Christmas in Garland, TX with Armitages – Dec 22-29, 2012 and Calvin's 5th Birthday

The idea for this trip to Texas started awhile ago when Lisa and I were chatting on facebook, she was telling me about the house they lived in since moving out of Swiss Tower on the DTS campus. She mentioned it is easier to host people now that their house is bigger. Neil, Sten’s dad, purchased the home for him and them in June 2012. She suggested having family to her place in TX for Christmas and the idea was planted but no decisions were made. We decided to make the trek to visit the Armitage family for Christmas sometime in November. We had a garage sale to fund the gas for the trip in November. We didn’t decide travel dates until a few weeks before coming. Calvin’s birthday was Dec 28th so we didn’t want to be traveling on his birthday, we decided to go on the 22nd (Sat before Christmas) and leave the 29th (the Sat after Christmas). When deciding how to get there (driving, not flying), we decided to make the trip all in one day, as opposed to two days. Dave and I disagreed on that when we first started talking about how to get there. I thought…let’s just enjoy the drive and take it in two parts, stay at a hotel with a pool, etc. Dave thought no, the “getting in and out of a hotel” is a lot of work and an extra expense, so why not try make the trip in one day. His viewpoint is rather “why have 2 miserable days of travel when you can only make it one.” I agreed. We weren’t sure whether to drive all through the night, or all through the day. We decided to wake up early in the morning and drive there with the hopes that we would get there and avoid arriving super late in the evening. “Super early” for this family is 5-6 am. Dave and I got up at 5 am on the 22nd and loaded the van and got the kids in the van by 7:15 and drove off by 7:20. My goal in blogging for this trip is not to summarize each day but rather highlight certain memories worth recording. I did not keep a running tab of the events as notes for me to refer to like I’ve done in the past, this time it seemed way too hard to do. We didn’t really do all that much, maybe that’s why. We mostly stayed at Sten and Lisa’s house. The drive down to Texas was l-o-o-o-o-o-n-n-n-n-g-g-g. We thought it would take about 12 hours, but we didn’t arrive at their house to close to 10:30pm, which was 15 total hours of travel. The first few hours of the trip were crawling over icy roads that were aftermath of a blizzard that swept through the Midwest a few days before our trip so that lengthened it quite a bit. We stopped a few times for food/feeding/bathroom breaks/diaper changes. The kids slept a little bit, but mostly watched a marathon of movies. We stopped for one quick “sit down” dinner at a place called Taco Mayo and sat under a table with a big straw umbrella.
Even though we really thought the trip would never end, we eventually arrived at Sten and Lisa’s house on Lakemere Drive in Garland. Emma and Anja were the first to come out and greet us. Violet was a little shy. We said hi, hugs, got a tour of their house, got kids settled where they were sleeping, and went to bed too. Everybody was pretty tired from traveling even though we did nothing but sit all day.
Emma was gracious enough to let us have her room for the week. Eli slept with us in a pack and play crib, and the older 3 kids shared Neil’s room (he was gone for the week visiting family in Peoria). Vanessa in the pink tent, Calvin in the bed, Violet on a mattress on the floor. The first couple nights Violet shared the couch with Emma in the living room. She said she liked sleeping out there.
Sten and Lisa have two very cuddly dogs. One, a pitbull named Kaia, and second, a “puppy” (1 yr old) named Cricket, not sure of the breed. She was named Cricket because she likes to eat bugs. The dogs
are very gentle, snuggly, sweet with kids, and not aggressive at all. Calvin really needs to learn how to “be” around dogs (not rubbing his hands all over them all the time and getting in their faces and sitting on them) … I suspect that is why he may be the victim of many dog attacks lately. I’m glad nothing happened with their dogs. He enjoyed laying down with them, petting them, etc. the whole week.
There were random trips to and from various places, Dave went to a craft/paint store with Kristina to get some art supplies for a painting she worked on for us. Lisa made a few runs to the grocery store. Christmas morning the kids opened their stockings and presents. Lisa and I planned a few meals. We made for meals for the week these things:
* Chicken fajitas
* Orange chicken with rice
* Mexican chicken/cheese/tomato soup
* Potato soup
* Cheeseburgers
Lunches were random, usually simple or leftovers. The favorite of all the kids for breakfast was creamed eggs.
Anja (age 11) and Violet seemed to play together the most. Kristina (almost 15) is more shy, and seemed happy to escape to her room to work on the painting for us. Emma (age 13) was always around, playing with whoever was around her. The kids watched some shows on Netflix, played with lots of playdoh, colored lots of things, played with the dogs, played outside in the snow that Dallas got on Christmas Day (a couple inches!), which was very rare for Texas. Christmas morning our kids had less presents because we had our own LaMarche family Christmas on Thursday of last week before leaving – we didn’t want to pack all their presents and bring them home. That’s another blog post. The Armitage girls gave our kids some books and movies. One evening after dark they lit a fire and we had smores.
Dave and Sten hooked up a rope swing to a tree in their big woody backyard and that was a big source of entertainment the last two days.
We didn’t get out of the house much because leaving with our big crew was a little difficult. We did make a trip to the library to play some games and check out some books. Vanessa and Violet wanted Dora books, Calvin wanted super hero books. Eli scooted across the floor and sucked on the diaper bag handle. The library was really neat – one whole wall of the children’s section was turned into a little store scene, with different storefronts all connected together at a child’s height, featuring different books for each store. It reminded me of BBC’s Western town made of cardboard.

Friday the 28th was Calvin’s 5th birthday. In the morning he said he felt different.  He wanted his favorite breakfast, which in that moment, he said was oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar.  He was so happy the whole day. We made the day special for him by all going to Chick Fil A and letting the kids play on the indoor playplace there and treating everyone to lunch. Lisa made a delicious chocolate cake/chocolate frosting/chocolate chips from scratch and we all enjoyed that after the chicken fajita/taco dinner. Anja hung up a happy birthday sign along with a hand written note that said “Calvin, we just want to let you know that we wish you a….” above the happy birthday sign. We sang happy birthday to Calvin and he opened his presents ~ a transformer Optimus Prime, toy cars/trucks, a stomp rocket and extra nerf rockets, dinosaur coloring book, superman hero figurine and a spiderman “piggy” bank.

I am writing this post from Dave’s laptop computer in the van on the drive home. Eli is crying, Vanessa is whining she is “dir-dee” (thirsty), Violet and Calvin are watching Tom and Jerry, and my eyes are throbbing because I barely slept last night. Eli was a terrible sleeper each night, waking up every couple hours, I do not know why! Maybe the cold he has is keeping him up.
A couple funny moments in the week included Vanessa copying something Dave said. He was being silly getting the kids to bed one night and said with an accent that he was going to break the kids heads if they didn’t listen and obey while getting them ready for bed. Of course he wasn’t serious – but Violet was tired and emotional at the end of one day and really thought he was serious in that moment for some reason and started screaming about it. Vanessa picked up on what Violet said and as she went to bed, she was holding Dave’s hand and said, “Don’t break head, dad!”
Cricket (the younger puppy, age 1), also nearly climbed a tree by jumping up into it trying to chase a squirrel.
Most of the stops on the way home were quick.  The kids watched a bunch of movies and slept some.  Eli (poor baby) enjoyed the trip the least.  I wasn't having much success pumping milk and feeding it to him by the bottle so I made a point to nurse him every time we stopped for someone to go pee.  Our one "long" stop was Chick-Fil-A somewhere in Oklahoma (I think) on the way back for supper.  Or was it Missouri?  I don't know.  Either way, they all got to run around for some time.  I took over driving on the way home ... and somehow we got home at 10:30pm-ish.  To keep us awake, Dave turned on his Slacker radio program and played tons of crazy songs and sang the lyrics probably for my entertainment.  The only one I remember was "The Final Countdown" and some Michael Jackson songs.
Rachel and dad were there (after grocery shopping for our Hardinger family get together).  Dave and I got kids in bed...put everything away.  We were zombies...exhausted.  And we went to BBC the next morning...miraculously.
Dad crashed on the couch, Rachel in the guest room.  Eli in Vanessa's crib - Vanessa on an air mattress in V&C's room.  I was so ready for Eli to be "un-heard" at night...for my own sleep's sake.