Christmas: Part 1
Jess and I are on a lovely Christmas vacation. We left after work on Friday, and after picking up a rental car in Boulder, we stopped off at home and headed for Ohio. While packing up the car, we checked out the weather report. The forecast was for pretty low temperatures (15–20 °F) across most of I-80 with 20–90% chance of precipitation. I yelled at Jess to stop wrapping the last few presents so that we could hit the road.
As things turned out, we had excellent driving weather. Although the roads were a bit wet on occasion, nothing was frozen and we encountered only a little light mist. We’d have made exceptional time if it weren’t for a couple of encounters with the local constabularies in Nebraska and Iowa. Fortunately both resulted in just warnings, so all is well.
About 21 hours after leaving home, we arrived at Jess’s parents’ house near Cleveland. Jess’s brother Nathaniel and his wife Laura beat us there by a few minutes, and her other brother Matt and his wife Erin arrived just a few minutes after us. It was nice to have the whole Hazelton clan together—complete with spouses.
Since there are a number of birthdays in December, we decided to have a combined birthday party for everyone. We also celebrated Christmas a bit early as this was the only time all of us would be together during the vacation.
We had a nice time opening up presents. Jess’s dad got an exciting new GPS for his car, and everyone else got some fun presents as well.
On Sunday, we all made it to church at Trinity (Jess’s mom is the Senior Pastor there) for lessons and carols. The theme was waiting (for the birth of baby Jesus, of course). They did a really nice job of tying the theme into the carols.
After church, we headed back for the first of many baby showers for little baby Gribble. There were presents galore, and a lot of family made the trek to see Jess’s protruding belly. I hope s|he felt all of the love. Look for a future blog specifically on the topic.
The following day we hung out with Chris as Betti had to work. We slept in pretty late and took a drive to a few different stores guided by Australian Ken (voice of the Garmin Nüvi). The GPS did much better when provided with an accurate destination, but, as always, GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out for those without the requisite computer geek background)!
Back at home, we took a walk to Giant Eagle to pick up some meat for beef stew. It was good to a get a little exercise. Note that Jess and her dad got a bit of exercise with Ada Jenkowitz’s Basic Training.
On Tuesday, we got up and took a trip to Cleveland’s own Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. This time Nüvi did an excellent job of guiding us. The museum was a lot of fun. I think my favorite part was the pants with built-in underwear (on the outside) that belonged to Freddy Mercury. Who else could pull off such an ensemble?