make it worse, our plane was an hour late. So, we were picked up by a friend's mother at 1:00 AM on December 26th. How strange is that?

We spent a quick day shopping for my half of the family. The reasoning was that we could take advantage of some post-Christmas deals. We ended up buying most of the gifts at Costco, which doesn't have post-Christmas sales. Then, we drove five hours north to spend a few days with my family.

We didn't do much at my parent's (always my plan). We played cards, we re-created Christmas morning, my other half fixed computers. We napped and watched movies.

Then we drove down to attend a New Year's party at J's house. It might have been more enjoyable if we had not just spent five hours in the car. We were dead tired by midnight. We stayed later just to let me finish processing the alcohol. Then we drove home.

So, for New Year's day? We layed around. We also discovered those post-Christmas clearance sales. Just exchanging clothes that were the wrong size seemed to work to our advantage.

Now it's 9:00, and I'm finally recapping the last three weeks of my life. There were so many times I was tempted to blog. I wanted to comment on Winter Solstice, Christmas, and New Years. Alas...you just get the cliff notes.