Growing Up Reissy Cup: Christmas Vacation: Part 1 Reiss family

Our KY Christmas trip was our longest since we moved to California in 2013. We left Oakland for Louisville on Dec. 17th and returned January 5th. It was much cheaper to fly on these dates during the week and not as close to Christmas, but it required Emily to miss four days of kindergarten. (Basically, Emily is a "delinquent" now. The school sent us our first truancy notice when we arrived back into town. Yikes!) The flights went as well as possible for that long of a trip with three children five and under. The hardest parts about a Christmas trip (vs. summer trips) is packing and managing gifts to/from KY and packing a winter wardrobe which takes up a lot of luggage space. I buy as much as I can and ship directly from online stores to KY, but we still have to get things back home. It really cramps Santa's style to have size limits on what we can reasonably do.

Christmas is the one time of year that so long as we live in California, I can never make it "as it should be" in my mind. At this point in my life, I pictured us owning a nice home in KY somewhere and the kids waking up in their own house to the wonder filled joy that SANTA came to our house!!! I see myself making fun breakfasts for them and having plenty of time to do special celebrations locally with each set of grandparents. I see us crashing in our own beds at night. Nowhere in my mind, does my ideal Christmas include packing and/or shipping loads of luggage and gifts, sleeping in our parents' homes, stressful times with three kids at the airport, flying cross country, illnesses contracted from the flight, managing time zone differences and the havoc that causes with their schedules, and spending as much as a good vacation on travel just to "go home." I realize that I may sound complaining and ungrateful, but this is the reality of traveling so far at Christmas. Our parents are wonderful hosts. I know they work tirelessly to put us up for a week and buy beautiful, special gifts for us all. They are generous and always helpful with the children. We are grateful and thankful and lucky. We want to see them and our extended families. Of course we do! We miss them and love them so much. It's just that I also want to make memories with my little family in my own home. Do our own little traditions. When we travel for Christmas, I feel like I'm just trying to survive it all. I realize that this year was especially difficult because Anna Kate was just a couple of months old. It will be a tiny bit easier when I don't have two in diapers!

And so there is no way to make Christmas "right" in my mind. If we stay in California, we avoid the stress and hassle and expense of traveling, but then I think we would feel sad to not be with our loved ones. We either deal with the downsides of traveling and not being in our own house or we deal with missing out on the special times with our loved ones. That's the choice. And I wish I didn't have to make that choice every year. I would say that for most of the year, I LOVE living in California. I love our climate, all that there is to do and see, the beauty of coastal living, our friends and church and neighborhood and that my husband is so happy and fulfilled with his job. But, I really miss that we no longer live in KY at Christmastime and Derby week. I miss the peak of autumn color and country little pumpkin patches. I love a few weeks of hot summer fun and swimming at Lakeside. The homesickness is worse for me at those times of year and at each child's birthday when we want to share those special early birthdays with grandparents.

Even with the very real difficulties of traveling, I would be remiss not to say that we were blessed with the gift of time with our families and friends and many memories were made. We are thankful that Jeremy has a generous vacation policy at work and I'm able to be completely flexible while staying home with the children to allow for these long trips home each year. During our Louisville visit, Jeremy and I were able to attend a Christmas party with his former co-workers. We had appetizers and drinks one evening with Jeff and his new girlfriend. Dinkney, Poppy, Emily and Jeremy enjoyed a special IMAX movie treat to see The Polar Express. We were able to attend a regular Sunday church as well as the special candlelight Christmas Eve service. Jen, Ed, and Elizabeth also were visiting from NC during part of our time in Louisville and it was great to see them, too.

We took lots of photos. Here's a few highlights from our time in Louisville with Jeremy's folks and I'll make a separate post for our time with my folks in BG.

Decorating Dinkney and Poppy's tree

Their reward for being good little decorators.

Caleb called the apple cider "apple spider." It was so cute that we all adopted the saying!

Dinkney with her little kitchen helpers

Celebrating my birthday with my three littles. I chose a dutch caramel apple pie from the Homemade Ice cream and Pie Kitchen store--a Louisville original!

Sweet sisters and morning bed heads. :)

Chilling with cousin EB after church

The kids were all dressed up for Sunday church, but of course it was nearly impossible to get a good photo of all three together.

This was the best we could get...

And it quickly went downhill from there!

Christmas Eve jammies

Christmas Eve with the family and the ONLY photo I have of all five of us over the whole break? What?

Santa came for Elizabeth, Emily, and Caleb! Lucky kiddos! Anna Kate got a stocking, but beyond that Santa didn't leave much for her this year. ;)

The kids loved their tent. Luckily, it could break down easily and fit in one box for travel back home to CA.

Morning coffee and a sleepy baby girl Christmas morning

Caleb loved going through his stocking.

Emily practicing her reading skills with Poppy

Peek-a-Boo!

Oh, look at that face! She was so happy and pleased with her "Emily" American Girl doll from Dinkney and Poppy! Her grandmother bought it years ago and was just waiting for her to be the perfect age to take care of it.