Happy New Year

Well, it did turn out to be an adventure! Here's a recap of our most recent crazy trip. (Warning: this is a long post, and there are no pictures yet.)

Tuesday.... The night before we were planning to drive to GA for our annual New Years college reunion, Alasdair & I took advantage of his last day of vacation to go out to dinner! For only the second time in six months, we left Emily behind (with Granny Groves) and headed into the city. The evening started out as smoothly as it could have - Emily went to bed on time, we found a parking spot directly in front of the front door of the restaurant (anyone who has looked to for parking in Center City Philadelphia can appreciate this miracle!), and enjoyed a delicious dinner at the Melting Pot. Lovely. Then... on our way home, we came around a corner on Lincoln Drive to find a sheet of ice (the rest of the road was clear but a culvert had overflowed) and a stopped car (don't get me started on Philadelphia... someone had left traffic cones in a very unsafe place!). Crash. Thankfully, no one was hurt, our interactions with the other drivers were very civil, and despite a number of close calls, no one rear ended us. (I think it could very easily have become a multi-car pile up.) It was, however, immediately apparent that we would not be driving our trusty Civic to Georgia the next day!

Wednesday... spent the morning getting the car to a mechanic, reporting the claim (Geico was once again really easy to work with!), packing, and trying to locate a rental car that would be available that afternoon. During this time we found out that yet another set of friends had cancelled on the reunion, and we thought hard about just calling the whole thing off, wondering if it just wasn't meant to be this year! But, knowing that plane tickets had been purchased & not wanting to let the tradition die, we decided to go ahead. We were finally able to get a car, deal with a LOT of hassle at the airport car-rental location (including a call to my sister in law to make sure we were installing Emily's new car seat -- which we had yet to actually try out! -- properly), and we were finally on our way, quite harried but less than three hours behind schedule. Oh, and I should mention that our friend Katie was driving with us, and that she had arrived home from visiting family on the west coast late the night before, so you can add jet lag to all the other chaos involved in this trip. :) We spent the night in a motel near Roanoke, VA. Note that I said "spent the night" and not "slept" -- Emily was apparently not a fan of the overly hot, dry room.

Thursday... Emily was excited to get on the road to see Hannah, and she had the three grown ups awake & dragged out of bed by 6am. On the road again, the fun of a road trip finally started to kick in. Coffee in hand, I drove through the beautiful snow-covered mountains of SE Virginia as the sun rose and three of my favorite people slept in the car. Ahhh. :) I really do love road trips. We arrived at our destination (a friend's parent's lake house near Atlanta) by 4pm.

We spend the next 2.5 days catching up, laughing, playing with babies, running around outside in the cold, playing games, cooking, eating and just generally enjoying each other's company. We spent the end of the last evening singing and praying together about the coming year. I have been realizing how overwhelmed I am by all that we have coming this year, and it was nourishing to my soul to be lifted up by these friends. While it was definitely a very different New Year's -- sports were squeezed in around babies naps and late night games & talking were usually done by 10 (I was asleep by 11 on New Years Eve!), by the end of the weekend I was so glad that we hadn't called it off. Even though we've been out of college more than five years, these people are still our closest community, and it's worth just about anything to spend time all together every year. Now that many of us are married and some have children, it's getting harder to make it work, and we may have to find a different time of year... I hope we don't give up on this. (I'll post some pictures once I gather them.)

Sunday... Up before 6 to change sheets, clean bathrooms, pack the car and get on the road for the long journey home. I'd been dreading this part of the trip for awhile, and wondering why I'd thought it was a good idea to plan to drive from Atlanta to Philadelphia in one day with a 6 month old. Luckily for us, this particular 6 month old just happens to be an absolute angel! We left at 730am & were back in our house at 10pm. We stopped often to let Emily eat & wiggle, and although she let us know that she wasn't real happy to be strapped into her carseat all day long, we made it the whole way home with no serious screaming! The new car seat was definitely a success. [We got the EvenFlo Symphony in brown] and I love it so far!] She didn't sleep as much (maybe because she was more upright?), but she seemed generally happier. And, I was glad to have Katie along with us, to share the work of driving & entertaining Emily but also because she's great company!

Today.... Phew. Today I am home with Emily (who is currently taking her second long nap of the day!) while Alasdair works a very full day, and just trying to get life sorted out a little. Grateful that the ankle that I rolled pretty hard (while scoring an epic goal in 2 on 2 soccer:) is feeling much better!

2010... I think I'll start a new post for that.