Coming Home to Winter

The trip home from our Christmas adventure was fairly uneventful. That is, as soon as we made it on the plane. We had a few minor mishaps before then.

They say mothers lose their brain when they have a child. I don't know if it is age or fatherhood, but I am starting to lose mine too. I have always prided myself in my airport security savvyness, laughing at the casual travelers as they go back and forth through the metal detectors 12 times before they realize they are wearing a huge belt buckle. But this time it was me being laughed at.

For the longest time, I have traveled with my trusty brown Eddie Bauer duffel bag as my only carry on, dutifully placing my shoes, my coat, and my computer in the provided bins. I would empty my pockets of anything metal long before I reached the security lines and I wouldn't wear clothing that was too baggy.

With a new baby, the days of one carry on are gone. After I put the stroller, car seat, car seat base, camera bag, quart sized bag with her medicines, small duffel bag with breakable presents, shoes, Kelly's jacket, Kelly's shoes, and diaper bag through the x-ray machine, things started coming back to me one at a time...

"Uh, sir, do you have a computer in this bag?" Doh! Forgot about the laptop. Rescan.

"Is there a water bottle in this bag?" Shoot. Yes. We were supposed to empty that before we got to the airport. Rescan.

And a new one for me: "Do you have a summer sausage in this bag? We need to put it through the machine by itself." Yes, my mom surprised me with one of my favorite foods in all the world--a ginormous salami from Salumi Salami in Seattle. Apparently those are dangerous items to someone.

So, after the salami made its solo journey down the x-ray conveyor belt, I was free to walk through the metal detector. "Sir, since you left your sweater on, I'm going to have to pat you down." Ugh! Forgot about that one too. And all of this as Kelly's whole family watched, probably snickering at us amateurs, especially as I am being manhandled.

Finally through security, we still had some time to kill, so we were able to get Audrey to sleep and snap a few pictures. At some point, Kelly handed me her ID and asked that I put it back in her wallet. I opened up the diaper bag (which doubles as Kelly's new purse) and there was no wallet to be found. After a few minutes of frantic searching, I made my way back to the security checkpoint.

Long story short (if this could be considered short), the wallet found its way into a garbage bin and some nice sanitation engineer found it when he was emptying the bags. The wallet made its way into a police officer's hands and they were just about to make an announcement when I walked up. The money was there, as were the credit cards. We're still not quite sure what happened.

The plane ride was a piece of cake. The car ride home included a fairly big meltdown, requiring a stop on the side of the road to calm everyone down. But, we arrived home in one piece.

Our time since we've been home has involved having our own small Christmas celebration, unpacking, shoveling snow, unpacking, shoveling snow, unpacking, shoveling snow, etc. We're still not finished with the unpacking or the shoveling. In fact, today we reached a milestone--the snow shoveled from our driveway now reaches 3/4 of the height of our neighbor's fence. Yes, we've seen our fair share of snow this winter and the flakes are still coming down as I write this. Luckily one of the presents under the Salt Lake Christmas tree was an adorable winter hat from Grandma Vicki.