Christmas 2008

Mike and Maeve getting in the Christmas Spirit

We've now moved from Germany to Seattle, and after a couple weeks the beginning of December in Seattle, we headed out to SC and Tx to visit the grandparents for the holidays. We normally see one or the other, but since we were gone for the last year, we made the grand tour. The BEST part of the trip was getting to South Carolina. Seattle was having a blizzard. On December 18, it had just started snowing, but the taxi we'd scheduled to take us to the airport didn't show. We called Eric and Dawn, some friends, and asked for a ride to the airport. We got in our car to drive to their house to get a ride, and we couldn't get out of our neighborhood. Our car is a civic, not very heavy, and it currently doesn't have all-weather tires. We had maybe 2 inches of snow, but the house we are renting is in a very hilly neighborhood (Laurelhurst) in Seattle, and we were sliding all over the place. So we parked the car and I was walking with Maeve while Mike was pulling our two suitcases to get out of the neighborhood. We flagged a passing pickup truck, which took us to the local bus transfer at the University District. From there we took a bus downtown and transfered to the airport. Two hours later, at about an hour after our flight's scheduled departure, we arrived at the airport. We checked in, and were put on standby for the next flight out to Dallas, which we had to fly through to get to Greenville-Spartanburg. On our way to the gate, we saw our original flight leave, over an hour late. Two flights later, we got on a flight to Dallas and made it there by 10:30 PM, where we crashed with Mike's parents, who thankfully live 15 minutes from the airport. At 6 the next morning, we got on the flight to SC. When we got there, our luggage wasn't there, but we got it late that evening. We were all exhausted, but it turned out we were lucky to even get out of Seattle as the city was pretty much snowed in for a good week.

After that, Christmas was great. Maeve really enjoyed hanging out with her Grandmom Shirley and her two girl cousins, Winnie and Emma. Here, Winnie and Maeve are cracking up looking at themselves in the mirror while Emma's chilling with Granmom.










We also went to Emma's Christening. It was a very nice service with family only, at Jennifer's home church in Greenville. Emma was great the whole time, even when every member of the family was wetting her copious hair.










The weekend before Christmas we went to visit my Great Aunt Becky in Ellerbe, NC. The plan was to drive during nap or evening sleep time, which we did. Maeve did not really sleep in the car, but on the plus side, she didn't get sick either. We're just not in the car enough for her to be relaxed and sleepy there. The visit was great. Maeve walked to church with Daddy and Great-Uncle David, and walked back with me and Uncle David. It was beautiful out. We then had lunch with the extended family and ate lots of Beck's goodies.












After Christmas on Christmas Eve in SC, we flew out on Christmas day to TX to see Mike's family. In downtown Grapevine, there was a Christmas light show, and animatronics show, and some climb-onable animals. Maeve liked the polar bear.


















We went to playgrounds a couple of times between visiting Kathryn Schoenbrun and family and Chris Kribs and family. On one playground, Mike found some mistletoe and Maeve learned to put it to good use.













By the time we left, Maeve was sad to leave and enjoyed holding her grandparents' hands in the airport and coordinating a group arm swing dance.