Christmas! The States! A day of travel with three children six and under...ouch. The day before our trip...a Belgian friend: "London is fogged in. Aren't you flying thru London?" Uhhh, yeah, we are...A phone call, a flight cancellation, a new flight, a car ride to Brussels, and we're on our way...to a layover in London...Perfect for my Christmas shopping for Amy (and her for me)...a $60 bagel lunch for the 5 of us..."Let's get some sleep on the 8 hour flight to Chicago"...doubtful, at least for those of us over the age of 6...I have too much adrenaline going now but if I listen to the Ipod maybe I can sleep...OK, maybe not...airplane seats...Amy and I are a good team when we travel..."you take Mackenzie to start...I'll finish"...unless, of course, she sleeps forever or just wants mom (like she usually does)...I'll hang with Taylor and Dylan who want mom's attention too but are a great deal more reasonable than the 2 year old. Our children endure a lot...of course they're sleeping now, unlike Amy and me...irrelevant...Chicago soon...last plane change...we'll sleep after we see grandma Rosie...Chicago...American English everywhere...a train ride to a different terminal...it was a bus in London...we're covering all the bases...Quote from the London to Chicago flight, "Flight attendants (plural) prepare for landing." Quote from the Chicago to Green Bay flight, "Flight attendant (singular) prepare for landing." We're in the upper midwest of America because our only flight attendant sounds like she starred in "Fargo." "Yaaa Hey Dare." Welcome home....or close enough to it. Rosie at the airport...a great surprise...rental car....no narrow european streets...nice...American strip malls...convenient but ugly. The first night we had Rosie to ourselves...not common with the McMonagle family...soon the house would be crowded.
Next day...even with no snow on the ground, spending Christmas Eve with their cousins was nearly perfect for Taylor, Dylan and Mackenzie...the glitch...Dylan had been sick since we arrived in Green Bay. Sadly, this was just the beginning.
Christmas Day...Curiously, Santa combined the traditions of the three families staying with grandma Rosie, thus no difficult questions arose. Soon everyone started arriving for Christmas dinner...a football game broke out between a bunch of "has beens," and also Jacob, and Adam. As expected in these sorts of games the 6 year old gets the attention of the old guys, and the teenager gets somewhat ignored. This is not because we like six year olds better than teenagers, we just don't want to admit that the teenager is now as fast as, and soon to be, faster than us...thus we pretend it's not happening. Dinnertime arrived and some of that achy feeling I had was from football, and most from the virus that would play a major part in many of our lives over the next day and a half. It was a great family gathering...catching up with everyone (I remember John and Fred in particular)...unfortunately my white blood cells were circling the wagons...Christmas was an early night for me.
Leno would have some good material for what happened over the next day or so...best not to dwell on it too much. As I look back now, I have fond memories of this past Christmas...fifteen years of my life have been spent near Mac, Kathy, and Jules, so it was nice to be spend time with them after not seeing them for 6 months. On the lighter side, I look back and laugh at: Mac pretending to like the strong Belgian beer I brought...a gift for Amy surviving 5000 miles unscathed only to break in the last 10 meters as I pulled it from it's hiding place...sitting in the bathroom in the wee hours awaiting the inevitable...a knock at the door...it was Julie with Lexi, who's inevitable trumped mine by about one minute...there are so many McMonagles that one must wait in line to be sick even if it's 4 in the morning!
The day after Christmas...recovery, relaxation, conversation...quarantine. The next day I'd catch a ride with the O'Hallorans back to Minneapolis, leaving Amy and the kids behind to continue their quality time with grandma Rosie and the cousins.
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