Christmas Eve

It's 6:30am Christmas Eve morning and I am the only person awake in house full of family. Santa Clause is merrily rocking away outside the window in the front yard and the sun is just beginning to come up over the hill. It's been a whirlwind week, but Christmas is nearly here!

Sunday morning, my Dad drove our family to the airport to catch our flight to Las Vegas. Our final destination being Tehachapi, CA, which is just four hours from Las Vegas, we opted to have one long flight and to drive the remainder of the way. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:20 and we arrived at the airport around 9:45am. As soon as we pulled into the departures lane, our jaws just about dropped. There were lines on top of lines of people waiting to check their bags. We gathered the kids and all of our bags, hugged my dad goodbye and proceeded to figure out where were supossed to be. Five hours later, we made it to the check-in counter. Yes, five hours, two Lunchables, one box of Teddy Grahams, and many games of Eye Spy we made it to the check-in counter. Obviously, we had missed our flight, so we waited to see what flight they would put us on. We were put on stand-by for a 5:50pm flight and we also got seats on a 7:5opm flight. Relieved to finally have tickets in our hands, we headed for the security check point. With two kids, this is quite an ordeal, but we survived. After checking in at our gate, we had a quick lunch at Burger King and tried to make the the wait as fun as we could for the kids. They were troopers to be honest, they did a fabulous job, even though Katelyn was totally sick with a cold! Five more hours passed and we boarded our flight, hoping that our luggage was riding with us. The flight was 4 and half hours, so we watched movies, ate snacks and the kids slept on and off. Again, they really did a great job. We arrived in Las Vegas at 9:30pm, and discovered that our bags were on a different flight that would not be arriving until after midnight. Tim and Becky, Ben's younger brother and his wife, were picking us up from the airport to make the drive to Tehachapi, but plans quickly changed since we had no baggage. They picked us up and we drove to Ben's older brother Jonathan's house, which was only 30 minutes away, and they put us all up for the night. The next morning, we drove back to the airport, retrieved our bags and started the drive to Tehachapi. Are you tired yet? Mind you that we are used to Eastern Time and we are now traveling in Pacific Time. So, we are all a little out of whack. To make a long story short(er), we arrived in Tehachapi around 4:30pm, a little rumpled and worn out, but happy to finally be at our destination.

Since we have been here, we have woken up to a surprise snow fall (Kate was so happy!), driven to Bakersfield for a little Christmas shopping, watched plenty of movies, and had lots of fun just spending time with family. Stay tuned for "Christmas with the Burgesses". Merry Christmas Eve!