Holiday Travels, Part 1

As many of you already know, I make it a point to spend Christmas with my mom in Anaheim. With Derek’s rigorous hockey schedule this year, our time with Mom this year was shortened – or adjusted, you might say.

Derek is on three hockey teams this year: for our local recreational hockey, he is on the team for his age (PeeWee), and also the team one level up (Bantam). Practices are twice a week here in town, with games nearly every weekend. This puts him at playing two to three games a weekend, depending upon his endurance.

He is also on New Mexico’s state competitive team, Team New Mexico. This is the team he has to try out for and be good enough to make – which he did! But the parents have to make the commitment just like the player by making sure their child makes all practices and tournaments. Practices are two to three times a week, and all out of town, with the nearest practice a 1 ½ hour drive one way, most being a 2 ½ hour drive one way. He has at least one tournament a month, all out of state. These are usually three-day tournaments, requiring a lot of driving to another state, plus a hotel room and eating out. Not cheap, by far!

So for our Christmas travels this year, we couldn’t leave until the weekend before Christmas, cutting our shopping time to the three days before Christmas. We left Sunday, December 21 early in the morning, stopped in Santa Fe for Derek to play two Bantam games, then continued on to Albuquerque where he did comp practice. Then we hit I-40 for California, arriving at Mom’s Monday just after noon, where I madly started shopping for Christmas!

It was so great to be with Mom! We did a lot of wrapping and baking in preparation for Christmas, catching up on talk. We didn’t make it to Church Christmas Eve (we were just too tired!) but did after opening our presents on Christmas Day. After coming home from Church, we baked our last dishes for our family get-together, Mom napped, and then we were off to my brother Steve’s for our family dinner.

Now, I have to tell you why Steve was hosting our dinner. First of all, it’s too much work for Mom at her house. Second, we couldn’t have it at my sister’s because she was still trying to clean up the mess the fires caused. Did I write about the fires? Her house is one of three houses left on her street – the rest burned down in wild fires. She has soot everywhere, lost all her food in her freezers because of the electric being turned off during the fires, the pool is black from ashes, etc. etc. etc. They were able to move back in just last week after installing new air conditioners, hepa filters, and new ducts throughout the house. Still a lot of work to do! But at least her house didn’t burn down with all their stuff in it!!

So we all decided to travel down to Steve and Barbara’s this year. Yeah, it’s a long way (45 minute drive for us, longer for Jeny), but worth it! One thing I absolutely love about our get-togethers is the FOOD! We have such great cooks in our family! My contribution? I made sour dough “hockey pucks”. Yeah, I sometimes wonder why my genes didn’t include the cooking genes the rest of us got! LOL! *sigh*

Anyway, I drove my truck instead of riding with Mom and Cal (my little brother) because Derek and I probably would be leaving early to finish packing for our hockey trip the next morning (more about that later). It was raining the whole way down. But it was nice to have my truck because we could easily put all the presents for everyone in the back! Plus, I could “mark” Steve’s house on my nav system… I NEVER remember how to get to his house! So that was nice…

My adventures took a down-turn at Christmas dinner. *sigh* 'Course, they're funny, but of course not at THE TIME. Since I was in my Church clothes still for dinner, I didn't have a place to put my truck keys, so clipped them to my purse (usually clip them to my Levis belt loop). After I had helped to unload all the presents and food, but before I could get back to the truck to get my purse in the truck, Derek, like a good kid, LOCKED the truck for me. AAAGGGGHHHHH! So there sat my keys on my purse locked in the truck on the front seat.

Okay, I have a Tundra. The guy who came out from Auto Club took one look at my truck and said "no can do". Tundras you just can't get into! Well, great; comforting thought that no one can break in, but how do *I* get in, huh?

It's pouring rain by now. The Auto Club guy and I were literally soaked to the skin trying to get SOMEthing inside the cab to reach the keys to push the button on them to unlock the truck. In the meantime, in my brother's quiet, upscale neighborhood on this festive holiday, as soon as the wire breached the air inside the cab, my truck went majorly ballistic. *sigh* so embarrassing...

Everyone was done eating by the time I re-entered, sopping wet, but jubilant with my purse in hand!

Okay, so that was Christmas... on to our trip...