Leaving Michigan for a month...

When you’re flying out of your home airport later in the day, you

Canadian Lakes castle lit up for the holidays

feel like you have all the time in the world.  We had a leisurely breakfast, John’s playing games on the computer and Oscar has made sure that he has all the toys that he wants to bring with him in his backpack, but then suddenly we realize that it’s time to leave and we are in hurry up mode for some reason…we hit traffic on the way to Grand Rapids, but still have

asking if he's on the naughty or nice list

plenty of time to leave our car at Julie and Dave’s to shuffle around their driveway for 3 weeks and Julie drops us at the airport, bless their souls.  The only hiccup comes when I realize that I can’t put my TSA precheck number on my ticket with American Airlines because you have to be in their frequent flyer program to do that.  So, we have to pull out the laptop and log into Southwest to get my number so that Oscar and I can bypass taking off our shoes, 

learning to skate

etc.  We see some people running for their planes because they’re late and Oscar is convinced now that we have missed our own plane.  We’re trying to explain that we’re early, that we have time to hit the Founders bar for a couple of beers to toast the beginning of vacation, but finally have to walk to the gate to show him that the plane is not even there yet.  We get some food and on our puddle jumper to Chicago which all goes without a hitch.  This is the first

Oscar's birthday party at school

  time into and out of O’Hare when there were no problems.  We landed on time, boarded on time and I was able to tell the ground crew that it was Oscar’s birthday so that the captain announced it over the intercom where you can’t hear it because when can you ever hear what the

more birthday

pilot is saying?  We have a new plane with tvs and entertainment, but they can’t find us any headphones for Oscar.  It’s only his birthday and he’s four, but they finally figured out that there were some in first class so that I could quit narrating Willy Wonka for him.  Oscar did get to go up in the cockpit and sit in the pilot’s seat, wear the captain’s hat and get wings at the end of the flight.  We got our bags easily after  getting to ride the cool train at Hartsfield.  We then had to figure out which silver car

more birthday, kid's got it good

 (because I swear to God that every car that was picking up people in Atlanta this night was silver) that Kevin was in and picking us up to take us to his house.  Apparently, at 9pm at night, Atlanta traffic can be negotiated in a timely manner.