Thanksmas

Now that we were back home in the States and Jeff was enjoying his new status as a retiree, he was quite enthusiastic about having so much free time to enjoy the holidays. As Thanksgiving approached, he decided to plan an epic road trip for all of us to drive up to Michigan for the annual Thanksmas celebration with his side of the family. As excited as we all were to see our extended family and resume our Thanksmas traditions, the 20-hour road trip was not something that the rest of us were looking forward to.

We took 3 days to reach our final destination with several stops along the way. First up was an overnight stay at my parents' home in White Oak. It was really nice to visit with them but for some reason I only managed a single photo during our stay. It's not surprising that the one photo shows both kids on their devices, because it was device overload during our LONG trip to Michigan and back!

Also not pictured is another reason that the road trip didn't quite go as planned. Since I had recently returned to work, I had quite a few work conferences and video calls to conduct during our drive. I tried to do most of my work in our hotel rooms while we were stopped, and I'm sure that was pretty miserable for the rest of the family. Because of those work calls, we weren't really able to do any sight-seeing on the long drive which completely defeated Jeff's expectations of the road trip. We finally arrived in Chicago after a couple of days of driving, and we picked up Kevin at the airport. Then it was another few hours to our destination in Michigan, where we were finally reunited with family. Let the fun begin!

What a blessing that we could reunite with the family and catch up after our time away! As usual, Aunt Patti was such a gracious host for our rowdy group, and there was no shortage of delicious food and hearty laughter. The only downside to the entire trip (well, besides the long drive) was that several of us came down with a nasty cold. I was so miserable that I wasn't able to help much on the drive home (thank goodness for Kevin!) and I ended up being sick for 2 entire weeks in total. There's nothing like the holidays to bring out the germs, but it was a small price to pay for the family fun.