Christmas on the Road

On the one hand, spending Christmas on the road means that you get to see everyone you would like to share the holiday with. On the other hand, it means you have to be on the road.... This is probably the last year that Christmas will take Sydney by surprise. Next year, she will be a pro at unwrapping presents and be able to smell Christmas on the wind like an animal can smell the coming of winter. We took advantage of her lack of anticipation (and general calendar awareness) to be in Houston with the family for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and then celebrated "Christmas morning" on December 27th back at home. So, for this post, I just assembled some pictures of the folks we saw and some of the things we did while we were celebrating Christmas on the road.

This is Sydney with Jeremy's father's family. Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Nolen are there on the couch with Jonathan and then Jessica (Jessica is Jeremy's cousin, Jonathan is her boyfriend) and Aunt Peggy. It took forever for the camera to take this picture so every adult is waiting for Sydney to run off as the flash makes its fifteenth strobe.

This is the gift Great Grandma Nolen got for Sydney... a barnyard bowling set. She absolutely loved it. Her Uncle James would set it up for her over and over again and then she would go bowling. She is also eating her first candy cane. Great Grandma Nolen put a couple on each gift this year, and Sydney was hooked. When it was time to go, she saw one laying out (open) by the door. I saw the look on her face that said she was going to go for it and told her "no," but she grabbed that candy cane and took a solid crunch of a bite before I could stop her. She was saved from an instant trip to time out by a confluence of events: we really were on the way out the door, it was Christmas, and her Great Grandma looked like she might cry if we put "that baby" in time out one more time.

We felt really lucky to get to see Dave and Suzanne in from Nigeria. I already posted the picture of Sydney with them and her giraffe, but here are the grown-ups. I'm wearing my Christmas gift from Suzanne (the beautiful turquoise necklace and earrings) and Suzanne is wearing her Christmas gift from me (the purple apron).

We went out to dinner with my mother who had to have a rolling cart to get all of Sydney's gifts in the door. This is Sydney and Mom playing with her Little People Nativity set. I thought it was really cute, and Sydney can now (accurately) identify Baby Jesus, which is a nice side effect.


One of the best parts of the holiday was the time spent at Nana's house and with Uncle James. Because we saw so much of them, Sydney quickly started asking for both by name: "go see James... go Nana house... go play Nana house... play James at Nana house... it's funna go Nana house... it's funna play James." This is a picture of James showing Sydney how to line up cars on the ramp at Nana's house and then flip the switch so that all of the cars go down the ramp at once. No wonder it's fun to play with James (at Nana's house).


This is the big holiday shot of Jeremy, James, Sydney, Jeremy's mom Kim, Nana, and me. We did Christmas dinner at Nana's house with Kim and her brother and his family. Dinner was mostly made by Jeremy's cousin Michelle and was absolutely delicious.

Sydney enjoyed playing with her second cousin (or is it first cousin once removed, help me out folks) Nicholas. I am amazed at how patient he is with her given that he doesn't have younger siblings of his own. They are playing with Sydney's matchbox car set from Uncle James.

Here we are at the Gonzalez house. We gave Myles a new game for Christmas and he and his dad and Jeremy were trying it out. We also gave his sister a game (a trivia game about the show Friends) but she wouldn't let us play until she finished watching all of the seasons. I told her by then I wouldn't stand a chance against her, since my only advantage is having seen more episodes, not watching them over and over again like she does. But then again, I think that was the point.


Sydney got a fabulous new chair from her Aunt Dani and a DVD set of The Electric Company from Nana Kathi (that's my aunt). The two went together very well. I somehow missed The Electric Company back in the day, so it was a real surprise to see folks like Morgan Freeman and Bill Cosby were in it. I'm looking forward to watching it with Sydney.

Sydney also got an animal puzzle that we were supposed to take with us to the zoo so we could find all of these animals, but things just didn't work out that way. She still enjoyed the puzzle very much and even days later remembers a few of the new animals: "not a duck, it's a osridge."

Finally, the night we left, Jeremy and I went to a Texas Hold 'em party held by my Uncle Don and Aunt Marcy. (Uncle Don was one of my dad's best friends in high school. He and my Uncle Nick are both still very special to me.) It was a "no kids" kind of party... toddlers tend to not be very good at poker... they let their emotions show too much, I think, but I include the picture because so very many people who know and love Sydney were there, and it was a fun evening (I came in third out of fifteen, by the way).



Whew. I look back over this post and am amazed at all the things we did in a week in Houston. In fact, I didn't get the camera out the first three days in town when we were hanging out with Richard and Natalie and went to the Museum of Natural Science. No wonder we were so tired when we got home!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and is looking forward to a Happy New Year!