Whirlwind Christmas "Vacation"

Jon and I got back from our whirlwind Christmas "vacation" a week ago and we are still feeling the effects of such a draining trip. Individually, each destination was great, but roll them all together in a 10 day window of time and you do NOT have a vacation.

We started out traveling from Houston to New York (Buffalo) to spend Christmas with Jon's family. This was our first married Christmas together, so all the new traditions were being made. Before we were married, we decided to alternate Christmas each year and we're trying really hard to stick to that plan. We mostly just visited with family and relaxed. I did a little shopping with Jon's mom and we took his parents to the Melting Pot as part of their Christmas gift. I, unfortunately, still didn't get to meet Jon's brother, who didn't show up for the festivities.

The day before we were supposed to leave, we learned that Delta changed our flight to California and that we would have a 5 hour layover in the Atlanta airport. We called Auntie KK and she was nice enough to feed us and entertain us for a few hours.

We arrived in California for Morgan and Adam's wedding late. We picked up our rental car and it was pretty much non-stop from there. We helped Morgan get ready for the rehearsal dinner and Jon was even given the task of taking Morgan's wedding dress to the church! Not to brag, but we know we helped a lot and I'm sure the wedding wouldn't have gone so smoothly had Jon not taken on so much responsibility! The wedding was beautiful and the reception was fun; got to spend some time with old friends from college and make some new friends too. Jon even got an invitation to visit one of our new friends in Japan and go to Tokyo Disney.

Speaking of Disney, Jon wouldn't let us leave California without visiting the Mouse first. We spent December 30th and 31st at the parks. The 30th was cold and rainy and COLD!!! It was a good thing we packed our winter clothes for NY or we wouldn't have been able to stand it. Since it was already misting outside, we decided to ride Splash Mountain on the first day. I insisted that Jon buy us ponchos, and it was a good thing, because we got SOAKED! So, soaked in fact that it wasn't even fun. We ended up leaving the park, going back to our hotel room and drying our shoes with the hair dryer, putting on our winter clothes, and then went back to the park. The rest of the evening was pretty fun and we made sure to stay dry.

On the 31st, we knew the parks would be packed, so we made sure we had all the clothes we needed when we went in and knew that we wouldn't be able to leave. By 5:00 pm, the fire capacity was met and if you left the park you wouldn't be allowed back in. It was wall-to-wall people. Everywhere!!! They even made a majority of the walkways one-way. By 11:00 pm, we'd had enough "fun" and were ready to head back to our hotel. We had an early flight home and were in bed by midnight. Happy New Year!

We finally made it back to Texas and are so thankful to be home!