Christmas Celebration/Craziness!

Wow! It has been a whirlwind of a week. First off, because I just realized that in the craziness of open gyms at Rolly Pollies and getting ready to come home I forgot entirely to mention that Rob officially passed his test last Monday and is now a licensed CFI (certified flight instructor). He has turned in a resume to the flight school and now we are just waiting for instructors to move on so that he can be hired. Rob says that the tourism companies in Vegas and the Grand Canyon (the 2 most popular next steps for instructors with the hours to move on) tend to hire in January/February, so anytime now people should be moving on and a job should open up.

Onto the excitement of Christmas. We had a short visit at home, but packed it with family and friends. Our flight was delayed a bit on Christmas Eve, but the crazy windy day was in our favor and we had a 150 mph tailwind that helped push us along. We had Christmas Eve dinner at Rob's parents' house, met up with my parents for church and spent the night at my house. It was so much fun to have Christmas morning with Rob there! We opened gifts and had brunch, then spent the rest of the day with Rob's family. Both sides of his family live in the area, so we saw a lot of his family! We separated to spend more time with each of our families on Friday and it was a lil strange when Mom and Dad picked me up at the Andrasik's house in the morning...it felt like I was being picked up from a sleepover in middle school! Some parts of this whole married thing are still a lil weird...especially the sleepovers at each other's houses. On Friday night we met up with friends at BW3 and so many people came! People we hadn't seen in years! It was fabulous catching up with everyone.

The play by play continues...Our flight back to Phoenix left at 7:20 Saturday morning, which meant leaving the house at 5:30 after getting home around 1:00. Ewww. But it's not over yet. We had a 10 hour layover in Memphis. We were both thankful to be home for Christmas, but honestly, worst traveling schedule ever. We taxied over to the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, where there's this crazy tradition of ducks marching into the fountain each day at 11:00am. Weird but entertaining. Here's a picture of the ducks hanging out in the fountain after their lil march.We did a lil more exploring in the area around the Peabody Hotel...walked along Beale Street and had lunch at Rendezvous, a famous bbq restaurant. (Thanks to Dad for all the tourism ideas!) Here is a picture of Beale Street and another of us on the roof of the Peabody with a lil of the city in the background. Good thing we don't look ridiculously exhausted :)

After some more hanging out in the airport, we were finally headed back to Phoenix. It was about 11:00 when I got back to the apartment (Rob still had all night to stay up and work!)...1:00 am Cleveland time. Talk about a long day of travel! In retrospect, the layover was maybe good because we were both so excited to just be back that I wasn't as sad as I was when we left.

We've spent the last couple of days getting re-settled in out here...grocery shopping, back to work for us both and I've been working on getting my teaching stuff in order. I can't believe that in less than a week now I'll be teaching! I'm starting to get really nervous...

We both hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and loved the chance to catch up with everyone we saw. Happy early new year to you all...and watch out for the Andrasik comeback in the bowl pool! :) Love, Sarah and Rob