Hello hello!! Happy Christmas Eve!! By the time you read this, I will hopefully be in Chicago. [Edit: I made it!! It was a rough landing but made it] Well I left yesterday, so I sure hope so, but writing this post up from the airport as I wait for 2.5 hours. Yes 2.5 hours. See, I decided to take the train to the airport since my flight was supposed to leave at 10am and I figured that if I drove I would still be caught in the rush hour traffic and with the rainy weather, we all know that traffic is even slower then. Plus by taking the train they didn’t even make me pay extra for the next zone with my train pass so that was very nice. Basically I save nearly $70 that I would have spent on parking.

I gave myself a 30 min cushion with the trains taking an early one and then still made the earlier airport train as it was perfectly a few minutes late. The only thing was that once I had arrived at my train station, I received an email that my flight was about an hour delayed. So make that an hour and a half cushion. At least I didn’t have to worry about rushing right?

So I get to the airport and there isn’t even a line for Southwest! There were huge lines for other airlines but not Southwest. Check my bag, go to security and fly through there in 5 minutes, hardly a line there either. So now I’m through security with 2.5 hours before my flight leaves. From my apartment doorstep, taking 2 trains (since I changed in the city) and checking my bag and getting through security this only took 1 hr 15 min. Crazy fast!! I can only hope that as I write this and watch the cloudy rainy weather outside that we have a good flight. Chicago is of course calling for thunderstorms and wind this afternoon which had my flight left on time, we would have pretty much arrived right when the storms were going to begin, but now could be arriving mid storm, which I don’t like the sounds of.

Anyway my parents don’t know I’m coming home. I told my sister on Sunday (of course I booked the flight a few weeks ago, right after Thanksgiving, before my car windshield decided to crack…). So my sister’s plan is that I show up at dinner. She is bringing her boyfriend over and making dinner. My family rarely eats together for a family meal but my sister wants us to act semi normal for her boyfriend lol. Little do they know that I am going to show up. I am hoping to have my friend take a video of me ringing the doorbell and showing up, even though I still have keys to the house. I checked with my sister to see if they changed the locks because I know they are planning to replace the front door of the house because it is old and our current lock apparently doesn’t fit in new doors. That would be the only reason. I don’t really think they are trying to keep me out, but who knows how much longer they will have the house anyway. They have been talking about selling for the last year, just hasn’t happened yet.

Anyway, the other day, Heather wrote about her Christmas traditions. The only tradition my family really has is getting together with my cousins who live in Wisconsin and having a Christmas dinner, which is basically Thanksgiving round 2 because we cook a turkey and all the Thanksgiving related foods. My sister doesn’t really like turkey so one year my aunt got a small ham, so we could have the Christmas ham tradition. Then we open presents and chat for a while. 

Besides that, when I was little, my own tradition, was to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night to check if Santa arrived. I would always pretty much go to bed at 9pm Christmas eve, because the sooner I fell asleep the sooner Santa would be here. But I usually woke up in the middle of the night, had my flashlight in the drawer by my bed and knew where every little creak in the floor was to avoid in my house. I would tip toe downstairs and see if my stocking was filled and if it was I would go back upstairs and wake up my sister and have her come down. We’d spend a few minutes looking around at our presents, sometimes moving a few so that my presents were on one side and my sister’s on the other. I really don’t know how my parents did it, because sometimes I would come downstairs at midnight, my parents asleep in bed and Santa didn’t come yet. That’s what made me believe so long. Plus my parents got presents from Santa too. So sometimes I woke up twice to check. My parents claim they never knew we did this. We told them a couple years ago.

Christmas morning I would wake up super early. I am a morning person after all. It would probably be like 7am. I would wake up my parents and my mom would try to fit in a shower before opening gifts. Oh the torture of waiting that long!! Seriously she would spend nearly an hour showering and getting dressed. I would usually start the morning with a  piece of chocolate from my stocking and open presents for a while before grabbing a snack of a bowl of cereal. Then my dad would make pancakes. For many years, my dad also taped Christmas morning on his video camera. Though I can’t say we have watched many of them. Sometime I need to get someone to combine highlights from our home videos.

Today is Christmas Eve and my family doesn’t really do anything for Christmas Eve, but I plan to get to a barre class in Evanston in the morning and then I don’t know what. Maybe search for a salad recipe to add variety to Christmas dinner with my cousins (who will also be surprised I am here). I haven’t been home for a holiday since before I moved in 2013 so I guess it’s nice to get home for one. All my presents were shipped to me which is better since then I don’t have to fit them in my suitcase.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I rarely use this laptop and don’t have any on here.

Wishing everyone a Happy Holiday!!

I will recap my trip next week. I can’t believe there is just a week and a day left in the year!!