We made it!

Wiggy and his Nana

Wiggy and Baby Bro Taylor

Wiggy and his Mom

All the Kids and Significant Others

Wow. We finally arrived home from Christmas #3 with Wiggy's family in Chicago. Although it was a wonderful trip on many levels, the traveling part was a nightmare. We arrived almost on time to my surprise after I watched news story after story about people sleeping in cots in the Chicago airport the night of the 23rd. We landed on Chrismas Eve just a little after scheduled and got our luggage no problem. We were scheduled to attend a Christmas party at Wiggy's Uncle's family's house; however, we had an unexpected detour when my Father in Law got quite turned around in the car and we ended up far from the party as it was winding down. We decided to find someplace to eat instead and ended up at a lovely Italian place after begging them to serve us. They even had grilled calimari, a favorite of mine and Wiggy. After the meal we settled in to the hotel before attending a lovely Christmas Mass with the family.

Christmas morning we slept in and then headed over to Wiggy's Aunt's house for a day full of meeting cousins, eating, and game playing. It was very nice to finally meet Wiggy's Nana, Aunt, and all of his cousins. We played Secret Santa along with lots of rounds of Catch Phrase and Apples to Apples.

On the 26th we finally were able to see Marley and Me. This has been my most anticipated movie in quite a long time and I must say I was holding myself back from sobbing the entire time. I have had dogs my entire life and read the book 3 times and the end just kills me. We then sampled Chicago pizza before venturing into the city for some bargain shopping and a car tour as the weather was kind of icky. That night we went back to the movie theater (it was in the same parking lot as our hotel) for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". We all really enjoyed it, although it is quite long.

Saturday it was time to head out. Our flight wasn't until late afternoon so we got a chance to catch yet another movie after everyone else left. This time it was "Slumdog Millionaire", a surprisingly great film that had us both glued to the screen. Our airport experience was horrible as our flight was delayed about 3 hours and our connection cancelled. We found a room in Philadelphia for the night and then finally made it back to NC at about 7 pm on Sunday just in time to pick up our greatly missed Jasper.