A Wonderful Night at Home

I was incredibly happy to spend an evening at home with Doug.  Even though I had been in Florida with him last weekend, it felt like he had been gone for longer than that.  We first watched Cameron's Christmas program at Bethany.  We had talked about going to see their first all school Christmas event aptly titled "Unwrap the Nativity" in person, but Cameron thought it was best if we watched it online instead.  We enjoyed it very much and appreciated being able to avoid the large crowds.  

Once the program was over,  Doug and I played several games of Ticket to Ride where I actually won a few games.  We then worked on our castle puzzle.  It has definitely been challenging, but we made pretty good progress tonight.  Doug picked Toy Story to watch while we were working on it.  It had been awhile since I had seen it and I enjoyed it very much.  Meg suggested Toy Story 2 next as that's her favorite.  Unfortunately, we couldn't make it up that long.  We were awake when Cameron arrived home at 10:30.  He had gone to Culver's after the performance and had fun with a large group of his friends.  We were glad to hear that he had enjoyed his evening as well.  

Road Trip

One negative about Doug and I both traveling to Florida last week was that I would have to pick him up at the airport today.  Normally, I don't mind the trip, but this time his flight didn't get in until 10:05 tonight.  I was worried that it would be delayed and make for a complicated drive home.  Fortunately, that didn't happen and I was able to meet him at the arrival gate at 10:15 p.m.  I was tired, but thankful for the time with him in the Pilot on the way home.  He had been extremely busy this week and I hadn't talked to him very much.

Besides seeing Doug another huge positive of picking him up in Indianapolis today was that I got to spend the afternoon and early evening in Bloomington.  While there I got to take a long walk with Meg to her first class of the day, rearrange some of the items that we had stored at Brett's, help him sort his laundry, go to the Union for pizza with Meg, watch an episode of Saved By the Bell at her apartment, and see Brett for about an hour before I left for the airport.  It made for a very exhausting day, but one that I enjoyed very much.  

Single Parent

With Doug traveling so much these past nine months, I have gotten a small taste of what it would be like to be a single parent.  It has to be extremely stressful to be the only one responsible for every parenting decision or to be the sole person in charge of all of the parenting duties such as homework check, laundry issues, lunch making and more.  Thankfully, we are well past most of that in the Heinisch home.  Cameron's very good at making sure that all of his homework is done and that his grades are acceptable to both he and I.  He also is very good at letting me know where he is and who he is with after school and on the weekends.  Thus, my parenting role has really revolved more around meals for lunches, keeping up on laundry and making sure that Cameron is up on time in the morning.  I helped with all of those tasks before Doug started traveling, so not too much has changed in that regard.

What has really been different with Doug gone, is just how quiet the nights have become when Cameron isn't home.  I am glad that he keeps himself busy and always enjoy listening to him talk about all of his activities.  This past week highlights included dancing at the semi-formal, attending a birthday party, spending the night at Avery's (twice), shopping with Samuel, volunteering at the veterinarian clinic and keeping stats for the girls basketball team.   With Cameron busy and Doug traveling, it did make for some long evenings at home.  That was when I could really sympathize with the single parents of the world.  Fortunately, Doug will be soon  and it won't be quite so quiet around here anymore.

Christmas Season

Getting ready for Christmas always feels so time consuming.  I think it's because everything takes longer than I plan.  Decorating is a two to three day project.  Buying gifts takes at least a day even when most of the purchases are online.  Today, I was very happy that I had completed both of those projects before I left for Florida.  That gave me extra time today and tomorrow to work on Christmas cards and wrapping gifts.

I decided to start with Christmas cards first.  My goal was to finish them all tonight and then wrap gifts tomorrow.  I spent a couple of hours addressing and writing on our custom made card and wasn't even a third of the way done.  I started to panic about it until I realized that it was only December 7th and I still had plenty of time to finish everything.  A huge benefit of addressing cards was that it gave me some time  to watch Christmas movies.  Tonight I chose Disney + to keep me company and enjoyed their original movie "Godmothered."  I had watched it last year, but forgot how much I liked it.  Thankfully, I don't have much else on my agenda tomorrow, so I should be able to wrap gifts, write Christmas cards and watch more holiday movies.  If I only had some egg nog to go along with it, my day would be perfect.  Maybe that will be this weekend's enjoyment.  

From the Sunshine to the Wind and Cold

Yesterday, it was 80 and sunny in Orlando, making it the perfect weather to spend outside at Disney Springs.  Doug and I enjoyed the sunshine while walking from store to store.  We didn't buy a lot, but I did find some great gifts for the Heinisch children and even a holiday sweater for myself with Slinky Dog on it.  We got very lucky in the food department as we got last minute lunch reservations at Wine Bar George where we enjoyed a hummus platter, hash, and macaroni & cheese bites.  It was delicious.  For dessert we picked up cookies from Gideon's Bakery.  The virtual queue was four hours long when we arrived, but thankfully, they called us an hour early.  While we were there, we picked up two Christmas cookies for Cameron as well.

This morning when I got up to leave for the airport in Tampa, it was still nice.  When I arrived in Indianapolis, the reality of winter hit me as the temperature was 34 degrees with 30 mph winds.  Fortunately, I dressed for the change in weather from Florida to Indiana.  The drive home was definitely cold and I saw several large trucks weaving on the road.  Even the airplane had struggled to stop swaying when we landed due to the high winds.

I did make it home safely and arrived just before Cameron.  I was very happy to see him.  He filled me in on his day and the fun he had this weekend.  He showed me the blood on his tie from the nosebleed at the semi formal.  We agreed that a good dry cleaning would help.  He had a project for English to finish.  While he was busy, I caught up with Meg and Brett on their weekend as well.  Cal had called last night, so I was able to talk to him then and was happy to hear that tonight he had tickets for the Bulls game.  Once Cameron was finished with his assignments, he and I watched a few Seinfeld episodes.  We had decided to start at the beginning and watch them in order.  We enjoyed the first few of season one.  I called Doug just before bed.  He had a busy, but productive day at work.  I missed him, but was thankful for the days that we had together in Florida.  

Semi Formal

 Last night was the annual Christmas semi formal for the high school students at Bethany.  When Doug and I made plans to go to Florida this weekend, we didn't realize that we would be missing it until we already booked out flights.  Cameron said that he was ok with us being gone as he knew that we had a few items to take care of in Ocala that were important to our family.  I did help him order his purple dress shirt and lavender tie for the event.  I also cleaned his shoes and ironed his outfit before I left.  Thankfully, Grandma Jane was able to take pictures before the left and Cameron had plenty of photos on his camera roll from the dance for us to see.  It almost felt like we were there.

I talked to Cameron today and he said that he had had a great time.  Since he was part of SGA he had arrived early to help set up.  An unfortunate timing incident with masking tape led to a bloody nose, but other than that he had a great time.  Cameron hung out with a lot of different groups last night and had tons of fun dancing and socializing.  I was really glad that Bethany was able to host this event as I realize that an important part of the high school experiences is the social events.  

EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays

 Doug and I checked out of our hotel this morning in Ocala for a day in Orlando.  We had tickets for the EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays.  We hoped to be there by the 10 a.m. opening time and got there well before that.  Once we made it through the turn style, we headed straight for Test Track.  There was already a long line from those staying in the Disney hotels, so we decided to try the single rider line.  I had never done that before and was pleasantly surprised by how quick it was.  We were in and out of the ride in less than 15 minutes which was well below the 50 minute standby line.  As an extra positive, the woman that I sat beside was a lot of fun.

Our next stop was Meg's favorite ride, Gran Fiesta Tour.  We thought it was really funny that she texted us while we were on the boat to let us know that she would be "really mad if we skipped The Three Caballeros."  It was as cute as always and Doug was able to get his favorite margarita next door as soon as we got off the ride.  We spent the next several hours walking around the countries trying the festival food booths.  There were less than at the Food & Wine Festival that we attended with Brett and Cameron in October, but still plenty of food for us to try.  Some of the highlights were an eggnog donut, beef and mashed potatoes, and pastrami on rye.  Doug's favorite was the salmon latke and mine was the chocolate peppermint ice cream.

We did take a break from the food to catch more rides including Soarin', Living with the Land and Spaceship Earth.  We had tried several times to ride Frozen, but the line was well over an hour long each times.  Somehow we got lucky on our last try as it was only a 30 minute wait.  I was glad to have gotten on the ride and even happier to have a dry seat in the end.  I also did some window shopping as well while Doug was waiting in line for food and drinks.  I didn't buy anything, but they did have a lot of really cute holiday items.  We did not stay until the park closed at ten because we were both tired and we had already seen the new fireworks show, but we were there long enough to see the Christmas decorations lit up.  There weren't as many as I thought that there would be, but they were still nice.  I really enjoyed looking for the hidden Olafs throughout the countries as well.  I wished that Cameron could have been there to help me find them all.

We got to our hotel at Flamingo Crossing around 8 p.m.  Doug wanted to watch the Iowa vs. Michigan Big Ten Football Championship.  We found a small outside bar at the hotel that had it on and we enjoyed watching the Wolverines take control of the game early.  It was nice to sit down and relax for awhile as we had taken over 20,000 steps in today - exhausting, but fun.