I have only recently begun to emerge from my hibernation after a fun (and food!) filled week of holiday festivities. I was gone long enough for it to feel weird to sit here again at my desk and attempt to be productive. Code doesn't come as easily as it did a week ago, and I've had to stop and actively remember the names of things that usually roll off my fingertips onto the computer. I'm happy for this break in the rhythmn, though. And I'm thankful for the new office coffeemaker that makes single servings of decaf Hazelnut coffee. Yum.

Adam and I started out on our holiday adventures on Christmas Eve, when we flew to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with his family. It was fun to get a peek into another family's holiday traditions, and I was really grateful and moved at how much I was included. There was even a stocking over the mantle with my name on it! :) I had fun jumping into The Great Christmas What Time Shall We Wake Up debate between the kids and the adults, a discussion I had often as a kid.

Christmas morning was a blur of candy and chocolate and stockings and presents and over-excited puppies. We headed over to Adam's dad's place for an amazing homemade breakfast - where I discovered the wonderful combination of queso and scrambled eggs - and then back for an excellent Christmas dinner. So much food in so little time! No sooner had we finished our dinner than it was time to catch our flight to Dallas.

We would have made it to Dallas if our flight weren't cancelled. The ticketing agent (a real gem of a woman) told us we'd be lucky to fly out of Philadelphia before Wednesday. There were a lot of frustrated people in the airport that night who had been there longer, or whose flights had been cancelled for reasons other than a sick-out, or who had lost their luggage, but it was still hard to accept the very real possibility that I would miss Christmas entirely.

So we waited in lines, waited on the phone, waited in more lines. And, with a stroke of luck, we managed to get on a flight early the next morning, plus a voucher for a night's stay at a hotel.