The whole family took Christmas time off from Dec 24th to January 3rd inclusive. Da Man and I are lucky enough to have family-centric employers who do understand the importance of balancing work/life and strongly encourage downtime for the holiday season. Of course, we are also painted into a corner because daycare services are not available to us for the holiday season.
Most years BC (Before Children) we have flown out East when we could afford it to spend the holiday with Da Man's older brother and his family. They had a family and we didn't. They had bags of room and we didn't. Most often, Da Man's mom also spent Christmas there because it would otherwise have been a smidge too lonely on the Big Island.
When Girl-chick arrived, we not only braved four flights for Christmas, we also made a trip in the summer to see the cousins and a separate trip to the Big Island to be christened! Girl-chick did a lot of traveling in that one year and she met a plethora of aunts, uncles, cousins and even the great-grandmother she was named after!
After the Tater came, it no longer became feasible to do all this schlepping about. Tater's life has probably been less exciting, more sheltered. She has not ever been on a plane ride (much less 12 within one year), she has never been on a car ride more than 3 hours in length! (We did go to the cottage for a visit and it was almost 3 hours drive away)
This year, Nanny came here for a visit instead to spend time with her littlest grandchildren and to check out the new house. This has been good because that has meant a warm home after work, Tater is picked up early instead of being the last little kid at YaYa's, and, and, AND supper is ready to be served as soon as we get in (that one is important!).
We had fun. We toured the outside of the house, we tidied up, we put up the tree and stockings, we did crafts and went on quite a few car rides. Of course, the grown-up version is so much more... blah than what Girl-Chick and Tater can tell! Read their stories instead.
