Holidays are all different depending on the company and time of your life.

~ Dominic Monaghan

Tomorrow I head to the land of my most memorable Christmas of late. Muncie, Indiana. I’m going back to Muncie. It’s a Merry Muncie Christmas.

Jason and Child are already there. Once I arrive we can officially eradicate the last time we three were all ho-ho-hoing in Indiana. So unless something dramatically awesome happens, (like winning the lottery or discovering unicorns in the shed), this better be a drastically less emotional Christmas. Let’s time travel shall we?

Christmas 2010: It’s our first Christmas together! After 9 months of blissful turmoil, what shall we do for our first Christmas? Let’s roadtrip! Let’s pack up the car and the corgi and pick up the Child en route and then motor on over to Muncie to spend a few days with Jason’s family. Then on Christmas Day let’s drive from Muncie to New London, Wisconsin and spend a few more days with MY family! Then let’s drive to Chicago and fly Child home to Austin. THEN we’ll drive back to Raleigh. In Winter!!! BEST IDEA EVER!!! WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

• It’s a really long ass drive
• Jason’s divorce is so new that he’s visibly conflicted – “Buy the candy store? Or gluttonously roll around naked on everyone in the candy store?”
• There’s like 8 feet of snow in Muncie
• The only gym is the 60-year-old YMCA with the 60-year-old spinning instructor on crack
• Child has a meltdown in the market – “She’s NOT my mom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
• Child has a nuclear meltdown the night before we leave for Wisconsin (totally deserved, yet totally nuclear)
• Sarah proceeds to have a slightly less nuclear meltdown
• We run out of liquor and all the liquor stores are closed
• Jason tells Sarah he loves her – for the first time
• Sarah and the corgi drive to Wisconsin without the boys
• Sarah and the corgi drive back to Indiana to pick up the boys
• Sarah catches the flu
• Sick Sarah and the corgi lay in the backseat of the car in the parking lot of MDW in the freezing cold for hours while Jason waits for Child to depart
• The corgi refuses to pee because she has standards. Peeing in the snow while it’s raining at a gas station in bum-fuck nowhere does not live up to her standards
• Jason’s ex calls upon discovering that Sarah and the corgi were involved in Christmas. Sarah receives many, many colorful new names for Christmas and Jason may have been told to shove the corgi up somewhere
• Jason catches the flu

This year we chose airplanes. We are delightfully married. The hos are no longer hiding under the tree. The Child and I are friends. The corgi is at peace in a warm and grass-covered place. The Max is happy at camp. The liquor has been bought. The weather is behaving.  There is a CrossFit box in Muncie. The family is all good.

Happy ho-ho-ho-holidays to you and yours. May our holidays be filled with fabulous adventures and memorable stories to share.