Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The "Flat" Christmas, Part I

 Christmas in AR!

 Micah peruses his stocking gifts
 Jacob takes a break after tackling his stocking
 The boys open a package of gifts from Grammy and Pop Pop Noden.
 Christmas morning in Wisconsin!
 Yeah! Presents!
 Uncle Mark hold the Bible while Lynne reads the Christmas story for us.
 Uncle Randy and Aunt Joyce help Micah open his new Nerf gun.
 Uncle Josh and the cousins bond over an iPad game!
 Chi Chi the chinchilla meets the cousins
The Inouye men continue the great holiday tradition of napping...:-)

Well, most of you have heard about our Christmas saga, which I guess is a good example of how we make plans, but life doesn't always follow them. In case you haven't, here it is:  we missed our initial flight to Wisconsin due to a flat tire on the way to the airport. Although we got there only about two minutes after the flight was scheduled to leave, they would not let us board the plane. After talking with the airline attendant, we decided that our only feasible choice to get to WI by Christmas was to drive there. So we drive back home from the airport and the boys and I packed new bags (our bags made it on the plane, but we did not so we had no luggage) and Dan had four new tires put on the car. We then drove up north. It took us three days since we stopped at a hotel twice. In hindsight, that was a good decision since i helped us all keep our sanity. In fact I think the hotel pool was one of the highlights of the whole experience for Micah :-) We were thankful to not have to worry about snowy weather so we could take our time. And the boys really did well, all things considered. The days we spent at Gramma Lynn and Papa Roger's house were great. The day we arrived we had a celebration with Uncle Randy and Aunt Joyce and the whole family and enjoyed some sushi. Christmas Day, Uncle Mark, Aunt Katie and cousins Lynne and Alaina came back to the house to open gifts with us again and stayed all day. (They also suffered a flat tire on the way back home!) The kids all played so nicely together and it brought back memories of when I was little, playing with my cousins! We all got to go sledding while we were there since the weather was mild (read= above 0) and we celebrated my birthday with a special cake made by Gramma and Micah :-) Dan and I even got to go to a movie and out for coffee...by ourselves! It was so good to see everyone again, especially since not everyone had met Jacob yet.

For the way back we decided that I and the boys would use our return flight on Saturday to get home and Dan would drive the car back, swinging close to Chicago on the way just in case we missed our connection and had to stay overnight in Chi-town. Two small delays and one poopy-diaper-on-the- plane later, the boys and I made it home. We could hardly believe it when Dan texted us and said he'd gotten another flat tire on the way home! But he also made good time driving and was home Sunday night. So in light of all of the flats, we are calling this the flat Christmas. But it really was a good one and we don't want to downplay the many blessings we experienced over the holiday too :-) We are still recovering. Jacob currently has pneumonia so we're hoping that responds quickly to the treatments. For now, he's in good spirits, just a little wheezy. Dan's gearing up for classes and a show he starts working on next week. I am back at work. Micah is back at school and doing well. His report card for the last quarter had a note from the teacher that said "Micah is a hard worker and a good helper." That's what we like to hear! I hope you all had holidays that were wonderful too. We will post more photos and videos of our time up north in another post.

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