Monday, January 07, 2008

The Holiday


Here I am on Christmas Eve unwrapping gifts from Kyle and his parents.

Me again! With a moose in the Minneapolis/ St. Paul airport.

Kyle with his DVD stocking stuffers!

Kyle, Uncle Alvin, and I on Christmas Day in Spearfish, South Dakota.

The Holiday
Well, we have fully recovered from our Christmas vacation having been home a week now. Back to work and into the swing of things. Back to the grocery store and to Dinner Done to restock our food as we had empty cabinets and fridge since maybe before the wedding! Back to church. Back to lifegroup, finally starting a new series!
Back to normal life...(sigh) it’s good to be BACK!
I grow pretty weary of traveling and I just start to crave my own home with my pillows and my dishes and my afghans on the couch. My own closet and my very own bathroom!
Home sweet tiny smushed apartment Home!
So, let me kick back into the recesses of my memory of the week before last and tell you about how we spent our holiday.
We flew out of Tampa on the Saturday before Christmas and headed for the freezing state of South Dakota. After about 5 hours in Minneapolis/ St. Paul we actually boarded the plane to Rapid City where Kyle’s parents, Joyce and Kurt were waiting for us with their puppies, Domer and Cowboy. Yes, the puppies were in the airport! This seems to be a growing trend.
After we gathered our bags we walked to the doors that opened to the outside and OH MY GOODNESS! I thought I was going to freeze in that spot. My body wanted nothing to do with going out into the coldest air ever!! I gritted my already chattering teeth and headed for the truck. I was a blue popsicle by the time I got there and climbed into the not much warmer vehicle. Next we ran some errands before heading into the hills and up to Deadwood.
The next day was Sunday and not too much occurred. Kurt had to work (he supervises a casino in downtown Deadwood) so we headed down to play some penny slots until he got off work. Later that evening my dear husband got extremely sick (this is turning into a typical thing when we travel, we always get soo sick!). He was sooooo sick! It was awful! At first we blamed food poisoning but later on realized it was the stomach flu. He was still very sick on Christmas Eve so I stayed with him while the rest of the family went to the get together with the rest of the family. After they returned, I accompanied Kyle’s mother and Uncle to a lovely midnight mass at their Church in Deadwood. I really enjoyed it, except for the incense which sent Joyce and I both coughing while we were attempting to sing. Uncle Alvin is pretty ornery and we really had a good time though maybe not as solemn as the priest had hoped, we seemed to be in the ornery section in fact! Too much holiday spirit. It was a lovely service though and I enjoyed it very much. When we walked outside, bidding Merry Christmas to Father (I don’t remember who) it was snowing and car was covered already! My Oklahoman heart would have been nervous at the idea of traveling on the steep roads with ice and snow but not with these South Dakotans! They do it everyday and they never let the weather keep them inside!
On Christmas Day Kyle was feeling good enough to go to the festivities but not quite good enough to eat much. We had a good day and I learned how to play pinochle which is the card game that his family loves to play. We brought wedding photos to share and had a really good time munching on the goodies Joyce made. She goes ALL out for the holidays and make every kind of goodie you can think of, the only way to explain is to name as many as I can remember. She started pulling them out of containers as I helped her make up the dessert trays to take to Christmas Dinner. There were turtles, chocolate chip cookies, toffee bars, lemon bars, angel food cake bars, oogey gooey chewy bars, peanut butter cookies, butter pecan fudge, regular fudge, sugar cookies with icing, chocolate mice (little bite size treats made out of cherries and Hershey kisses-decorated to look like little mice! So cute!), ummm let me see here….no bake cookies, thumbprint cookies…..ok that’s all I can remember but there are at least 8 things I am forgetting!
It was serious dessert time folks! And it was seriously delicious!
Christmas Evening we headed to the casino with Kyle’s cousin Katie from Texas who wanted to spend some time with all of us. She did really well while Kyle and I lost again! We had quite a good time until I started feeling kind of sick and then BAM!
Sick for two days! Joyce was mildly sick the next day as well as Katie and another one of Kyle’s aunts was terribly sick as well.
So, the next night I stayed home while the whole gang went to the weekly burger night at the VFW. I was sad to miss it but way to sickly to be out and about.
The next day was better and Kyle and I went to Spearfish to visit his Grandpa and got to spend more time with his family from Texas. Then we headed back to Deadwood to hang out with Joyce at The Gallows casino where she works part time. We had a good time shooting pool and playing some penny slots (losing of course!). I did however beat Kurt in pool! Wahoo!
The next day we went to Rapid City for some light shopping (Kurt was at home sick this day, poor guy) and then we ended the day with some yummy Culvers ( a fave burger and custard place) and headed back to Deadwood.
Friday we woke up early and met some friends for Breakfast at Hickok House (as in Wild Bill Hickok) and had a pretty lazy day after that. Later on we went to Kyle’s Uncles house and got to talk to his Aunt who is in Iraq on the webcam.
Saturday I have no idea what we did and on Sunday we headed home after meeting some other friends for breakfast that we hadn’t got to see yet.
We got home about 2 o’clock Monday morning after yet another delay in Minneapolis/ St. Paul.
We were tired and we sooo happy to be home in our warm muggy Florida!
And that my friends was our holiday! Hope yours was just as fun and memorable as ours minus of course the stomach flu!

L. Hall