Christmas Travels | The TENTH Day of Blogmas!

On the tenth day of Blogmas, Leeann's blog gave to me... a Christmas travel story

Some years we stay at home for Christmas and some years we travel to my grandparents' in West Virginia. Traveling at a time of year where snow is always possible and crowded highways inevitable always brings adventures. We've had our fair share of traffic jams and snowy slow-downs.

But it was Christmas of 2011 when my family found ourselves in a hotel room come Christmas morning. Hotel stays typically happened well in advance of the holiday. We would be dreaming of sugar plums in a white farmhouse while Santa comes to visit instead of resting in rough hotel sheets without a fireplace in sight.

My high school football team had made it big that year--we went to the state finals! An event that hadn't happened in years, so no one would miss the game , including my freshman sister and senior me. The game that just so happened to fall on the Friday after Thanksgiving, a Thanksgiving we were supposed to spend in West Virginia with my mom's side of the family.

So we stayed in town for Thanksgiving; not a problem since we could celebrate with my dad's family. But it did mean we had to stay for Christmas Eve in Indy and somehow make it to West Virginia for Christmas Day.

My parents are smart when it comes to travel plans. Thanks to my dad's willingness to drive in the middle of the night and my mom's ability to keep him awake, the plan was concocted to celebrate Christmas Eve with Dad's side, leave straight from the party, and then head straight for West Virginia, driving until we were only about three hours away from the farm.

So with Christmas (seafood) chowder warming our bellies and Eloise at Christmastime playing on the portable DVD player positioned between my sister and I, we headed east on the night of Christmas Eve.

That's how I ended up in a double bed in a hotel by the highway with my sister early Christmas morning. Our stockings, at my insistence, hung from the TV cabinet at the end of the bed. I hurried my sister out of bed and the two of us dumped out the cross-stitched, faux socks to see what Santa brought us.

As we sorted through the nail polish, candy, toothbrushes, and Chapstick, my parents worked on packing up the room behind us. We ate a breakfast of cinnamon and pecan rolls carried all the way from Indiana and dressed in our Christmas clothes before straightening up the room. Our Christmas goodies were shoved into plastic bags, the stockings carefully packed away, and anything unpacked overnight tossed back into black and purple suitcases before we rushed back into the car to take on those last three hours to the farm.

On the tenth day of Blogmas, Leeann's blog gave to me:

A Christmas travel story, six final to-reads, decked halls a-twinkling, a Christmas tag of sorts, two Christmas book reads, FIVEEEE FESTIVE MOVIES! Memories filled with snow, one blog tag, the best study tips, and 10 Christmas songs to sing!

On Location | The Happiest Place on Earth

"The symbol of the Magic Kingdom, the symbol of Disney World itself, Cinderella's Castle is my favorite part of the park. My first peek was set under a rainbow sunset, melting a silky blue sky to orange watercolors folding towards the west. The light invited me inside, to a plaque placed at the entrance to the park  inviting all who entered to 'leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.' I was more than willing to accept the invitation."

Traveling Woes

I was going to write about my grandparent's farm. It's a beautiful, beautiful place that I love very dearly. I wanted to share it with all of you as I do, in word and picture. But I want to spend time on that, since it is so important to me. And time is not something I exactly have, because of this:

Yup. Those are boarding passes. And no, I didn't collect them. They are all from Sunday, in my attempt to get to San Jose with my boss for a conference. I say "attempt" because it took this many boarding passes (only two used) and a car to get to our destination.

Delayed, missed flight, delayed, cancelled, five-hour drive. I wasn't reunited with my bag until this afternoon, much to my chagrin. There was much rejoicing in the kingdom when we were reunited.

So needless to say, my recent travel was (is) exhausting. I've been up since 6:45 am eastern time Sunday. I am looking forward to nestling myself in my bed and sleeping as soon as this post is done! So I thought I would just give you a few brief takeaways from my experience these past 40 hours (give or take):

• ALWAYS pack an extra outfit in your carry-on. My mom had me do this for years, and today it finally came in handy. We jumped around on so many planes, our bags ended up stuck at the airport without us. Fortunately, I had an outfit in my carry-on I could change into today. I just felt so much cleaner and ready to face the day sans sleep with fresh clothes.
• NEVER bring just one book on the plane. Just don't. I don't care if your book is 800 pages and you just started it. You never know how long you're actually going to spend in airports. I know better, and yet I only brought one book on the plane that I finished in two hours. Always have back-up reading material, and delays and layovers become more manageable.
• NEVER yell at the customer service agents. It's not their fault, and they're trying to help you. It's not like they said, "oh, whoever yells the loudest, we'll give her a first-class seat on the next flight out of here, even if we have to kick someone off!" No one says that. No one (who would?). Just be patient, and all will be resolved.
• Finally, ALWAYS stay positive. After a previous bad flight experience this summer, I started this trip accepting the fact all might not go as planned. It makes things a lot easier to be ready to respond to sudden changes positively instead of getting frustrated. My boss and I managed to make it to our destination simply by being ready to jump around and not letting things we can't change get to us.

So those are the four major things I've taken from this rough-rider worthy experience. What flight woes have you endured, and what did you learn from them?

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Below the Line

• This post was written with a rough two-ish hours of sleep. Please forgive any proofreading errors/things that just plain don't make sense :)

Traveling to the Twin Cities

That's right folks! Greetings from Minnesota, one week later :) The first week of July my family and I traveled up to Minneapolis to visit family. While we were there, we got to see some amazing sites, such as the Minnesota History Center, Fort Snelling, the Minnehaha and Saint Anthony Falls, the Walker Art Center's outdoor areas and the great neighborhood around my relative's home. Fun was had by all! I toted along my road trip bag for the 10 hour car ride and got ready for  great vacation in the northern Midwest.

Now get ready for a lot of pictures!

On the first night we went to this great restaurant Town Hall Tap. OH MY GOODNESS THE FRIES. Just look at them with me- ahhhhh. Some of the best fries I've ever had. They had the perfect amount of crunch and a slight sprinkle of cheese and spices along the top that came together as a celebratory bite in your mouth. I could have eaten a whole extra plate of these beautiful things.

The chicken sandwich was also delicious, with a good ratio of condiments to chicken. This place was spectacular, and if you find yourself in Minneapolis I highly recommend stopping by.

Wednesday we headed to the history center, where the cool "Welcome to Minnesota" super-sized postcard comes from. We saw several exhibits on Minnesota, but there was one particularly cool one on toys of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I was surprised at how many toys I had played with myself. Sometimes this meant I played with the updated version of the late 90s, but other times the same toy was right there, on display. After going through the exhibit, I couldn't imagine why kids would want to be glued to screen all day when they could be playing with Barbies and Hotwheels.

That afternoon we went to Fort Snelling, my favorite place of the whole trip. It's like an interactive fort, with people representing the types of folks who would have lived and worked in the fort. There were presentations throughout the whole day that people could participate in and/or listen to, as well as a closing "parade" of sorts at the end of the day. A really cool history spot!

The next day (Thursday) was outdoor day, and we went to the Walker Art Center's mini golf course temporarily set up this summer. It's full of artist-designed holes that are both maddening and tons of fun. Every hole is different and brings a different challenge. The one above was like those coin funnels you see at the mall, only it was your golf ball doing the spinning.

Before and after the golf, we walked around the neighboring sculpture garden and saw the famous Spoonbridge and Cherry, as well as many other cool outdoor art sculptures. I especially loved this tunnel-like structure with all the different flowers scattered around.

That same afternoon we saw two beautiful sets of falls, one at Saint Anthony and the other at Minnehaha. Above are the Minnehaha falls- that is an insane amount of water tumbling off a cliff! It was both remarkable and very, very frightening to see the water plummet to the bottom. We don't have anything like this where I live, so the falls were a really cool experience.

Of course, you can't go to Minneapolis without stopping by the Mall of America. I was interested in a couple of stores we don't have where I live and to, of course, see what it's like when you put a theme park in the middle of a mall. You can kind of see in the picture how the rides fill the middle of the mall. I had to get a snap of the American Girl store, since I loved it so much as a kid (Samantha fan for life!).

After Fourth of July shenanigans (and some of the BEST fireworks I have ever seen- sorry Disney World), it was time to go home. Our drive took us into Wisconsin, so naturally we had to stop at the World's Largest Culver's to finish off our vacation. It was a great finish to a great trip. The  Twin Cities are really cool to visit (don't even get me started on the wonders of Caribou Coffee) and I loved getting to see them with my aunt and uncle.

Have you been to the Twin Cities? What are your favorite things to see there? What cool places have you traveled to this summer? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!