The Kazillion Days of Christmas

What do you do when you have three families to spend the holidays with?

Have four Christmases, that's what. We hadn't done the Smith Holiday Road Trip in two years (John's graduate school schedule made for ~~a good excuse~~ difficult scheduling), but now that his MLS is in the bag, we took the holiday show on the road once again this year.

Our first stop was Stockbridge, MA - the Red Lion Inn, where my mum was stopping over Christmas with our friend-family, a lovely group of fun folk. The inn is also very dog-friendly and we enjoyed walks and communing with the inn's mascots.

I also finished John's Ribby Cardi in time for him to wear it over Christmas week, though the zipper will have to be reinstalled by someone whose sewing skills do not suck ass:

Stockings are the order of the day for this crowd. Big stockings, that get filled with everything from post-its to jewelry:

On Christmas morning, we loaded everything and everyone (human and canine) into the car and headed for John's family in eastern Connecticut. The Smith men demonstrated their usual dignified reserve:

And knitwear seemed to be appreciated by all and sundry:

After a couple of days there, we once again re-packed the car (if you are getting the idea that this is not exactly a restful holiday, you are getting it right) and cruised down to my dad's for a couple of days. He lives in southern Connecticut, so at least we didn't do any backtracking in our schedule for this year. My stepbrother Brian was there, 50 pounds lighter than we had last seen him and looking fantastic (a fine example for us all here in the Smith household...)

My first cable-patterned design, a hat for my dad, went over rather well:

Brian gave me a fantastic photographic toy, a "Lensbaby" - it lets you create very trippy blur effects. We took a walk one morning and played with it extensively:

Brian - day after day after boxing day walk

Brian also proved his professional skills by taking a photo of me unshowered and sans makeup that makes me look better than I have any right to.

"But wait," I hear you cry. "Didn't you say you had four Christmases?" Yup. Aside from John's cardi, we had left all our presents for each other at home. We had the last Christmas last night, where the usual mix of books was graced by my big prezzie from John. A spinning stool. What an enabler I married...

Hope your holidays were merry and bright, and hope you were able to stay put for more than two days together.

ETA: The real Christmas miracle this year? Almost zero traffic the entire trip. Bliss.

Posted: Saturday - December 30, 2006 at 12:59 PM | |