Christmas in Cali!

Despite all of the weather conditions surrounding the Midwest, we had no problems with our flights to and fro. Thank goodness! We had to leave for the airport at 530am on Christmas Eve, waking Caleb from his slumber. I thought he may fall back asleep on the way to the airport, but the minute Kerry put him in the car he says, "I wake up! I wake up!" At the airport to kill time, Caleb loves to ride on the moving walkways, or alligators as he calls them. Anything moving really is an alligator. Elevators, escalators, somehow all got named alligators. We arrived into Sacramento around noon so we were able to put Caleb down for a nap right on schedule. He slept wonderfully this trip! Took all of his naps, went to bed peacefully. Just woke up on east coast time at 530am every morning, but would go back to sleep for an hour once I moved him into my bed.

Santa (my Dad) stopped by Christmas Eve to see Caleb. At first Caleb said, "I don't like Santa," but soon he warmed up to him after he gave him a big candy cane to play with. My family tradition on Christmas Eve is having a lobster dinner, which we enjoyed! Yum! My sister is quite the hostess. Christmas morning Caleb had more presents to open! (This was our 3rd Christmas celebration! We did ours Wednesday morning before traveling and then a skype video with Nana & Papa in AZ) My sister got him Monty Rex, a very cool animated dinosaur which he loved. His reaction was priceless! I am so glad Kerry caught it on video. He said, "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!" with his hands on his head! He has tons of dinosaurs now to decorate his new big boy room before the baby arrives. For dinner, my sister prepared Prime Rib which was delicious! We get so spoiled when we visit!

The remainder of our visit was just hanging out, enjoying ourselves. We did miss out on after Christmas shopping, but a part of me didn't need to partake in that chaos this year. I actually like to go later once things are completely marked down, like a small tabletop tree I got last year for 49 cents! Caleb liked to carry that around this year for fun!

We had In N Out for lunch one day so Kerry could get his fix before we headed back home. We actually flew out of Modesto which is an hour from Lodi so we stayed at my Dad's Sunday night. I shopped around for the cheapest flights this holiday season and saved us $300 by flying different airlines each way and departing out of Modesto. Never again. Talk about a shady little terminal. They had plenty of employees there and I was thinking, this is a one man show. You don't need 3 ticket agents, 5 TSA agents and 2 car rental companies. We did have to take a small prop plane to San Francisco first, but it was only 20 minutes. Kerry hates them! I told him this was the last time I try and save us money by giving you a slight heart attack when you look at the size of the plane. The rest of our travels were fine. Caleb managed to stay up all day long and conked out on the way home from the airport. He was a trooper!

We had a lovely visit with my family, but missed our first White Christmas back home in Indy. Next year.