This holiday season gave us the full specter of experience. Our oldest son and his family arrived a few days before Christmas and spent several days with us, sharing a Christmas eve dinner of a huge 25 plus pound turkey with all of the fixings with us and several neighbors. A good meal, good companionship, good time. After hubby's favorite breakfast, stockings and gift opening, they were off to the eastern part of the state to share the next few days with our grandson's other grandparents.
The day they arrived, we purchased a brand new soft car top carrier to aid our trip that was to follow. The carrier was loaded with gifts, wrapped, boxed and sealed, I thought in plastic bags, the dogs food and a few other items sealed in giant zip lock bags. The car was loaded with more gifts, suitcases and the two pups, who now weight in at about 170 pounds and 65 pounds, taking up a good portion of the space behind the front seats of hubby's Xterra. We set out on the 26th to the eastern side of the state to see our youngest son and his family. This trip proved to be quite taxing as the weather was not cooperative, driving in snow, sleet, freezing rain, with several inches of slush on the interstate. We saw dozens of cars that had spun out, some harmlessly, some ripping off car parts, most facing the wrong way on the shoulder or in the median. Several vehicles suffered worse fates and were on their side or upside down, leaving us hoping that the drivers and passengers fared better than their cars. The last couple of hours of the trip were in driving rain. After checking in to our hotel, I went to move the gifts into the car for the night, only to find that the carrier had about a gallon of water inside the bag, the bag of gifts had leaked, damaging packaging on several and ruining one gift. In spite of this, we had a nice visit with the kids, went out to dinner with them and our oldest son and grandson as they were in the same city and hubby even went bowling with them while I babysat the dogs in the hotel.
The following day, we awoke to a chilly, but beautiful day, walked the pups on the boardwalk then loaded them into the car for two long days driving to visit our daughter and her family in Florida. We arrived on the 28th to celebrate Christmas with them just in time for hubby to come down with the flu. He spent most of the few days we were there in a room alone, me sleeping on the couch hoping not to catch it from him. The day before we left, he ended up at an Urgent Care center to be treated for a sinus infection. We left Florida a day early, still hoping that neither our daughter's family, nor I would be infected. By the time we reached South Carolina on the way home, I was achy and coughing, went to bed as soon as we got to the hotel and have spent the past few days mostly sleeping and coughing. We heard from our daughter, that her husband came down with it too.
The icing to this was the information that my Honda, which we had loaned to our oldest son needed a new catalytic converter. Though he is having to deal with getting it repaired, the cost is on us. The poor little CRV is 8 years old and has almost 130,000 miles on it. I love the car, but it may be reaching the end of its repair free life.
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