December was another whirlwind month (are you seeing a pattern here?). The first weekend was spent in Washington, D.C. where we stayed with great friends from CHBC. On Sunday after church we went out to lunch with Christine & Will at a great Mexican restaurant in VA where several presidents have enjoyed the food (and it was great). Monday we went to Michelle & Damien's for dinner and had a great time catching up with them. Tuesday, Susan's Dad arrived in town with our beloved Malibu in tow. The plan was for him to drive our car (towed behind the trusty motorhome) to us and take Claire's car back to CA with him. He made really good time and it worked out well for him to rendezvous with us in VA, rather than having to drive all the way to NY with it.

Now, the whole purpose of our trip to DC was because Ivan PASSED the DC bar exam (Hurrah!) and was sworn in on Monday followed by a mandatory ethics class on Tuesday. We were both very excited that Ivan's hard work (while Susan was in Russia) payed off and he can officially call himself a lawyer now :)

On Friday of the following week (the 19th) we had our first major snow storm. And I mean major. It also happened to be the day we had booked our flight to CA for Christmas. How nice it was to be leaving the winter wonderland of NY heading off towards the sunny beaches of So Cal. Of course, it was a bit of a nail biter as to whether our flight would be one of the 400+ cancelled due to the weather. Thankfully, it wasn't - although it was delayed for about 3hr - between waiting for the weather window and getting de-iced. Also thankfully, we had a non-stop flight, so we weren't worried about missing any connections along the way. We landed in balmy LAX sometime after midnight - completely exhausted, but glad to be back in CA.

We were able to spend a lazy 8 days in CA, without a care in the world, enjoying a true vacation. On Sunday evening (the 28th) we took a red eye home. Ivan went straight to work (poor guy) and Susan took the train home. Unfortunately, she was pretty exhausted and somehow managed to fall asleep just long enough to miss her stop. As a result, she had to wait out in the cold for an additional 20 minutes to catch the train going in the other direction, but the conductor had pity on her and didn't make her pay for the one stop trip back home.

It took the rest of December for us to recover for the jet-lag and tiredness caused by the red-eye flight, but we're up in the air about whether it was worth it or not. Would we do the same again in the future? Who knows.

Labels: Summary