Christmas Day

Ewan's first Christmas Day. Oh my gosh what excitement! Presents, presents, presents, presents, presents, presents, presents! What a lucky boy! Thank you to everyone who sent him such wonderful gifts. He had such a good time openening them all and it was a very special time for Mum and Dad and everyone else watching him, even if he had no idea what was the reason for all the fuss and attention. As you can see the theme of eating the wrapping continued from last Tuesday too.







Present opening was followed by a hearty breakfast of freshly baked cranberry and date scones with fresh pineapple and scrambled eggs. This fueled everyone up for preparing the Xmas dinner, with some pauses for naps and for studying/playing with gifts. In the afternoon, Grandma Kristi also found a bottle of Champagne that was left over from Fraser & Jen's wedding in June '04. Below you can see Martha and Great Grandma Fran enjoying a sip. Christmas dinner was a fine meal and we combined a mixtue of US, English and Swedish traditions. As an appetizer, Kristina prepared Swedish meatballs for us all that we ate with lingonberry preserve. These were delicious and we also had shrimp and cocktail sauce and cheese selection to warm us up for the main event. For the main course there was the traditional Turkey and sides washed down with wine from Santa Barabara County that Jen and Fraser brought along with them. Everyone did a little something towards dinner, including Rob's "Gourmet" cream corn; seasoned with a secret extra ingredient from the spice rack. We later found out that it was more onion powder in addition to the fresh onions already in his recipie. Simple yet effective. Watch out Gordon Ramsey. We also introduced the British Christmas Crackers to the table which supplied the paper party hats we were all wearing and some very droll jokes to tell over dinner.

Christmas Eve

Christmas preparations continued and the final guest arrived today. Kristina, Fraser and Jennifer's former colleague and good friend from Caltech, who now works at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor arrived to spend Christmas with us all. It was great to see her again, as it had been over a year and it was the first time she had met Ewan. You will have seen some of Kristina's handy work in previous posts. She is an awesome knitter and the clothes he wore in the the pictures at Lake Arrowhead . We made sure Ewan got to hug with his chief designer as soon as she arived.





Later, Dad and Ewan had some fun with him wearing his Reindeer hat that he was sent from Aunty Caroline, Emily and Katey. He was just so funny and cute. All this went on just after we got the stockings hung from the fireplace in the living room.

In the evening we all piled into the cars to go and see the Blossom festival of lights. We thought Ewan would like this as he is such a fan of any bright or twinkling lights. The festival ground was packed with displays and Ewan certainly enjoyed them all. You'll notice his trademark "Google-eyes" as he took it all in which if you didn't know better looks as if he's a bit scared. However, he really liked all the colours and lights.





When we got home we had the family's traditional Oyster Stew meal for Xmas Eve, opened some early gifts from Santa Claus (Because the batteries needed charging for tomorrow!) and then hung out by the tree until some went of to midnight mass.

Soccer, Indian Food and decorating the tree

Over dinner last night, a soccer game was arranged. Fraser and Kristi joined Tom, Andy, Kelsey Whit, Tom's Brother and his kids for a 5 a side kick around. It was really good to blow out the cobwebs and was a fun and close game ending 6-5. Kristi managed to poach two of the goals too!





In the evening, Martha prepared a wonderful home-made Indian meal for us all. Ewan got to know his Great Grandma Fran while all the preparations were going on.



Afterwards, we continued preparing for Christmas by doing one of the major jobs, decorating Grandma Kristi's tree. This task ended up falling to Fraser and Uncle Rob due to their height, with some finishing touches by Grandma Kristi, while Jennifer, Martha and Great Grandma Fran directed operations from the comfort of the sofa.

A much better day

Ewan was asleep when we got to bed at 3 am this morning and only stirred once all night, sleeping through till after 10 am. What a star!

Grandma Kristi was at work till early afternoon, so once we were up and about Jennifer and Aunty Martha went out to shop for some necessary items (clothes, diapers, wipes etc) that we were without due to our suitcases being stuck in Chicago. While they were out Fraser hung out with Ewan and tried to determine if and when we would see our cases again. It took till 1 pm to get through to American Airlines customer services because their phone system was overloaded, but once through he managed to determine 1 case had already made it to Cleveland, but the other case and the car seat were not in the system, so it was likely they were still in a pile of bags at O'Hare.

Fraser and Ewan both needed an afternoon nap so rested while everyone was still out. When they awoke after 3pm Grandma Kristi was home and had a huge hug ready for Ewan. Shortly afterwards Jennifer and Martha came home with a couple of nice new outfits for Ewan and the necessary items to get him through the day clean and dry.

The rental car needed to be taken to the depot at Cleveland airport, so Fraser and Martha went out at about 4pm in to cars to do this, and then on to the baggage claim to get the one bag that had arrived. The car return was easy and we headed to the terminal. Once the AA baggage claim was located Fraser was quickly reunited with the one bag that he expected. Fortunately, as the agent brought out the bag Martha spotted in a pile by the door a car seat. "Is that yours?" she asked. Sure enough, on closer inspection, it was, and right next to it was our second bag. They had both just arived on a recent flight from Chicago and had not been logged in the system but they were definitely ours, and Martha and Fraser returned triumphant from their outing with all the missing kit. Sure, we now had double the diapers we needed for the week and twice the bath wash and moisturizer too, but we had all our stuff, including some presents that were checked in the luggage and Christmas could begin!

In the evening we began celebrations by having dinner with Tom and his family. We ordered a ton of Chinese and Thai food and got to know Andy, Kelsey and Whit. It was a really nice evening, but for some reason no one took any photos!

The Great American Adventure - or "O’Hare Sucks!"

Today was going to be the 3^rd time we have taken an airplane trip with Ewan. We awoke at 3am this morning in order to make our flight from LAX to Cleveland via Chicago O’Hare airport. We had spent the previous evening preparing everything and the car was packed and ready to go so it was a simple get dressed and jump in the car to the airport. Everything went very smoothly with the check in (we actually have found it less hassle now we have Ewan because the always put us in the short cut line in security because we have the baby and supposedly move more slowly). Our flight out of LA was delayed by 45 minutes, but that is pretty standard for any flight going to Chicago in winter. At this point I have to add that we were somewhat concerned about flying this route for this trip as O’Hare airport is notorious for delays and cancellations in winter. The reason we took it was that back in March we decided to use Jennifer’s frequent flyer miles to take this trip and the only available route was via O’Hare. Now to continue.

Despite the brief delay in LA we made it into Chicago around 1pm local time. Our connecting flight to Cleveland was “on time”, but no other flights were so we suspected there would be a knock on effect. We were due to depart at 3pm. Sure enough this became 4.10pm, 4.30pm, 4.45pm, 5.00pm. at this point Fraser went to buy tea and a bite to eat. It was while he was in line at Starbucks that he got a call from Jen on his mobile to say “drop everything and get back to the gate now, the flight has been cancelled”. Having been sat with a sleeping Ewan and all our carry on bags, Jen had been unable to dive in to the scrum for the American Airlines desk to arrange alternative travel with all the others. By the time Fraser was able to get in line, we were about 6^th from the back of the line. It took at least another hour to get to the desk during which time Jen had called her Mom and Martha in Akron to get them to start trying American Airlines for other flights to jump the queue at the airport. She also was on an American Airlines rebooking phone, on hold, trying to get through herself. None of the other airline were accepting passengers from cancelled flights as they all had their own problems, and there were no more American flights into Cleveland till Dec 24^th. Although we understood that the staff were having a very long day, we were rather miffed to be greeted by a somewhat hostile agent at the desk.

Agent: “So where do you need to go”

Fraser: “Cleveland obviously but that does not sound like an option”

Agent: “No, nothing till Dec 24^th”

Fraser: “Then how about Akron or Columbus?”

Agent: “No”

Fraser: “No, not today? No not ever? No what?”

Agent: “Not today”

[Enter Jen pushing Ewan having been on hold for 45 min with AA on the payphone down the hall]

Jen: “Do you have any flights to Toledo or Youngstown?”

Agent: “Not for a week”

Jen: “Then where are we supposed to go?”

Agent: “Oh we can fly you anywhere in the USA”

Fraser: “Clearly not because we just listed 5 airports in Ohio and you can’t get us to any”

Jen: “Can I ask why the flight was cancelled in the first place”

Agent: In a very sarcastic tone - “Can’t you see the fog and rain? Airplanes don’t fly well in fog.”

Jen: “Well we manage to land in that 3 hours ago and there are still plenty of planes taking off even if they are delayed.”

And so it went on. I’ll not recall the rest in such detail but suffice to say getting Ewan out if his stroller certainly softened the agents mood and we ended up with a provisional booking on a flight to Columbus, Ohio 5pm the next day and a voucher for a discount hotel rate in a local hotel (they can’t even spring for free night these days!). We decided there was just as good a chance that that flight would not leave the next day either and we would still be over 2 hours drive from Jen’s Mom’s place.

Plan B went into action. We went down to baggage claim to get our bags back and were going to try and get a rental car to drive Chicago to Cleveland that night. The lines at baggage claim were huge and we first made the mistake of getting in the American Airlines line rather than the American Eagle line, which although are they are essentially the same company operate exclusive of one another when it comes to things like baggage claim. While Fraser was in the first line, Jen was feeding Ewan, who incidentally had been as good as gold this whole time. When feeding him, an elderly couple who had had their flight to San Francisco cancelled and who were also waiting for their bags back, offered Jen a room in their house on the outskirts of Chicago for the night while we waited for the flight to Columbus the next day. They said they were set up at home for their own grandchildren and would by only too happy to help. This was such a nice offer and restored a lot of faith for both of us in people’s good nature. Other people were happy to hold Fraser’s place in line while he ran around helping Jen and Ewan and trying to get a pen to write down details of a potential car rental, which he did manage to secure.

We decided to decline the offer of the place to stay now that we had the car booked. We just needed our bags so we could get Ewan’s car seat for the journey. A long wait later in the correct baggage claim line we were told they could get our bags but it would be at least 2.5 hours until they could even start looking for ours because there were 50 planes worth of baggage backed up from all the cancelled flights. We decided to abandon all our checked luggage to the handler at O’Hare and arranged for them to be sent to Cleveland as soon as possible. We called the car rental company again and they were able to loan us a car seat for Ewan.

I have to give it to Dollar Car Rentals; they were excellent when we needed them to be just that. The car was ready when we go to the depot, they had the car seat just as they said and we were able to get Satellite navigation for just $10 more so we could find our way out of Chicago in the pitch black and rain. Once again we came across helpful fellow travelers to the depot. Ewan had used his last wipe in the airport following an explosion of Krackatoic proportions in his diaper. The rest were in one of the cases that we could not get back. Another mother who was also waiting for a car just gave us half a tub of her own wipes without even pausing for thought. Thank you!!!

Our journey from this point on was fairly smooth. It just took almost another 7 hours. It did bring back some childhood memories for Jennifer who made the trip many many times as a child to see family just outside Chicago. Going over the Chicago Skyway and passing the smoke stacks in Gary Indiana made her realize that she had come full circle and was now driving her own child on the same journey. Ewan slept 95% of the journey which was great for Mom and Dad.

We arrived at our final destination at 2.45 am local time. By the time we got our stuff in the house and ourselves and Ewan in bed it was 3 am precisely, exactly 21 hours since we woke to start our trip.

This is one we won’t forget for a while!

Ewan’s First Christmas Comes Early

This evening we made time for early opening of many of Ewan’s Christmas gifts that had been sent to us from far and wide. We will be traveling to Ohio for Xmas on Thursday so we decided to open them before rather than after we got back from our trip.

To start with, Ewan didn’t really know what to make of the mound of wrapped presents in front of him. However, once he established that they made cool crinkling noises when you crawled on them and the paper was good to suck, he was all for it.

Some cute gifts to note included a very funny reindeer hat from his Aunty Caroline and her girls (above). The pictures speak for themselves.

The gifts that were the biggest hits were the ones that could be put straight in the mouth. Here are some examples, including a sippy bottle, a new ball and some bath books.

Ewan opens some toy trucks…….

Then tries to put them in his mouth – of course!

And of course the gift tags and ribbons were greatly appreciated.

Mom and Dad gave Ewan his big gift last, as there was no way we were taking it with us on the plane. He actually liked it a lot, but the wrapping paper was still the best bit!

And finally – “Look at me with all my cool new stuff!!”