I'll be home for Christmas

We are getting in the Christmas spirit around here!  Bieber Creeper has been busy.  He showed up at the door the day the girls and I left for Illinois with a bag packed, so we took him with us.  He hasn't been up to too much mischief on the trip, but who knows what he will do once he settles in?!  We did catch him narfing down one of Ms. Sarah's robot chocolates this morning.....

All three of the girls' Girl Scout troops had a holiday party together.  This is especially convenient for us for it all to be done together!  They did a lot of cool stuff!  They played, made cards for nursing home residents, made ornaments, ate, played games, and had a blast with new friends.  One of the games happened to be bobbing for donuts in which Gwyn and Celee were pitted against each other.  For some reason Lyla was afraid to play that game, but she did get into the holiday clothes relay.  It was really neat for them to be somewhere together but also with their own individual set of friends.  And I got to pop in and out of each group and spend time with all of them.  I even got to have conversations with other adults, so it was a win-win.

Monday the girls and I headed out to Illinois.  The plan was to go to the house and clean anything that needed to be cleaned, paint the front door, rake the yard, and pick up some things we left.  And of course we had to see some friends!  We got to stop in Indianapolis and have dinner with the Cortez's, whom we hadn't seen since they moved in the summer.  Lyla was especially excited to play with her bud Teagan.  They always seem to pick up right where they left off.
We finally got to be house at 10pm and crashed into our sleeping bags.  Tuesday was not as productive as I had planned, but we did drop off Christmas gifts to people, got the oil changed in the van, had lunch with our Aardsma friends, painted the front door, had a super play date with 5 kids including the Davidsons after school, and went to have dinner and watch bad 80s Christmas specials with the Arnold's and the soon-to-be Meilike's.  Oh, and I did laundry and cleaned the house.  I guess I was pretty productive, I just didn't get to rake the yard.  So Wednesday morning we packed everyone and everything that would fit into the van and headed south.  Did I mention that we've got the cat and the dog with us?
For the 5 years we lived in Champaign I always wanted to visit Coahokia Mounds outside of St.Louis.  The girls even had a lesson about be Mississippian Culture in North America in their history book last week, so I decided it was now or never.  I doubt we'll be driving south from Champaign any time soon, so we took the detour.  It was really awesome!  It's so weird to me that historical sites like Coahokia aren't a bigger deal to people.  It was really amazing to the girls and I that such a huge and complicated city stood there 1000 years ago.  It's almost surreal that there's this ancient city there with normal roads cutting through the main plaza.  But the interpretive center was very nice and we learned a lot.  We got to see a short film about the mounds and then we trekked over to the Temple Mound - to climb it of course.  It's incredible that it took almost 300 years to construct and the city stood dominating the Mississippians for over 500 years!  The girls also got to see the Arch in the distance from the top, so that was cool.  That's another St.Louis thing we never went to see.  And the City Museum.  One day...

So that added quite a bit of time to our trip to my parents' house.  (Also Lyla woke up with silly putty smashed in her hair.  At least I did have some hair shine jell to get it out with, but that did take a while and we left Champaign much later than planned). We rolled in to Decatur a little after 10.  Since then the girls have gotten to "bungee jump" at the mall and have a fancy tea party complete with dancing in the "ballroom."  I did get some really sweet videos of Papaw Pete teaching each girl to foxtrot and mambo.

Today since the world didn't end, we get to pick up Jason from the airport!  Who knows what mischief we may get into in Jackson.  I still have some last minute gifts to find.  And we might take advantage of our free membership to the children's museum.  We're home and we're about to all be back together and it Christmas and we get to sleep late (if the cat will let us) and the fun is just beginning.  I am so very thankful for my family and a van that can take us on long trips and money for Jason to fly and that we get to come home for Christmas no matter where we actually live.