Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

What a fun week. We spent the first half of the week getting ready for our trip. I made sure I could connect to work remotely, since we were planning on having me work remotely a couple of days so I didn't have to dip into negative PTO hours. We packed and cleaned out our fridge of almost all our food. We took our keys to Star's sitters (and enjoyed a silly, fun movie called Shaolin Soccer with Chris and Alyssa). We arranged for the taxi to come pick us up. And then we laid low until Wednesday morning.

Wednesday we woke bright and early (well, it was still quite dark out, so "bright" isn't exactly the right descriptor) and sat on our curb waiting for the taxi. It was our first time in a cab, so we were excited. Since buses don't run that early in the morning and long term parking would have been insanely expensive, we thought we'd try out a taxi ride. It was less exciting than I anticipated, but that's probably good. How many people have positive stereotypes of cabs? :) We were happy to board the plane on time and settle in for a good nap. My only concern the whole trip was that I kept feeling like we were forgetting things. We don't often check luggage when we travel so we can get out of the airport that much quicker and so we can be sure our belongings are handled with care. We made an exception this year because of new restrictions on what you can bring aboard. I was just pleased when I thought up a way to bring our bottle for water on board with us (it's bigger than the 3 ounce limit they have)...we brought it empty and filled it up at the water fountain after passing through security. Yay for plenty of hydration!

We've enjoyed our visit in Michigan so far. It is a bit colder than CA, but not much. We celebrated the winter solstice Thursday with good food and good company (yay for days getting longer again!). We played some fun games with Wayne's family and with his friend Dave. We've enjoyed sleeping in later and staying up later, going for walks in the morning and reading books under a blanket. Saturday Camilla and Victor invited us to their house for dinner, and we all tried our hands at their nintendo and went pew-pew with their controllers. It was funniest watching Wayne's dad play the game. Though I did flip Wayne's little boat over three times, and that was fun too. :)

Now Christmas eve is finally here, without snow, even if Wayne isn't ready, and even if some of us are sickie-poo-poos. There's only one more sleep till Christmas day!