Christmas Isn’t Over Until I Say So

So…Happy New Year!

I didn’t intend to immediately stop blogging after successfully finishing the 31 day blog writing challenge, but in retrospect it was somewhat inevitable. First, there’s the fact that I hate blogging from my phone — it’s too small, and too clunky, and too just-doesn’t-feel-right — but my phone is pretty much all I have here at my parents’ house. Then of course there’s the fact that I’m on vacation and busy with family fun. And finally there’s the “out of sight, out of mind” factor. When I’m not at home, and not going to work, and basically not doing anything related to normal everyday life? Well, it feels a bit like I’ve fallen into a black hole and I’m always somewhat surprised to realize that the rest of the world keeps turning.

(This week aside, in 2018 I am going to try to blog more regularly again — my goal is every weekday. I definitely won’t be entirely successful in this effort, and that’s fine, but with a bit of effort I think 4-5 posts a week is pretty reasonable.)

We’ve been in Charlotte all week, and honestly this trip started off a little hit-or-miss. I just didn’t feel very good for the first several days we were here — still recovering from flu I guess, or perhaps I had another low-level virus on top of that. Charlotte was slow to recover as well and we even ended up at an urgent care here last Saturday evening for an ear infection that she didn’t have when we left Houston. (For those keeping score, we had 6 medical appointments in 8 days for 4 family members. I AM DONE.)

And then of course it’s been absolutely frigid outside — with the daily HIGH temperatures hovering around the freezing point and nightly lows in the teens. That’s basically apocalyptic to me after living in Houston for 15+ years and definitely put a damper on some of the things we look forward to doing when we’re in Charlotte. We were only able to enjoy the park last Saturday before the arctic temps arrived, and we haven’t been able to enjoy my parents’ new deck. Next time, I guess.

But on the flip side, there’s obviously been plenty of good too. We had “Christmas, Part 2” with my parents, brother David, and brother Brian’s family. We’ve spent a lot of time with the girls’ cousins, especially Lucas (who’s the same age as Emma). We did a bit of shopping at the outlet mall one day and got a new coat for me, new jeans for Jose, and new shoes for both girls. And we’ve explored several indoor activities that the girls have loved — Discovery Place (for all ages, has been around since I was a kid, and is even cooler now), Discovery Place Kids (geared towards the toddler & elementary crowd and under the same umbrella organization), and the Mint Museum uptown (seen above, which featured art for the adults and a great family area and kid activities for the girls).

And thanks to my mom and dad, Jose and I were able to get away to do something on our own almost every day! We went out to dinner three times, saw Last Jedi one afternoon, hung out at Barnes and Noble, and checked out a cool French bakery and cafe.

Tonight we head back to Houston and while I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s forecast of 68 degrees (vs. Charlotte’s forecast of 35), the return to “real life” — no awesome parents/grandparents to help with kid wrangling, no one feeding me an endless supply of hot beverages and cookies, etc — will certainly be a shock. And don’t even get me started on the fact that I have to go back to work on Monday…

But the germs we left in our house must have all died by now, right? Right???