I can’t get over how short December felt and how much we managed to cram into it. Thanksgiving was pretty late this year, so I’m sure that’s a big part of the feeling.

We managed to squeeze in a birthday celebration for Sean at the beginning before things got really bonkers. We went to Reale’s for dinner, and, at his request, I made him the same chocolate malt cake that I make every year. We opened gifts at home, and have field tested the new mai tai glasses he got on numerous occasions.

The next week, Maya had not one but TWO jazz band performances. The first was on Monday with the Anderson High School jazz band at the AHS PAC. At this one, Maya managed to play a different instrument in each of three songs. The other was on Wednesday with the Murchison Middle School beginner band. The jazz band were the opening act.

The following Sunday, we managed to sneak in a birthday party for Ian. He wanted to go roller skating again, and he requested a chocolate chip cookie cake, so the planning wasn’t too arduous. A whole pile of kids showed up and it seemed like he had a really good time.

We were finally ready to go home after the party, the parents already feeling the strain of such an action packed December and looking forward to a rest on the couch, possibly with a cold beverage. We hopped in the car, pushed the button to start it (does anyone even *use* keys anymore), and were presented with a blinky dashboard and a pissed off little buzz, but no actual ignition.

We have a battery jump starter apparatus, but it had been living in Sean’s car for a while since it doesn’t get driven enough for the battery to be consistently charged. Plus, we had just replaced my battery within the past year or so, so certainly it wouldn’t need a jump start. And that’s the story of how we took an Uber home from Ian’s birthday party. Sean and I came back and were able to jump the car to get it home. We had the battery replaced, under warranty, the next day.

All of this was particularly galling since I had just had it in the shop for brake work and fresh tires and (of course) an oil change so the car would be ready for our big holiday road trip. Oh well, at least it didn’t die on the road somewhere between Texas and Alabama. It died in the local roller skating rink parking lot instead.

Maya had a big day on the 16th. She’s been putting up with a palate expander for several months now. Finally on this day, she received her clear aligners. They have taken her some getting used to, since she has to take them out to consume anything other than still, unflavored water, and she has to clean the aligners themselves out with soap regularly. But, she’s actually been doing a really good job with them so far.

That same day, Maya’s new clarinet arrived. Why get her a new clarinet instead of an oboe, you might ask? Certainly she’s played oboe longer and (depending on whether or not it’s a good reed day) seems to love it. The thing is, oboes are REALLY expensive. Also, Sean thinks that he too might like to learn to play the clarinet, so it seemed like the right one to have in our house. She couldn’t play it that first day, since it had to acclimate to our temperature, but once she did get to play it, I think she was in love. It sounds much nicer than her school instrument, and I think she can get it to “behave” more consistently than the school clarinet.

Also on the 16th, we took Ian out for his birthday a couple days early. He had been wanting to try a teppanyaki place for a while, but we always put it off in deference to Maya’s fire aversion. This time though, she kindly agreed to go. It’s what he wanted for *his* birthday, after all. We went to Kobe Japanese Steakhouse and watched our talented cook make an onion volcano, crack eggs on his spatula, chuck little bits of rice for willing patrons to catch in their mouths, and slice and dice with rhythmic abandon. They made Ian a little fried rice birthday cake, complete with a candle and presented him with really pretty chopsticks at the end of the meal. It must be a popular birthday choice – counting Ian, there were three birthdays celebrated at our grill alone.

Ian thought he wanted dessert afterwards. Those Japanese steakhouse places feed the heck out of you. For my part, even though I held back, I still felt uncomfortably full. Ian noticed an ice cream place next door. Since it was his birthday, we gave in. The monstrosity they served him looked amazing, but it didn’t take very long at all before he realized the error of his ways.

On the 17th, we headed downtown to the Long Center to watch the Austin Symphony Orchestra provide a live score while the Home Alone movie was shown. Back in November, Maya had seemed very overwhelmed at the idea of having any kind of big to-do for her birthday, so we offered her this experience instead. Despite leaving a full hour before performance time, thanks to the end of rush hour plus holiday traffic (particularly for the Trail of Lights display), we nearly missed it. Luckily, I think they delayed the start a little, so we wound up having time to get parked and seated. The show was great, and we hung around for a bit afterward to enjoy their light tunnel and the misty-topped views of the city before heading home for the night.

Then, on the 18th, Ian’s actual birthday, we headed to Maya’s regular band concert. This was held down at the Austin ISD Performing Arts Center. All told, it took a couple of hours to make it through the concert. Murchison and Anderson each had concert band, symphonic band, and wind ensemble performances. These were peppered with a few middle and high school joint performances.

After all THAT, we headed back home to have our Texas Christmas. Lots of gifts were opened, we all stayed up too late, and tried our best to enjoy the occasion as a happy, well-adjusted family.

The previous week’s schedule was compressed in that way because on the 19th, after the kids spent the day at school and the adults spent the day working, we loaded up the car, gave the cats some goodbye pats, and drove to a hotel in Shreveport to get a jump on our Christmas drive. My memory is that we were all tired, but that the drive was otherwise uneventful. We drove the rest of the way to Homewood the next day, and upon arrival, mostly just hung out at the house decompressing a little from all that driving. Harry and Helen had redone their basement, so we finally got an in-person view of that transformation. It’s amazing – difficult to believe it’s the same place!

During December in Austin, we really didn’t have a lot of time to do extra holiday things, short of getting a tree put up and mostly decorated, so I was delighted when Harry and Helen led us on part of the Wacky Tacky Light Tour they had gone on earlier in the month. The light displays were over the top and a whole lot of fun to go see. I can’t believe the money some of these folks must have sunk into inflatables alone.

My favorite though was the “ditto” house. We drove up to *the* most extravagantly decorated house; the depth of the display and the effort it must have taken were staggering. Their neighbor across the street simply had an arrow of lights pointing toward them along with the word “DITTO.” I loved it.

The next night, we got even more holiday light action. We got to see Glow Wild at the Birmingham Zoo. There weren’t too many live animals to see, but there were light-up animals everywhere. There were normal zoo animals, sure, but there were also a variety of dinosaurs. With yellow eyes that skewed less toward wild and more toward creepy, some of them seemed to have a sinister intent. All told, it was really neat, and we couldn’t have asked for better weather. We even got to see a light up Vulcan!

After the requisite hot chocolate, baked pretzel, and funnel cake, we called it a night at the zoo and went to dinner at Okinawa, which may be the kids’ favorite restaurant in all of Homewood.

The next morning we had our Alabama Christmas celebration. We all gathered in the newly remodeled basement and opened gifts. The kids begrudgingly posed for us in their 6-7 shirts in front of the Christmas tree. We had an excellent feast full of whole food delights. And later on that evening, we saw some more of the Wacky Tacky Light Tour. After all that we mostly hung around enjoying the last bit of each other’s company before heading off again.

Christmas Eve saw us making the relatively short drive from Homewood, AL to Friedheim, MO. We figured traffic might be a little rough, but honestly I don’t remember it being all that bad. Our drive was not noteworthy, and we arrived in Missouri to find that poor Grandpa was sick and sequestering in the bedroom so as not to spread the illness to the rest of us. (Thanks, Grandpa!)

We always seem to need to just unwind a little after a long drive, so that evening was pretty low key, anyway. The kids reacquainted themselves with the toys and crafts in the basement. The grownups rooted through gifts to verify that everything we ordered had shown up.

On Christmas Day, Ian showed up in the kitchen in time to assist Grammy with breakfast. I think Ian might like cooking – he’s been helping more at home too. We spent another day mostly laying low. The kids enjoyed way too much screen time, and the parents enjoyed some down time.

That evening, we went to Sharon and Doug’s house to celebrate Christmas with them. Grandpa still wasn’t feeling 100%, so he wound up missing out. We ate too much food and played lots of games. One of the games, called left-right-and-center, used scratch off lottery tickets as the prize. Ian was delighted to find that he won one of the matches, and more delighted still when his scratch offs actually garnered cash!

The next day, after another giant breakfast, we took a walk down to the pond. The kids were delighted when the neighbor cat came to visit them. And Gus (or some other white goose) hung out for a while.

The kids’ shoes were muddy after the pond walk, so I left them out on the porch so the mud would dry out and would be easier to knock off the shoes. Alas, the next day they were still caked up with moist mud, so before people started arriving to celebrate Missouri Christmas, I spent I don’t know how much time trying to scrub mud from their shoes at the outside tap. At the end of all that, I had semi-clean shoes that were soaked through with water.

Christmas at Grammy and Grandpa’s has an order to it. As people arrive, we all snack on the crazy amount of finger food Grammy has assembled. Then we take all the various permutations of family photos. Since the weather was nice, we actually did photos outside in front of the house, which was a pleasant change. Then we come inside and listen to Grandpa read a story. Then finally the waiting is over and glorious presents start getting handed out in as orderly a fashion as can be managed with that many kids “helping.” Paul displayed an uncanny ability to find gifts with his own name on them!

We played some more crazy games that evening and generally tried to see everyone a little bit before the long drive back to Texas. Maya and Ian got some good time with their cousins, and we managed to catch up at least a little bit.

The next morning, we got a pretty early start. I can’t remember the exact details at this point, but I feel like we were on the road, fully packed, between 8 and 9. Grammy sent us home with extra food and beer, but even with that and all the generous gifts everyone had given us, we didn’t have to struggle too hard to get everything in the car.

The kids are older now, so we can manage our stops for bathroom breaks more efficiently. Plus, several states on our route have a 75 mph speed limit instead of 65 or 70, and over an 800 mile journey, that truly does make a difference. Even with multiple stops for food and gas and a couple of traffic slow-downs, we managed to make the drive in 12-12.5 hours, which is actually really good.

We were glad to be home. Part of it is that we missed our cats and part of it was just that we were ready to relax after such a hectic couple of months, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit to a third reason. Stranger Things. We had been enjoying watching that series with the kids, and a handful of episodes had been released while we were on break, culminating in a final episode that was released on New Year’s Eve.

Over the next few days, we caught up to the big finale. And that is how the Woods family spent New Year’s Eve – hanging out on the couch watching the epic and ultimately satisfying conclusion of a series we all dearly loved. [SPOILER] I, for one, choose to believe Elle is still alive. Perhaps we will visit her in Iceland this summer.