ace and megan: and a partridge in a pear tree.....

every year it seems christmas comes and goes so much faster. every year christmas brings yet another sickness to my home. seriously, i don't think there's been a year in the past 5 or 6 that has gone by without some ailment striking. the flu in georgia, colds and flus in greenville AND florida, the never forgotten time in the UP when my dad almost killed nicole and ava (appendix story, remember that gem??) thankfully, the flu has only been the culprit once...maybe twice. but puke has not been far behind even when the flu is nowhere near. poor connor gets carsick like crazy. thus the decision to drive through the night to greenville this year.

i love greenville. it's such a happy place. warm, sunny (most of the time), pleasant people...ok, they are HORRID drivers, but i can overlook that. detroiters just know how to drive, ya know? we know where we want to go and we GET there. forcefully. and fast. even changing lanes can be quite a process in the south. but i digress....

we rented a van. i am now officially a van person and i have recently converted my husband. i always was a van person. i like driving up higher, i like the space, i like the convenience when getting a baby seat in and out. nathan swore he would never drive a van, but after the trip he admitted that he would like one. score one for me!

we left monday night and drove straight through. after a quick spongebob movie connor slept the whole way. meg was awake a little, but a bottle seemed to appease her. we got in about 7:30 and promptly crashed. i slept for almost an hour and then started getting the kids and us organized. nathan's parents have a cute house, but the invasion of the michigan hairgroves was certainly a force to be reckoned with. since we had the van we brought TONS of stuff. lots of comfort stuff for meg -- which of course translates to oversized colorful plastic. after that we hit the ground running....tuesday family dinner at cracker barrel, wednesday gattitown, thursday christmas lunch at the mansion, friday and saturday hanging out and golf for the guys, sunday church and then we left for the drive home. it seemed to go too quickly. we had a great time though, and we both put this in our top 3 of christmases.

sunday was a drive for the books. going home is always harder. you're tired, you're full of food and memories, you're going back to the grind.... and in our case neither eligible driver has slept for two nights b/c the eight month old in our life has decided to cut four--that's right, F-O-U-R teeth at once. yeah, it was brutal. it was just outside of toledo that nathan started to hit the proverbial wall. want me to drive? as my head nodded again. so we made frequent stops, nathan drank countless cups of coffee, and thankfully meg was a little out of sorts b/c she was getting hot so we had to stop for her a couple times. on sunday we found out that lots of allen park was without power. my sister had gone to her in-laws to stay the night, so we knew we didn't have power either--we live two blocks away. my dad had called sunday night to tell us if we needed to come to their house we could go there until the repairs were made. i kept calling dte trying to find out an estimated time for a fix and all through the drive home i kept getting the same recording, "repair efforts are underway, but there is no way to estimate a repair time. please call back later." so, instead of heading all the way home we went to my mom and dad's to crash. we limped the last 20 miles into michigan and barely made it to their house. nathan said he didn't even remember anything after we got to their house. we unpacked the kids and plopped on the air mattress in the manly room. three hours later i emerged from the cave. nathan woke up soon after me and we found out that we indeed had power so we got a little brefix and headed home. then, stupidly, i decided that i should go get some staples for our fridge. it worked out fine b/c nathan got the kids some lunch and i hit meijers then we returned the van and headed home to crash again. that trip was brutal, but i didn't have to clean up one drop of puke so it was totally worth it.

i've got some pictures on facebook so you can see the whole trip, but i'll give a few highlights here.