Christmas lights among the palm trees...

My brother and I are visiting our younger sister in Florida for Christmas, leaving our parents in the frozen tundra of Iowa. They okayed the plan before we purchased our tickets and now here we relax in mild, humid temps while the midwest struggles to clear the ice and snow off the roads.

It's odd seeing Christmas lights and nativity scenes among the palm trees. It almost doesn't feel like Christmas. I got that feeling yesterday as well, as we dealt with flight delays and butt-numbing hours sitting in airports and airplanes. After 15 hours of travel, I was glad to finally reach Tampa at 1:00 a.m. on Christmas Day.

Frankly, we're lucky to be here. There were 34 seats available at 4:30 p.m. when we had the airline check the 7;30 flight out of O'Hare, but they couldn't change our reservations for us at that point. We were told that we had to wait until we got to O'Hare, which ended up being 7:00 p.m. I didn't have much hope until we discovered the 7:30 flight out had been delayed to 8:30 p.m. YES! We hauled ass to the correct concourse for departure and immediately requested standby for that flight (our original connection had already left). By the time everyone had boarded, the screen display showed 10 open seats and we were the first two passengers on the standby list. I knew we were going to make it.

This morning came early as Jill the Wonder Dog was too excited at seeing us to let us sleep in. I finally gave in and took her outside at which point she woke the neighborhood with her barking. When we came back in, my brother and sister were awake and decided to make a grocery run. You'd think in Tampa there would be one grocer who defied tradition and remained open on Christmas Day. Ha! With no open grocery to be found, we ended up showering before going out for breakfast at Village Inn. There were a lot of people with the same idea but we had a table within 20 min. Stuffed, we went back to the house and spent the next five hours napping. :)

Now it's mid-afternoon and we're decided how to spend the remainder of Christmas day. Until next time...