In the name of "Cheese!"

My last blog post was December 23rd...before Christmas.  Before the whirlwind of our Christmas adventure began.  We decided to just kind of chill over the holidays.  We weren't making a schedule.  We didn't commit to anything (sorry everyone!).  If we made it somewhere, great.  If not, no worries.

Instead of rushing out the door on Wednesday after work, we relaxed when we got home.  We drove around and looked at Christmas lights.  We delivered cookies to our neighbors.  When we woke up the next morning, we weren't in a frenzy, but we worked steadily all day at packing, wrapping, prepping for our week away from home.  (For an extra level of difficulty, Santa didn't come to our house before Christmas this year like he has in years passed.  So we had to account for that too.) 

As a result of our casual efforts at getting out the door, we made it to Sylvania for the Mock Christmas Eve feast just in time.  No worries.  (Well, *I* was worried, but I think I did better than I would have if I hadn't been making a conscious effort not to be stressed.  How's that for convoluted?)  We had a wonderful meal, a fantastic visit with family.  In fact, that family was blessed with so many babies in the past year, I thought, "Hey, I should totally get the camera out and take pictures."  I went back to the bedroom, pulled the camera out of the bag, and flipped the power on.  Nothing happened.  Battery dead.  No big deal.  We have two battery chargers and a back-up battery.  Except they weren't in the camera bag.  In fact, after I thought about it, I remembered that they were sitting side by side on our kitchen counter.  In Warner Robins.  Two and a half hours away.

I cried.  I literally cried over a battery.  A million thoughts ran through my head.  It's Sarah's first Christmas.  Tomorrow is Christmas Day!  We're about to go to Maryland.  *Nothing* is open tonight (and certainly not in Sylvania) that would have a charger or battery for our camera.  How could I forget the chargers?!  I delivered the news to Sam.

We stewed over it for a couple of hours.  The Mock crowd dwindled.  We chatted with Mrs. Lisa.  Ben & Abby wound down for the night.  We gave them their Dr. Seuss jammies to wear on Christmas morning.  (Love those things!)  Ben started turning out all of the lights so Santa wouldn't skip Grammie's house.  (I do believe it's the first time in his life he's ever *wanted* to go to bed.)  It had started to sprinkle outside, so we unloaded the presents and the rest of our "stuff".  Sam kept his shoes on and said, "I'll be back."

My knight in shining armor was going to get the charger.  But not without me.  And if I was coming, little Sarah was coming. 

This was a very long way of saying this - we drove 5 hours on Christmas Eve (returning to Sylvania at 4am) in a torrential downpour to retrieve a battery charger so we could take pictures like this:

 

So was it worth it?  OF COURSE it was!  Because for every 10 bad pictures we took (like those up there), we ended up with a gem (like the one below).  And now we have a camera card full of priceless memories. 

A Happy, Happy 2010 to You All!  (Or y'all as my southern friends may prefer!)

(If any of you would like to peruse our Christmas pictures, you can do so here and here.)