One puking toddler wasn't going to spoil anyone's vacation

Note that my mouth feels like someone punched me hard in the jaw due to spending all of my 2013 dental benefits and almost 1/2 of my flex med account on not ONE but TWO procedures yesterday. I'd been waiting since early fall for new benefits to kick in to get a 1st ever crown.

Then in an M&M eating episode on Christmas day added a broken tooth. Ironically the broken tooth was NEXT to the tooth needing a crown so I wound up with 2 1/2 hours of work yesterday and cursing again my damn hobo teeth.

Before we move into 2013, one final post about 2012, specially what we did outside of refereeing lots of fights, watching lots of Ninjago, and cleaning up what seemed like a perpetual sticky kitchen counter over the vacation.

On Sunday 12/23 we took Amtrak over to the Greensboro Children's museum.  The boys loved the train and the museum is only a couple of blocks away from the station. The museum offers a room of full size fire and police cars, race car and cab of a tractor trailer. If local, this makes a great day trip, as my boys stayed almost 4 hours and had to be convinced to leave to make the train home.


Christmas (Eve) mom and dad were up to almost 3 am putting together Ian's car and wrapping the last of the gifts.   Note that Santa and the Santa Mouse got to feast on Krispy Kreme doughnuts and cheese.  The Santa Mouse is my favorite kids holiday book.  My mom once told me that around age 4, I snuck out of bed and ate the Santa mouse's cheese and was caught red handed by my dad about to be settling in putting together Santa toys.


Besides leaving a totally surprise Keurig for me, Santa also left me pork rinds.  He even remembered that BBQ is my favorite variety.  Sadly he only left ONE of the BOGO free offers on the bag.  Damn him.


Ian asked for a car and candy pops, so what did he get? A ride-on car filled with a mountain of suckers. While we were unwrapping gifts we discovered he ate somewhere around 10 suckers, proudly showing us the evidence.  Who cares, it was Christmas.  Ben did get a Nintendo DS with lots of ground rules about when and how much to be played left by Santa.

Later Christmas day we drove out to Meadow Lights which boasted a gazillion lights.  My friend Chrissy had once told me about some redneck place she once went as a kid that hosted the most inappropriate Crucifixion display next to teddy bears jumping out of presents.  Sadly, I think we found it. Oddly enough despite my and Bill's "never again" glances the kids loved all the lights.

We left on the 26th in a monsoon of rain for Atlanta. We tried pushing off leaving later but instead got stuck in the middle of traffic for a large part of the trip with carsick puking toddler.  Luckily I keep an emesis basin in the car and was able to keep puking incident 1 to a minimum of nasty. Unfortunately incident 2, resulting in a full strip down in a very nasty gas station bathroom in the middle of a equally nasty cold, blowing rain.

*No picture available of puking toddler nor nasty gas station bathroom.

Once in Atlanta we met up with Bill's family. After a room mix up we were able to sleep off what had been a horrendous puke-filled drive. Luckily it was also only car sickness and not a virus.  While in Atlanta we went to the Coke Museum, Lego Land Discovery Center, played tons o games at Dave and Busters, swam in the indoor pool, and met up with more of Bill's family that live in Atlanta for big family dinner on Friday night.

We opted to stay an extra day to avoid driving home in more rain and also to spend more time with Grandmommy. She graciously let Ben sleep with her for several nights allowing mom and dad to be real wild party animals and fall asleep by 10 pm.  I will note that I got to read 1 1/2 books and go shopping. The trip was a serious win for me.

Once home we spent a couple of lazy days and then met up with our friends and their kids for New Years Eve.  Mom had the forethought to pick up some illegal SC fireworks on the state line while on the way back.  Maybe it's just me but I can't say, "Megabanger" without giggling.

We broke out the silly string, shot off all the fireworks and made S'mores around their firepit before crashing in pjs and calling it a good end to the year.