Blessings, Bliss, and Bailey: The Busiest Time of the Year

While I agree with the statement that Christmas is the most WONDERFUL time of the year - I have to add that it is also the busiest!

Following Thanksgiving, Christian and I have had a full schedule! First up was meeting Santa. Bailey loves talking about Santa, pointing him out on every decoration, and saying "ho ho ho" but when it came to sitting on his lap - she was NOT a fan! We got a good video and a pretty funny memory :)

Following Santa came the last minute rush to complete Christmas shopping - we definitely overdid it with Bailey but like a good friend said, "It's better to spoil them now that they have no idea what is going on than later..."

All of our holiday preparations and planning got thrown up in the air when my 102 year old grandmother passed away two weeks before Christmas. We were very close as I lived with her on 3 separate occasions while in Atlanta one for 9 months while planning my wedding! This was my mother's mom and that added another element of sadness... Losing my mom almost 4 years ago and then losing her mom made it seem like something was ending... an entire line was gone.
I quickly arranged to fly to Atlanta early for her service which was then followed by a 5 hour drive the next day to Franklin Tennessee where the family burial site is. Christian stayed in Iowa and I brought Bailey with me. My sister came to Atlanta so we had an awesome time road tripping for 5 hours to Tennessee and then 8 hours back to Charlotte... NOT! Of course Bailey had a 102+ fever for 3 days during the travel which made for a disgruntled travel companion...
The good thing about going to the funeral was that it allowed me to spend extra time with my family during Christmas :) We all miss Tinkertoy, my grandmother as we affectionately called her :)

Christian met me in Charlotte and we spent a week in NC before heading back to Cedar Rapids on the 22nd... We had to be home for Christmas so Santa could come :)

That was an entire other event! While we were gone - Cedar Rapids had a blizzard and we returned to 12+ inches of snow and ZERO experience. Christian's sports car with street slicks didn't fare so well on the drive home from the airport - in fact, he couldn't even get up our driveway! His car had to be towed to BMW to get some more weather appropriate shoes on it :) My car fared much better - but was not without incident.

Since I had changed my flight to go home early - they put me on a different return flight so Christian and I did not arrive back home at the same time... He did me a favor of digging my tires out of the snow at the airport but that was not enough :( When B and I landed, the tarmac was iced so they did not connect the walkway and had us de-plane on the runway and walk in the terminal! It was 6 degrees and Bailey's coat was with her stroller which I checked gate side... So I am running across the ice, carrying a 2 year old that keeps yelling, "Cold!" I then made the terrible decision to head on out to the car where I figured I could pull back around and get her stroller since I knew it would take forever for them to get our bags off the runway... When I got out to the car, my doors were iced shut! I had remote start so at least it was warming up, but I could not get the doors open! I was holding a screaming, freezing baby, had no gloves, and no real strategy. I decided to remove one of Bailey's shoes with my free hand and use it to beat the ice off of my doors all the while Bailey is screaming "shoes! shoes!" It was a bizarre plan, but it worked. We got in, cranked up the heat, looped around, got our stroller and headed home. Jeesh. A southerner in the midwest is like a comedy!

Now we were finally home and all together. Santa came and Christmas went off without a hitch. Bailey got way too much, I got chopsticks and a book on Tokyo from Christian as my gift was a ticket to go to Tokyo with him in February! I am so excited but have been having some MAJOR anxiety about leaving Bailey :( That is another post...

Then there was Bailey's birthday! She turned 2 on Christmas day - We had a birthday party in Charlotte with my family, another in Winston with Christian's family, and a third one at home with Mommy and Daddy :) By Christmas night, Christian was like, "this is getting ridiculous..." I had to keep reminding him that we are cramming two holidays into one so it seems like a lot (secretly, it was a little much)

Lastly was New Years Eve. We really had made no plans - but were super stoked when our awesome friends who live in Chicago called and decided to come to Iowa for the weekend! We all went to college together and of course it was a blast. Patrick and Logan have a 10 week old little girl named Collins whom Bailey was obsessed with - she called her "Baby Commons" It was too funny!
We ate and drank ourselves to the brink of diabetes and made some great memories!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!