Fake Christmas

Since Madi was leaving for San Jose a couple days after graduation, and for Japan a few days after that, we decided to have our family Christmas a couple weeks early. We treated it just like Christmas, with the same way of opening presents, same favorite foods, same Christmas movies. It was kind of nice because none of the stores knew it was fake Christmas, so it was easy to pop across the street for supplies.

We had a day to recover and clean up from fake Christmas, then we decided to accompany Madi up to northern California to help her and Koji with their apartment search. Madi got there a day earlier and lined up two days of apartments to look at with military precision. With maybe the exception of the last apartment we looked at, we all agreed that each was better than the last. They ended up getting a very nice, secure, quiet, second floor 2B 1B across from a school in San Jose.

Heather and I flew back to Phoenix from San Jose on Sunday. Although we had a nonstop, our plane was delayed due to the lovely weather much of the country is experiencing. Heather was catching a connecting flight to El Paso to get to her mother's a couple days earlier. She would have missed her connection, but it was late too. She walked up and they started boarding.

I spent yesterday Christmas shopping and running errands. Today Chelsea and I drive to Las Cruces for Christmas with Heather's family. We all drive back in a couple days, then up to Prescott for my family's Christmas, which is usually mostly on Christmas Eve. This year it is Christmas Eve Eve because Chelly and company are headed to Hawaii, where Chad's family is.

We have Christmas Eve back in Mesa, then we are flying back to Florida on Christmas day. The boat is in Panama City and we want to get it to the Tampa area next. Instead of hugging the coast we are planning on cutting the corner from the panhandle of Florida with the help of a couple of friends. They fly back on January 2nd, so we have a pretty tight window. Hopefully we will get a decent weather window in that time for the 24 to 30 hour crossing.

Madi flies from San Jose to LAX in a few hours, then her flight to Japan leaves about noon today.

Other than that, not a lot happening!