Photo Every Hour: December 21st

Yeah yeah yeah. I'm just a little late on getting this posted. But hey--it's a special Travel Edition of Photo Every Hour because the 21st fell while we were in Atlanta to celebrate Christmas with Darrell's family (and staying with Darrell's super awesome cousin who also happens to have three boys. So we had six boys ten and under in one house. It was pretty crazy). 

 

It wouldn't be vacation if I didn't stay up until after midnight, right? It also wouldn't be Christmas if I didn't procrastinate on getting my parent's photo calendar completed and end up having to stay up late (and pay extra for shipping) to get it finished

Con of staying with Darrell's cousin: Our family of five slept in one large living room in the basement. It took Connor all of three hours to figure this out and he subsequently refused to put himself back to sleep when he stirred in the middle of the night--one of us had to go get him and rock with him. Needless to say, it wasn't exactly the best few days of sleep for multiple reasons

All things considered, not too shabby of a wake up time

8:00 We bought the older boys new sticker seek-and-find books for the airplane, and after twenty minutes of trying to convince him to save the remaining stickers for the flight home, we gave up on the battle (partially because we had intel from grandparents that he'd be getting other good plane activities for Christmas)

9:00 Look Mom! We flew halfway across the country and found trains to play with! We never do that in South Dakota!

10:00 Foosball, on the other hand, is definitely a new activity for the boys. Poor Garrett was a little short, but William loved it and would go downstairs by himself to play

11:00 Musical instruments! More toys that are very similar to stuff we have at home but are way cooler because they are in someone else's house!

12:00 Lunch is served!

1:00 When the boys at the house you are visiting have rest time instead of nap time, you do the same (unless your name is Connor, of course). We managed to get Garrett to nap the last few days of our trip because he was so worn out, but it would have been an impossible battle the first few days

2:00 I don't love the excessive TV time for rest time, but when in Rome...

3:00 Finally. Back to playing with toys. And a way bigger--and cooler--selection of Lego Duplos than we have

4:00 Making a grocery store run to pick up some essentials--and make sure our boys didn't eat Darrell's cousin out of house and home

5:00 Mommy was actually trying to "vacation" and read a magazine, but Connor was not a fan

6:00 Getting some water and getting ready for dinner

7:00 See the blurs? There was a whole lot of that going on. Those boys ran each other ragged

8:00 Trying to get calmed down and ready for bed

9:00 Ah. Enjoying some peace and quiet and adult conversation. And pretending like I don't have anything better to do, like...

10:00 Wrap presents

11:00 Darrell's cousin has a resident elf during the Christmas season. Thankfully my boys didn't get too into the whole thing, because this house will never have an elf

12:00 Would you believe it if I told you this isn't even all the luggage we took with us? We make for a pretty entertaining entourage entering and leaving the airport (thankfully we check over half of those bags, so navigating through the airport isn't quite so bad)

Bedtime at last--and a whole minute earlier than the night before!