Holy Hectic Holiday!

Wanna know what the VanHorns did over the holidays? Here goes.

First, we had our own dang Christmas:

Then, we took some airplanes, plural, through San Francisco and Chicago (with 2 kids, did I mention that part?)

on Christmas Eve to make it to Columbus, OH in time for Christmas day with my parents.

The next day we drove my mom's car 11 hours south

to Charleston, SC (thanks mom! sorry Sage puked in your car) for a hotel Christmas with Erik's family:

In the morning we all took taxis to the Norwegian Majesty for a week-long cruise. Yep, a cruise. It had been a year in the planning and despite the fact that the economy is crumbling, we went to live like kings (ok, more like pirates) for a week out in the ocean.

First we stopped in Great Stirrup Cay:

The next day we went to Nassua, Bahamas:

Then Freeport, Bahamas:

There were also a few days when we just stayed on the ship out at sea. We didn't get many pictures of ship life because we spent most of that time chasing a baby down rocking halls and corridors, getting lost, trying to get kids to sleep, watching goofy song and dance shows, or eating at one of their many grazing stations. The best parts were dinners with Erik's family and watching Sage hang out with his Grammy and PopPop and cousins and letting his cousins watch McKenna while Erik and I sipped rum (not their expensive ship drinks, but our own that we smuggled on like pirates (thanks dad!).

New Years:
Happy 50th anniversary Grammy and PopPop!

The next morning we docked in Port Canaveral, Florida, where we took a taxi. . . to rent a car. . . to drive to Orlando. . . to go to Disney World! (free, since Erik is still working there until February.) Whee! We only had 6 hours but we explored as much as we could.

then drove the rental back to Port Canaveral, got a taxi back to the ship and made it back in the nick of time. Here we all are on the last night:

We spent one more day at sea and then Saturday we were back in Charleston to lug our luggage through customs and into a taxi to my mom's car and drive 11 hours back to Ohio (thanks mom! sorry McKenna puked in your car).

Next up, airplanes, plural,


and now we're back home. Whew! If you're not completely exhausted you can see more pictures in my Flickr album.

tap tap. . . Is this thing on?

I'm back! I think. We'll see. It was a nice little break living the non-blogging life - no pressure to get a post in before midnight, no having to upload and resize pictures, no taking the time to find the right words, no worrying if I'm coming across as show-offy or stupid. I forgot what it was like to just live and not have to package everything into interesting little paragraphs accompanied by neatly cropped and color-corrected pictures.

But now I have no record of the things we did this month. Like 4th of July fireworks at the CBS Studios:

or our hike:
to this place:
???

or the trip we took to see the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center :

or how I volunteered at the Handmade Nation art auction at the Poketo studio.

I never told you about the countless playgrounds, library excursions and playdates we had:
or the homeschooling we did:

(. . . or tried to do. . . he's a bit of a daydreamer.)

I didn't do a big writeup of Comic-Con 2008:

or tell you about our stay on Coronado Island:

and our visit to the Wild Animal Park:

Sage's hair is getting long. So is McKenna's:

Well, not that long, or purple, but wispy and blond. But it's there, in case you were worried.

I'm still here too, in case you were wondering. Thanks for sticking with me. I now return you to your regularly updated patchwork world. . .

Joshua Tree weekend

Every few months Erik rallies the troops and insists we take off for a weekend excursion. Last weekend we went camping in Joshua Tree California. I have to admit I wasn't excited about spending time in the desert. I guess I'm just biased toward things that are green. However, I'm learning that dusty, prickly, and rocky can be beautiful too. See?

Erik and Sage climbed rocks:

While McKenna and I watched from below.

We explored caves:

and marveled at the alien landscape:


At night as the kids slept in the tent, Erik and I sat around the campfire (drank beer) and remembered camping excursions we've been on before - breaking down at the KOA in hicktown Florida, meeting Tibetan monks in the Redwoods, taking Koko to see fireworks at Mt. Rushmore on the 4th of July, getting lost in the dunes at Cape Hatteras, waking up to a Javelina outside our tent in Big Bend Texas and seeing 3 bears outside our tent in Yellowstone (edit - I mean Yosemite. After a while the trips start to blur together). Through it all, this radio has provided our soundtrack:

Our tent is still holding up too, though it seems to be getting smaller. Ten years ago we were getting ready to embark on our month-long trip "Out West" and back home to West Virginia. Who would've thunk that ten years later we'd be back on the west coast because we live here and that same tent would be housing our two sleeping kids. Time flies.

But staring into a fire never gets old.