Since Sean did not have any consecutive days off in a row at Christmastime, we were not able to go home and see both of our families. We expected this when we first moved down here, so earlier in the year my family bought tickets on the train from St. Cloud, MN to Chicago.
Their travel experience left something to be desired on both the trip out and the trip back (they were delayed four hours out after having to drive to St. Paul to leave and seven hours back), but once they were here, we had a wonderful time with them.
They arrived on Christmas eve, and we went directly from Union Station to Greektown to have a hearty dinner of yummy food. Christmas day is also my mom's birthday, so our tradition is that we open gifts on Christmas eve, and she opens her birthday gifts on Christmas day. We scrapped that this year and just opened everything late on the 24th into the 25th.
The next day, we lounged around in our pj's and had a leisurely morning. It was my first day hosting Christmas dinner, so I did my first turkey (with lots of help from my dad) and fixin's, along with pumpkin and cherry pies.
On the 26th, Erin and Chris were able to come and visit for a few hours on their way from Minnesota to Indiana. The novel gift this year was a fancy similar-to-a-French-press coffee extravaganza that my brother got for my mom. Now she truly is a coffee snob. It did make wonderful coffee, though; all the bitterness was taken away. We had her make many a cup throughout the course of their stay.
After another leisurely morning on the 27th, Sean and I drove my family to Union Station to catch the train. Amtrak did not get any points for their communication skills, and they waited from 1:30 in the afternoon until about 8pm before their train left. This was incredibly frustrating, but what made it more so was that no one would give them a straight answer about when they were going to leave. We could have picked them up again and made another day of it if we had known it would be that long. Warning to all train travelers in the winter - Don't do it.
Despite the travel hassles, Sean and I were happy to have such an enjoyable Christmas for our first major holiday away from Minnesota!
I remember cooking my first turkey. Fortunately it wasn't for a group of people. Steve was the only one who got to laugh at my mistake of forgetting to take the inards out. I think it must have cooked for over 10 hours. It never did lose its pink color.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had a nice time with your family.