My personal paranoia about the holiday traffic seems to have been unfounded, and got us to the airport way too early. But better early than late, at least in my book. Neither of our flights on Friday were full - the flight from Charlotte to Chicago, in fact, was only about half full. Sunday was a little more crowded, but still not exactly packed.
I think of all the airports I've had to wait for connections in, Charlotte is my favorite. It's compact, clean, attractive, has nice shops, and surprisingly reasonable prices. Matt and I ate at the stripped-down version of Chili's for dinner, and the bill came to no more than it would have in our Chili's at home.
At about 10:30, we landed at O'Hare, and while we waited for Matt's grandparents to come pick us up, we were entertained by a very cute little boy. He and his mother had been travelling since five that morning, trying to get home. You could tell by looking that she was bone-tired. The kid was just happy for a new audience. He drew pictures for me on his Etch-a-Sketch, showed me his toy robot dog, and held an imaginary paint can for me so I could use an imaginary paint brush to touch up the scratches on the dog. I thought he was adorable, and it was certainly more entertaining than just staring blankly at the baggage belt.
Eventually, Gramma and Grampa Brooks arrived to take us home. True to form, before we even got home, Gramma said she thought she'd fix us some dinner before we went to bed. We protested that we'd eaten quite a large meal between our flights, and mostly we just wanted to have a little water and go to bed.
When we got home, she offered again to fix us a meal. Once again, we told her we were just thirsty and tired. "Okay," she said, in a tone that suggested we were making a terrible mistake and that she fully expected us to perish of starvation before morning, "how about just some ice cream, then?"
We slept in Saturday morning, and then after a bigger breakfast than some of my dinners, headed over to the wedding. The place was small, but decorated pretty enough to almost make me wish Matt and I had had a December wedding. Matt's Uncle Dave and Aunt Terri were taking all the photographs for the wedding, so I had them take a few pictures with my camera as well. (Eventually, I'll get them posted in the album. I'm saving it for a project to do next week when I'm supposed to stay off my feet. In the meantime, here's a sampling.)
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We practically stuffed ourselves on the food at the reception, talked a lot, visited with the relatives, and generally had a good time.
Naturally, after we got back home, Gramma tried to offer Matt and I some ice cream and cake.
Sunday morning, Matt and I started watching the weather reports. All weekend they'd been predicting a snowstorm to come through sometime Sunday. The question was: would it come through before or after our flight was supposed to leave?
Gramma and Grampa took us out to a pancake house for breakfast. With everyone's permission, Matt ordered an oven-baked apple pancake that according to the menu took 40 minutes to prepare. As we watched tables around us turn over, Gramma said, "We should have brought some food with us!" and tried to convince us to get some food to go, to take with us on the plane. We declined politely, but boy was I ready for that meal when it finally came!
Our original flight was delayed, but when we checked in at the airport, we were re-assigned to an earlier flight that eventually took off when the first flight was supposed to. So we made it out of Chicago ahead - apparently scant hours ahead - of the blizzard.
We finally got home late Sunday night - or rather, very early Monday morning, tumbling into bed around 1:30 AM.
Yesterday, we slept in late, but not late enough. I got up around 9 or so, and when I was showered and dressed, headed down to Newport News to have some blood drawn. That turned out to be the least painful bloodletting experience of my life - I barely felt the needle at all. The technician was a funny guy, though: "See?" he said when I looked around at the tube, "I hardly felt it at all!"
After that, it was home for lunch. After lunch, we headed into work. I didn't actually get much done at work, but I couldn't afford to take off the whole day, really.
The evening was very busy, though. On my way home, I stopped at the ABC store and picked up some dark rum and some brandy for one of my recipes. Then I got home and made a batch each of hot buttered rum and brandy-butter ice cream topping.
By then, Matt was home, and we went to the grocery store. As soon as we were back from the store, I started making Black Gold cookies, which are, in essense, melted chocolate with a little flour and egg to hold them together, and some baking powder to make them puffy. They're simply divine cookies, if you happen to like chocolate, but they have to cool on the cookie sheets or they'll collapse into a gooey mess.
After making the cookies, I finally got around to making myself some dinner, and then I got on the Meade Hall, where I finally got to relax a little.
Tonight, I'm making three batches of breakfast cookies, but I think that will be easier, since I have every intention of making all three batches at once. (Well, here's hoping, anyway.) After that, I have one more batch of fudge to make, and the holiday baking will be done!!!
Well, except for the moon cookies, but we're having something of a party to make those.
It's all coming together!
(And just in time. My foot surgery is on Friday.)
Word of the Day: vernissage - a private showing or preview of an art exhibition
- The Mountain of Black Glass by Tad Williams
- The Sea Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
Current Projects:
- Christmas baking
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