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We kicked the whole thing off with a pre-holiday weekend trip up to Michigan to visit the Morrell clan. Originally, the weekend was designed to fit around Nick's visit to Ann Arbor (related to his thesis work, which I won't even try to describe here. I'll let him tackle that later). Even though his trip fell through at the last minute, we decided to head up anyway, and somehow even had the good sense to drive up the night before in order to maximize our time with the cousins. Not only did that super suave move give us an opportunity to spend some time that evening with Grandma Brace, it also meant that we happened to miss the biggest storm of the winter!! (well, thus far, anyhow. And winter is far from over. But it was BIG. I promise.)
Mom, Dad, and Derrick met us up there, and aunt Sheree came by with my cousin Tezra and her fantastic little girls.
Kara and Monica are such hilarious little spitfires, and seeing them run around Grandma's house reminded me just how long it had been since there were little kids bounding down the hallways, rooting through the closets for fun dress-up accessories or toys, and making everyone laugh.
Best of all, it was amazing to see my uncle Gil play with the girls. For those who don't know, my uncle has Down's Syndrome, and at 56, has had more medical issues than you or I could possibly imagine. I know he lives with pain and discomfort on a daily basis (probably more than we could ever understand, really), and it's hard to see him struggle with the pain. Add to this the fact that my grandpa, who passed away two years ago, was Gil's buddy, practical joker, and source of daily entertainment and ... well, I have a whole layer of absence guilt built on this alone. But anyway. Seeing Gil's face light up when he saw the girls and seeing him become so engaged with them, making funny faces, letting them crawl all over him ... it reminded me of how Gil was MY buddy when I was little. Nick remarked later how he'd never seen Gil so happy or excited or interested, which seemed so strange to me. I mean, that's EXACTLY the Gil I see in my mind. It's easy to forget that Nick and I haven't ACTUALLY been together our whole lives. =)
My cousins Grady and JJ plus Aunt Kay and Uncle Vern were able to come and spend some time with us as well, making our 2-day trip a veritable one stop shop for the Michigan Morrells! As the day wore on and the weather got worse, we steeled ourselves for a bit of an arduous late-night drive back to Ohio. (it didn't end up being so bad once we flushed our windshield washer lines with cold-weather, ie -20 degree rated, fluid and managed to unfreeze the lines. Of course, the 20 miles we spent on the highway with a dirty, smeared, nearly opaque windshield were a wee bit harrowing. But hey, all of life is an adventure, right? RIIIIGHT?!)
Upon an early morning return to Dayton, we had a few days to enjoy the dusting of snow and the start of the holiday season before packing back up and heading to St. Louis on Christmas Eve. Conveniently, our pre-holiday minivacation gave us a chance to test out the super duper fantastic self-watering system I devised for our Christmas tree! It's actually super simple and I fully intend to use this system year after year. It's just 5 feet of 3/4" vinyl tubing ($3), some zip ties (50 cents), a generic brand 11x16x6 clear plastic storage bin ($2.50), and a cardboard box with a lid that I wrapped like a Christmas present. The only trick to the system is making sure the water level in the reservoir isn't higher than the top of the tree stand. Everything else is just osmotic pressure. I filled the reservoir with a couple gallons of water, submerged the tubing until it was 100% filled with water, left one end submerged while plugging the other with my finger tip, and (here's the other tricky part) submerged the plugged end into the bottom of the tree stand without letting any air in. Zero air bubbles is key to this thing working. I zip tied the tubing to some branches to make sure a frolicking or mischievous kitty didn't knock it out of the tree stand, and THERE YOU GO. I premixed the water with some bleach and glucose/fructose mixture to keep the tree fed and healthy. Once and done. Best part? The reservoir is hidden inside that wrapped box and just sits there prettily looking like a present.
Go ahead, you can say it.
Smartest woman alive?! Wow, thanks!
And guess what? This device kept our tree fresh and perky for the whole 10 days we were gone for the holidays. We came home to almost no dropped needles, no fallen ornaments, and a house that smelled like a fir tree. Bliss!
So, Christmas.
We packed up the kitties and headed to St. Louis for a Sinnokrak Christmas that began with present opening at Matt's house with our nephew Braydan.
Bray proudly displayed each of his gifts for everyone with a camera.
"Errrrrin. Erin! Over here!" Bray made sure that we didn't miss a shot.
Arrrrr. Christmas pirate.
Look at him, popping that hip. What a Christmas model.
Chocolate = happy elf
He was so proud and excited to give Mary her gift
Dad and son matching caps!
Handling that camera like a pro
Vanna White? When'd she get here?
We spent the afternoon at Chris and Kate's for Christmas dinner. Josh was intrigued by Naski and was so darn cute with him! I don't think I've ever seen a toddler be so gentle -
The present opening continued ...
And before we could say "blizzard" we were off to Chicago for the Brace family Christmas! Once again we had our winter driving skills put to the test, but we made it to good ole LaGrange without so much as a slip or slide.
It was our niece Kayla's first Christmas, and boy was it a white one! It didn't stop snowing all day - light, fluffy, crystalline snow that was even a pleasure to shovel (says she who has no shoveling duties here in Ohio).
We all enjoyed the gift opening process -
The cats got settled in - Tasha found a comfy spot while Naski enjoyed chortling at the birdies outside.
And we all enjoyed playing with the real star of the day, little miss sunshine herself.
Tasha had settled in so well at the Brace house, we decided it'd be nice to give her a little vacation as well ... so we packed up Naski and shuttled him over to chez Sinnokrak for some quality time with Grandma and Grandpa Sinnokrak. He remembered them right away and reclaimed his kingdom.
Nick and I headed into the city for a few days to celebrate our SEVENTH anniversary! Wow, seven years?! It seems like forever and yesterday at the same time. Driving up from Homewood, we stopped at some places from Nick's childhood - the old Serbian Church, the Mexican Inn, his Dad's old office, the site where his grandpa's bar once stood, and the shipping terminal at the 95th street bridge, which also happens to be the site of Calumet Fisheries and its on-site wood smokehouse. We picked up some smoked salmon, trout, and shrimp (yes, smoked shrimp. UNBELIEVABLE, by the way) and devoured them in the car. We're such class acts. Nick described me eating the salmon as if I were a grizzly bear gnawing the fish apart streamside.
As we merged onto Lake Shore Drive, we remarked how beautiful the shoreline was, all crystallized with ice from the crashing waves and shimmering in the bright cloudless sunshine. As we passed Hyde Park, we could see a small bump in the shoreline that provided a fantastic vantage point to view the downtown skyline. We stomped through the fresh snow, and ...
The shoreline in this particular location is comprised of broken chunks of concrete, remnants of a one-time boardwalk. As we walked closer, I noticed the concrete was draped in ice from the surf.
The destruction of the boardwalk also left broken remnants of wooden pilings that received dripping caps of ice:
But my favorite feature were these cubes of concrete that, in their glistening state, looked like enormous ice cubes sitting in front of us, glowing in the sun.
(in this one I used two textures with different blending modes)
We spent a great anniversary vacation downtown, doing some post-Christmas shopping at the Serbian Christmas sales (well, that's what post-X-mas sales really are, didn't you know?!) and creating our very own Chicago food tour (dinner at Sepia, lunch at Blackbird, tortas at Xoco, Goose Island ... so much meat, so little time. We enjoyed celebrating the New Year and the Illini's near win against Gonzaga with Randy and Jenni and got the chance to catch up with high school friends.
And if you're a quarter as tired reading this as I was writing it, you might have an idea of how tired we were LIVING it! =)
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