Our Hollman Family Christmas 2011

I know that I'm still super behind. I'm try to catch up, I promise. Christmas was something like three or four weeks ago, but you know, we're still in the holiday spirit here, so I'm just going to go on pretending like this blog is current.

This year, we tempted fate, put both babies in the car and made the trip to Milwaukee (just for an overnighter) and then on to Michigan for the Christmas holiday. A week before this trip I was already ready to pop a Xanax and enter the twilight zone that would be the crazy of a trip fo this caliber with two little kids. The day neared with trepidation and finally, we were ready to go on a late Tuesday afternoon. We piled in the car, equipped with toys, food and GASP- even the Ipad for emergency situations. We still don't let Collin watch TV but we've given in to 15 minute spurts of interaction with the Ipad while on road trips only. It works for us and I don't feel like we are letting him kill too many brain cells.

Anyway, there we are, in the car, travel potty in sight, seatbelts fastened, window shades up, blankets, Benny, Parsley, pillow pets, etc abound. I had an internal wager that we could probably make it 45 minutes without someone crying/having to pee/deciding they are hungry.

So, guess what happened? I was all worked up over nothin'. The kids were fine. It seems we are getting better at this gig of driving long distances. They slept mostly and played a bit, we stopped a few times and got there in something like 6 hours. Which is a 1/2 LESS than it took us to get there last time.
That's what I call progress!

We stayed the night, wore the kids out in the pool and put them back in the car for nap. Low and behold, they fell asleep! They actually did great! We pulled into my parents in Michigan about 7 pm their time and the boys were ready for bed- I was amazingly surprised that there were no major meltdowns or hissy fits. It was fairly smooth sailing.

Now, I know I said last year that we weren't sure if we'd be traveling again once the kids were in the picture- especially after getting to spend Christmas here at home last year- but we decided until we add on to our home and have the capacity to hold everyone, we'd travel. That means one more Christmas in Michigan and then we expect then to come to us. Thats right family- if you are reading this, we hope to have added on considerably by Christmas of 2013, and so, since we'll have space for you, we expect you to come here. Start making arangements now.

Anyhow, back to this year's story.
It was fantastic to see my family and be home. I hadn't actually be there in quite a while and they had recently renovated the basement, which was a huge surprise for us. My dad and brother are rather handy and they did a great job. It looks amazing down there.
Being home also leaves me with that nostalgic sense- there's no Christmas morning like the ones in the house you were raised in, and it was so fun to see Collin have that same Christmas morning while we were there.
I won't swoon over how amazing it was for us, but I have to say, Christmas is pretty special in my family. They sure do make a lot of magic happen (not to mention turn every last one of us into gluttons with all the food) and I sure hope I can replicate that here in my own home. Maybe someday (soon) my mom will teach me the tricks :)

To appease your appetites for seeing how the boy's holiday went I've put the photos in a slide show because there are just too many to put in the post. Take notice of how OVERBOARD my presents went with the gifts. We even had to stop openning gifts and let Owen take a nap because there were way too many. They wouldn't even fit within the lens of my camera- I had to take three continuous shots!