A Very Full Christmas!

I returned from New York City eaaarrrrrly Tuesday morning.  Stephen made his arrival on Wednesday evening.  He continued to go into his last day of work for 2010 on Thursday.  He had gotten the week after Christmas off so on Friday we headed on our marathon adventure...

This is the overview of our entire trip - it gets a little detailed in KY but I'll share that later...

Chicago-->Pittsburgh-->Columbus-->Louisville-->Bowling Green-->Louisville-->Lexington

-->Louisville-->Chicago...Shew!

On Friday morning (Christmas Eve) we loaded up our car with TONS of stuff (all our Christmas gifts - ALL of them, laundry and enough clothes to last us 10 days as that is about how many days we'd need to be clothed) and headed to Pittsburgh to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Stephen's extended family.  We scored with great weather and empty roads on our 9 hour drive to Pittsburgh.

This is us on Christmas Day with Stephen's Nana, sister and her husband.  Unfortunately, this is the only picture I got of us in Pittsburgh.  

On Christmas Day we participated in the 38th annual Corsi Family Christmas Progressive Dinner.  From 3pm-10pm we traveled to 4 different houses to enjoy tons of appetizers, salads, main dishes and desserts as well as quality time with everyone you could imagine in Stephen's extended family.

On Sunday, December 26th we packed up the car, stopped by the Rehabilitation center to visit Nana and then headed off to Columbus, OH to stop and enjoy lunch with Stephen's Aunt Cathy and her husband, Jerry.  This was a 4 hour drive - we're keeping track - we're up to 13 hours so far in the car.  After a wonderful lunch and time with family, we got back in the car and made the 3ish hour drive to Louisville to enjoy Christmas with my family.  Now we're up to 16 hours.

In Louisville we proceeded to torture our dogs with horrible Christmas canine attire...

Here is Rosie the Elf and Patty the Reindeer...

Don't they look just SO happy to be sporting their Christmas Costumes!?!?!

and here is Moses, my sister's Santa.  Unfortunately, Santa doesn't get along with the Elf and the Reindeer as he likes to play and the smaller two snarl at him the entire time so a picture with all three sitting side-by-side will have to be left up to your imagination.  Let me tell you how fun this activity was - we were all belly laughing.  Especially when Moses' head got stuck inside his Santa hat and he proceeded to try and back out of it, only to be unsuccessful because it was actually stuck on his face.  He continued to try and back out of it until he backed into furniture - tears and silent laughs were being enjoyed by all!

Unfortunately, these are the only pictures I have from my family as we seem to struggle with taking pictures together - this has got to change!

We also celebrated Christmas with Stephen's immediate family as Stephen's older brother, Nathan and his family were sick on Christmas and couldn't enjoy Christmas with us in Pittsburgh:

Check out all those gifts under that tree - we had A LOT of fun opening them :)

Here are all the grandchildren (and great grandkids) with Noni.

Once we got to Kentucky, here's what our time looked like:

On Tuesday we traveled 2.5 hours to Bowling Green to visit my Grandma, Aunt and Uncle since we missed out on Christmas with my family when they went on Sunday.  Total time for this trip was 5 hours (to and from).  Add that to our 16 hours so far and we've hit 21 hours we spent in the car. 

On Wednesday, we traveled a little closer to Lexington to spend time with all my friends for the evening.  We enjoyed YUMMY Cheddar's cuisine and then enjoyed time at my old house, the home of my bestie, Doni.  The total time for this trip (to and from) is 2 hours - add that to our 21 and then we're up to 23 hours.  

My Aunt Shirley and Uncle Gene came to Louisville to celebrate Christmas and New Years so this sums up what we did our last couple of days in KY.  We then traveled our 5 hours back to Chicago giving us a grand total of 28 hours of driving.  SERIOUSLY - we drove an entire day and a good nap.  That is NUTS!  But, it was TOTALLY worth it and I'd do it all over if I had the chance!  I loved being able to see so many people in our family and some great friends - I look forward to all our visits with them again soon!

I'm playing "catch-up" with my posts so my New Years Resolutions are soon to come as well as some posts involving handmade Christmas gifts from 2010.  I hope you guys are having a great beginning to your 2011!