Our Christmas Break, the Summary

As you probably guessed, my long silence was because of holiday stuff.

Joe was released for Christmas break at 7:00 a.m. on December 18th. After standing in line for an hour and a half, I was able to sign him out. We went home and went to sleep. Thus started our 16-day vacation.

We were due to leave for Virginia on the 21st, but traveling preparations were delayed when I slept through most of an entire day instead of packing, cleaning, and wrapping presents. I don't know what I had, maybe a sinus infection, but I was exhausted and could not stay awake. So that was exciting. But we left on the 22nd, both of us sick and with the dog (Jack) sedated and crammed into the passenger's-side footwell (where he prefers to travel, if he absolutely HAS to travel.)

We arrived in Fredericksburg and spent a couple of days and half of Christmas day with Joe's parents, and an evening visiting with his grandparents. It was awesome to spend time with everyone and to sleep in Joe's old room, which had been cleaned but was still very much Joe's old room. We watched TV a lot, and it was kinda fun because we don't have cable. We got to watch shows about food and outer space (but not food and outer space at the same time.)

On Christmas day, we drove to Gloucester, three hours away, to spend half of Christmas and a couple of days with my family. Of course there's nothing like being back home, even when your joyous arrival is tainted by dog vomit (more on that later.) We had a  days-long LAN party at the kitchen table with my brother, his girlfriend, me and Joe, fueled by candy and cokes, and it was super fun. (Also, I poisoned Jack, but more on that later, too.)

It was wonderful to be in Virginia again and I was sad to leave (even slightly depressed,) but it was also a relief to get home.  At 10 or 11 p.m. on whatever night it was we got home (the 28th, I guess,) with the dog washed and the car unloaded, Joe and I had our fourth Christmas.

Like every year, we had a quiet New Year's Eve at home. It's kinda become our holiday, the one we spend with just each other instead of switching back and forth between family houses. We stayed up 'til midnight playing video games, watched the ball drop in Times Square from an online live video feed, and played more video games when that was over.

Joe's nightly school schedule just started up again the day before yesterday, so things are slowly getting back to normal. I'm so not ready for this vacation to be over! But it was pretty darn perfect...family, video games, sleeping in, forgetting what day of the week it is...perfect.