We Get Babs For A Holiday Visit!
We had the perfect Christmas present for Babs! We'd fly her out for a visit, a little before the holidays to try to make it less stressful with fewer weather and volume of people delays. The plan seemed pretty simple: I'd leave Rochester around 6 a.m., get to Des Moines around 10 a.m., pick up the rental car, drive to Altoona to get Mom, we'd head back to the airport around 3, grab a 5'ish flight from Des Moines to Detroit, then Detroit to Rochester, and we'd be back at our house by 11 p.m.
Ahh, hahaha. That's how it could have gone. My flights from Rochester to Detroit and Detroit to Des Moines were delayed, but that didn't really matter since I had a lot of lag time. I ended up getting to Mom's around 1, then we headed back to the Des Moines airport after a little time seeing friends in her community. I got us there way too early it turns out because the flight from Des Moines to Detroit was delayed by about 5 hours. When the flight finally left Des Moines, there were only 7 of us on the plane, which is always kind of fun.
We stayed in the lovely hotel attached to the Detroit airport since we had been rescheduled for our flight to Rochester early the next morning. We got to bed around 1, back up around 5. It was a quick night, but we both did get some sleep.
We finally walked in the back door of our house around 10 a.m. It was so good to be here.
The timing for Mom's visit coincided with when I needed to drive over to pick up Buster and Yessa for their end of semester break. We had an easy drive over to pick them up and Mom got to see their rooms and meet one of Buster's roommates.
The rest of Mom's visit included Christmas prep and lots of time hanging out together.
We waited to select the Christmas tree when Grandma could join us.
We chose a tree from the Boy Scouts at Asbury United Methodist again this year, another tradition for us. Bless those sweet young men, they had a tough time tying the tree on top of the van, but they kept at it until they got it right.
Babs brought us a star that Monkey made back in 2004.
Here's a long video that shows Buster capping the tree with the star.
Another tradition we enjoyed while Mom was here was going out for our end of semester celebration meal. We were very sorry to learn that our favorite restaurant, Maru Izakaya, had closed in November, so we had to find a new place to dine that all of us would enjoy. We decided to try Strangebird.
It was a fun place to try, but our hunt for a favorite celebration location will continue.
Mom had brought gifts for us to open, and we had a calendar we made for her so she could think of us all year long.
The week flew by so quickly, as they always do. Before we knew it, it was time to pack up and head back to Iowa.
The trip to drop Mom in Des Moines went much more smoothly than the flight to get to Rochester at the start of the week. Her best friends were waiting for her at the airport to drive her home so that I could hug her and spin around to head back up to my gate to fly right back to Rochester. Travel isn't easy, and it was totally worth it.
Thanks for making the effort, Babs. We love you.
