Well, belated. Lille Julaften (December 23rd) is Little Christmas Eve - when lots of Norwegian families decorate their Christmas trees. My family can never wait that long and sure enough when I got home on Thursday morning, not only was the tree up and completely decorated but there were TWO trees! My mom pulled mine out from storage and set it up too. It was so great to come home to that! And my family!!
I've decided after this trip home to NEVER again take the red eye bus unless absolutely necessary. Right as I was walking up to the bus stop, a bus was pulling away and I realized the entire sidewalk was abandoned. I normally take the 6:40am bus and there are always other people around. This time it was the 1:15am bus - the last one out of the city until around 6am. Guess I was the first one there. About 15 minutes later a French couple came and mentioned their credit card was charged but never got send the confirmation number and the website was down. (That's a set up for later.) It's FREEZING out. Definitely should have worn at least another layer of clothes and another set of gloves. Wow.
So the bus finally pulls up and I hand my number to the guy. He checks me off, I throw my suitcase in the luggage area and get on the bus. First one on, pick of any seat. Sweet. Behind me, though, I can hear the French couple arguing with the bus guy. He's telling them they have to go on stand by and they aren't having that. Next thing I know they've boarded the bus and sit in front of me. The bus guy announces to everyone else in line that no one can get on the bus until they get off. I was just out there - I know how cold everyone in line is. I ALMOST asked if I should get off the bus because I felt so bad but I was still shivering so I decided I'd only get off if the bus guy told me to. He was threatening to call the cops, and turned out he did. This older gentleman who was in line behind the couple stood in the doorway and said "I know you guys want to go to Washington. We all want to go but they won't let us on the bus until you get off and we're all so cold." That was actually enough! The couple got off the bus to the cheers of everyone in line right as the cops pulled up. Sadly, they never were able to get back on. I hope they managed to get where they were going. They were nice to talk to in line for awhile.
Things don't end there! The heat was so low on the bus that I continued shivering and couldn't get warm! It was so hard to try to sleep. When I finally did start to doze off, the lights were turned on full blast and the driver announced we were at our first of two stops in Philadelphia. Seemed like everytime I started to fall asleep we were at our next stop. That's cool though because each stop was one closer to DC. (Normally the bus just stops in Baltimore, and at Thanksgiving it went straight to DC.) Finally we get to DC, I grab my suitcase and head to the metro station to head out to Vienna. The metro was not crowded at all which was so nice because after I switched to the orange line, I got a great seat and was able to rest for the ride to Vienna. When I got to Vienna, Dad was waiting for me with a big smile and hug and fantastically heated car. Poor guy woke up at 4am to come get me! What a great Dad! It was nice getting home so early and having the whole day in Virginia. Got a haircut and ran some other errands... I drove! That was fun.
My sister and brother-in-law are spending Christmas in Buffalo with his family but they decided to host a cousin dinner at their place on Lille Julaften. The two of them, me and three of our cousins who moved here from Detroit a few years ago, Chris, Melissa and Joe (well, Chris still lives there but came here for Christmas) had pizza and hung out at The Burrow for hours. SOOOO. MUCH. FUN. We shared some great stories and memories of our Grammy who we all still really, really miss. She had this great innocense about her that sometimes turned out to be hysterically funny so we had a lot of gut busting laughs. I had to be the party pooper, unfortunately, a little after 11 because I hadn't really slept in close to 40 hours and I was trying so hard to stay awake that my eyes were crossing.
Since Lolly and Greer were heading to Buffalo around 10 this morning, we decided to celebrate Christmas Eve morning together. The two of them came over to my parents house (they live just through the woods) and we had this FANTASTIC french toast casserole breakfast my mom made. SO good and very sweet - my dear mom bought heavy whipping cream instead of half and half and didn't want to go back to the store so she just used it. Love little things like that about her! ANYWAY. We had a great breakfast and exchanged gifts with them. Our family opens one gift at a time so it takes awhile to get through everyone which is actually really nice. I bought my sister Michael Jackson: The Experience for their Wii, partially for me.
See, when I was about 13 my sister bought me Aladdin paper dolls for my birthday because she really wanted them. My dad had taken her shopping for my birthday and she convinced him that I really, really loved them and wanted them. My dad believed her. As soon as I opened them she got really excited and asked if we could play with them right away. Hah. So this year I put a label on this gift to her that said "This is payback for the paper dolls." We all got a great laugh out of it and she's pretty happy to have the game too. While they're in Buffalo I'll be taking care of their cat, Marzipan, and I think she and I will get pretty good at the dance moves while they're gone. Hee hee!
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