Over the holidays I decided to step away from sharing on my blog and enjoy the vacation time I had at home in Oregon with my family. But before we got to far into the New Year I wanted to make sure that I documented and shared a bit about my trip home. This post will probably be pretty dull if you don’t know me or really care, just FYI 🙂
This year, I learned that cross country flights during the holidays need to be bought REALLY EARLY. Fortunately, my family was able to make it work for me to fly into Portland instead of Pasco, which helped cut down the costs. I flew into Portland the Friday before Christmas and was picked up by my Grammy. My Grampy is the interim head basketball coach at Hermiston High and they just happened to have a tournament in Portland that weekend. So my Grammy and I spent the afternoon together, getting lunch downtown with my Uncle Jay and walking around Powell’s book store. Powell’s has multiple floors, covering an entire city block and is an iconic part of Portland. My Grammy is a big reader like me — we are always sharing suggestions back and forth — so it was really fun to spend that time with her discussing books, authors and exploring Powell’s. That evening we went to the basketball game, where I freaked out just a little when I realized I had babysat a few of the players — it’s guess its easy to forget that little kids can grow up quite a bit in 6 to 7 years. After the game we made the late night 2.5 hour trip home to Hermiston.
As always my time at home was really busy and packed full of my favorite people. My Dad had his knee replaced at the beginning of December and was still limited in what he could and how much he could be out and about, so I spent a lot of time at home with him, taking him to PT and on a few outings, which always was a bit entertaining. It also meant that his truck was all mine for the week 🙂 I hung out at the flower shop and tried to stay out of the way (mostly), spent a few evenings catching up with my girlfriends and spent an afternoon shopping and catching up just with my sister. Josh and Sonia, my uncle and his fiance, just built a house and were just given the keys at the beginning of the week, so the rest of my week was spent helping them get everything moved in (or visiting while they worked) so that we could celebrate Christmas in their place. We did take a break though to watch the new Star Wars movie. Growing up, Josh babysat my sister and I in the summers and to say that we watched a lot of Star Wars is putting it lightly. I had texted Josh weeks before telling him that he better wait for me to go it, and I think we all but embarrassed Sonia by how excited we were.
This is also where I should probably add the only really bad part about my vacation. To go into details about HOW, its easier to describe using my hands, but the story is that I burned the outside of my right hand pretty bad with the curling iron wand. The area is about the size of a half dollar coin and well friends, IT REALLY FREAKING HURT. The first day it took me about 5 hours before I could stand to take it off the ice pack and I cried again the first time we put Neosporin on it, which is a bit out of character for me. It’s healing pretty well now, (evident by the insane itch) and going to leave me with a pretty good scar, which just aren’t nearly as cool as they were when I was a kid.
Christmas was laid back and wonderful. It was fun to celebrate in a new place, and their home is really beautiful! We ate my Dad, Grammy and sister’s delicious food, played a few hysterical rounds of the game HeadBanz and watched the movie Inside Out. The next day I traveled back to Portland with my Uncle Jay and Aunt Michelle, so that I could catch a red eye out of Portland Saturday night. It worked out perfectly though because the Trailblazers were playing the Cavs and my Uncle and I were able sit in my Grampy’s seats and watch the game before I had to go to the airport. I don’t really like Lebron James, but I still wanted to see him play in person. The Blazers had a HUGE game though, and James underwhelmed.
This was the first red eye that I ever took, and if you asked me how it was just based on the first flight I would have said it was great! I got a row to myself and was actually able to sleep the whole time. My connection in Minneapolis went fine and I thought from there it would be smooth sailing and I would be home and crawling into my bed for a long nap before noon eastern time. Long story short, that didn’t happen. Morning fog in D.C. didn’t allow us to land and after an extra hour in the air they diverted us to Baltimore and after MANY setbacks I was finally on a shuttle bus to D.C. and home before 5 pm.
My Christmas vacation was filled with fun and love, and I am always so thankful that I continue to get to be home with my family and that we can spend it all together.
Cheers!
The Good Stuff 