This year we traveled for the Christmas holiday to see our family in the Midwest.  Two years ago when we traveled at Christmas we got snowed in at my Grandma Burton’s house for an extra couple of days, so we weren’t sure what this trip would bring us.  As it turns out, we were pleasantly surprised by the weather – we didn’t have any ice or snow to deal with.

We spent this first half of our week-long trip in Lawrence, KS at Mom Reid’s house.  We arrived on December 23rd after a long day of traveling.  Grant seemed to quite enjoy riding on the shuttle buses, the elevators, the escalators and the airplanes.  He seemed pleased with our choice of rental car too.

The next day, we went to a Christmas Eve service at the West Campus of First United Methodist Church.  It was a fun, family oriented service so no one seemed to mind Grant not using his “inside voice” when he said, “Where’s Uncle Chuck?!”.  After the service we walked to the playground on the property of the church where we had a good laugh after a couple of us adults showed why playground equipment should be left to the kids.  After barely avoiding injuries at the playground, we returned to Mom Reid’s house for supper.

On Christmas Day, we awoke to find that Santa had found us and left Grant a stocking full of fun things.

After we opened the presents and cleaned up, we drove across town to Aunt Laura and Uncle Chucks house for presents and dinner.  Dispensing of presents was quickly taken care of and people spread out throughout the house while awaiting dinner to be completed.   Grant enjoyed playing with Stella and getting her to kiss him by blowing on her.

While Aunt Sharon prepared a wonderful meal of duck, Grant played with one of his new toys and then watched a toy train go around the Christmas tree.  They also spent some time playing in the basement.

And then dinner was ready and we all sat down to eat.  But not before putting on our party hats.

But Grant’s favorite part of Christmas Day was his discovery of the dog door.  What began as a simple curiosity blossomed into an obsession.  By the end of the day Carol and I had spent large chunks of time standing in the backyard while he pretended to be a puppy and crawled in and out of the door.  I believe his second favorite part of the day was the tree house that Alyssa and Mason have out in the yard.  We spent a fair amount of time in that too.

We took advantage of the nice weather and took a family picture outside.

The day after Christmas, the gals went shopping and the guys went to The Booth Family Hall of Athletics to check out the sports museum and championship trophies.  While there, we all tested our vertical jump and confirmed that white men indeed can’t jump.

On the 27th,  Grant and Nana performed a duet on the piano,  and then we headed to Beatrice, Nebraska to visit the Dungan side of the family.

My brother and his wife had already arrived in Beatrice.  We had supper and then got the present opening under way.  After all presents had been opened, Grant and Pa read some books together.

After reading books, Grant and Gramma went into the dining room to work on a project.  They made “ants on a log” from celery, peanut butter and raisins.  Grant enjoyed the project and was very pleased when we all tried a bite of the log.

On December 28th, we met some other family members in Lincoln for lunch.  My Grandma Burton rode to Lincoln with my cousin Heather and her family and then my Uncle Rick and his family met us there.  Grant and Emma (Heather’s daughter) rekindled their friendship from two Christmases ago and enjoyed talking to each other at the table.  Upon our return to Beatrice, Grandma and Grant worked on another project while Pa and Carol played bowling on the Wii.  Grant and Gramma made bird feeders out of pine cones, peanut butter and bird seed (peanut butter is similar to duct tape in that it has many uses).

The next day, our last full day in Nebraska, was so nice that we were able to take Grant to a park to play.   A bit of rain moved in and cut short our time, but it was nice to get to play outside for a while.   In Florida it isn’t uncommon to have temperatures near 60, but it definitely wasn’t expected in Nebraska.

Grant enjoyed hanging out with his Uncle Andrew and Aunt Alicyn while doing a scavenger hunt to find a present and decorating another gift.

We were able to spend a bit of time with Alicyn’s father and brothers on the evening of the 29th at her older brother Aric’s house.  It was nice to see them and their growing family.  Their older son, Zane, and Grant had a great time playing together with an exercise ball (seen in the video below).  Their younger son, Caliber, wasn’t sure what to think of Grant and kept his distance.

On the 30th of December we packed up our suitcases and loaded up and prepared ourselves for a LONG day of travel.  We left Beatrice at around 1:30 CT and did not climb into our beds in Gainesville until 2:30 am ET.  Luckily we had a weekend to recover before going back to work on January 3rd.   And we were able to see in the new year with Mom Reid since she had stopped at our house on her way to her Florida house.

We had a wonderful Christmas trip.  We could not have asked for better weather and we were so glad that we were able to see so many family members this trip. Here is a video which shows some of the fun we had.