Bonnie & Clyve: Christmas in the Motherland

Do you ever get sick of hearing me talk about how much I love our breaks? Cause I really, really love them. But the first week or so of the break is always a little tricky. After each semester ends, there’s a learning curve of figuring out how to be in a co-dependent relationship instead of just always kissing goodbye for the day. During the semester, I manage the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and errands. All scheduled around when Billy needs to go to school. He’s so high maintenance. But then when he’s out of school, he has nothing to do and he’s really helpful and wants to have some say in how the household is run. Which some would think would be nice, and it really is! But this control freak has to adapt to the complete 180 change in our family dynamics. It’s like, by the time I’m used to being an independent woman (I feel ya, Bey), he wants to be included in decision making again and hear about my day. So clingy, right? We have to have a couple solid arguments before we can enjoy our free time, but we’re getting better at transitioning.

After our trip to Cabo, we went to Virginia to spend Christmas with my family. This was the first time that Billy was going to be around my family for longer than a week. We’ve been married for 5 years, and dated for 2, so that’s kind of worrisome, but that’s what happens when you don’t live by your family. He knows my parents and Tanne pretty well because we bunked up with them in Utah for a solid year. Yay for mooching! But for all my older siblings know, I could be getting beat by Billy every night. Too far? Probably. I was so excited/really nervous about everyone spending so much time together. It’s like the nervousness that you get when you combine two different groups of friends. Like, I think that I’m always myself around these friends, but what if I have a split personality and these two groups hate each other? And then realize that they both hate me? And my brothers-in-law are all really tall, so I was hoping they wouldn’t try to play some basketball against my 5’9-with-cleats-on husband. And Billy is so great with the Strong nephews and niece, but can he handle all 6 and 2 of the Griffith nieces and nephews? He has some really great magic tricks, but I wasn’t sure if any of the kids are even into magic? Are these normal fears I have, or am I just a head case? Basically, I love him so much and I love my family so much, so I wanted my family to love him and for him to love my family.

Well, turns out his magic tricks were a hit, and as is usually the case, I had nothing to worry about. I remember when we were dating, I was helping Billy’s mom with something (it’s more likely that I was probably watching her do something, but we’ll pretend) and telling her about someone we had run into the other day who had raved on and on about how much they love Billy and what a great guy he was. And Stacy stops me and says, “Tori. Everybody loves Billy.” And it’s probably because of the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law dynamic, but I’ve been trying to prove her wrong ever since. To no avail. Everybody really loves Billy. At least as far as his wife and mother know.

My favorite thing that happened over the break was when going-on-2-years old Sadie went through my phone pictures and found a Snapchat video I had saved of shirtless Billy making it rain with Grenadian money. She would grab my phone, go right to the video, watch it, laugh hysterically, and then watch it again. And so everyone else had to see what she was laughing about, so the whole family got to know Billy's gangster side. And Sadie loved it. By the end of the trip, she would yell “Billy! Color!” because Billy loved to be her little coloring buddy. Thugs love to color too. Watch her annoyance with him in this video.

My parents moved to a new house on December 18^th, with the help of my fabulously patient realtor sister, Megan. And we arrived to Virginia on December 21. My brother came in from Miami right after us, and so the 3 beach bums of the family could complain to everyone about how cold it was. When actually it was like 70 degrees because of El Nino or something. No white Christmas for us. Things were a little hectic with trying to get my parents settled, but I guess they always are around Christmas. And with my family. Comcast is the worst and so we didn’t have any internet the whole time we were there. And since we don’t have phone numbers, we spent a lot of time at Chik-fil-a and McDonald’s enjoying their free WiFi and glorious fountain drinks. Which is fine by us. My sisters all live within 15 minutes of each other, so it was really fun to go house-hopping and offer our babysitting services for the day. Which usually turned into them feeding us a delicious dinner, so win-win for us. My mom and sisters are all amazing cooks for some reason. I would resent them for it if I didn’t get to benefit from it so much. For Christmas Eve, my mom usually does an extravagant feast, but with everything in boxes, we all went to Uncle Julio’s—it’s a Mexican restaurant, not our Hispanic relative—for Christmas Eve dinner. The only other time I had Uncle Julio’s was at my sister’s wedding, and to this day, Billy and I still have conversations about their drool-worthy carne asada. They were surprisingly packed, but my dad went all judicial and spoke to the manager who let us eat outside on the patio. If you want to complain about service, just ask my dad to do it. He’s a pro. Although, the one time I saw him truly stumped was when he was at the register at a store in Grenada trying to check out. They compared his signature on the credit card with the signature on the receipt he had just signed and said they didn’t match up. He legitimately did not even know how to respond to that. Leave it to Grenada to quiet the judge. Anyway, during dinner the kids were running around and fenced in on the patio, while I was simultaneously stuffing my own face and spoon-feeding Sadie guacamole. And it was a Christmas Eve dinner to remember. We were a little sad to be missing Tanne and Doug—the last two family members who live in Utah—but hey, more guacamole for me!

On Christmas day, we went around to each sister’s house to deliver our presents and hear about all the cool stuff the kids had gotten. Sawyer, Caroline, and Mary Grace all got iPods so now I can text and FaceTime them. I feel like it was a present just for me, thanks sisters! Then, we finally went to see Star Wars and it was glorious, of course. I even got my Dad to wear a Yoda hat to the theater. I’m pretending he did it for me and not to make Sawyer laugh. Grandkids always trump real kids (I’m sorry, I tried to find another word than trump, even typing it makes me nauseous). After the movie, we searched for a Chinese restaurant for dinner (since my Dad wishes we were Jewish), but then managed to settle for the Old Town Grill in Leesburg. Christmas is so weird when you’re an adult.

Oh, I also saved Christmas for Billy. With our lowly student budget and the fact that I buy everything I need anyway, Billy has a hard time getting presents for me. But, since I took up running (and I haven’t quit yet!) this summer, all he needed to get me were some work out clothes and wireless headphones and I was a happy camper! You’re welcome for helping you out, Billy! And we’re kind of the same person, because I got him some Beats by Dr. Dre. But, I totally screwed up and got ones that were NOT wireless. Amazon Warehouse tricked me—they said wired on the description! I feel like they shouldn’t be allowed to specify unless they are wireless. It’s too much information. So, my poor husband has to wear headphones that connect to his computer. It’s so embarrassing. But at least he got me some good stuff.

We spent our anniversary and New Year’s in Georgia, but I’ll write a separate post about that trip. When we got back, we got to watch Erin’s kids—Hadley and Ari. OK, we really only watched Hadley for like a day and a half, because Megan agreed to keep her (or we may have been asleep when she came to drop her off) but we had Ari for 3 days. Erin and Josh had a friend’s wedding in Hawaii, and so we jumped at the opportunity to watch them! We had so much fun/we were so tired. Turns out, kids are a lot of work. Who knew? Ari was 10 months old at the time and just crawling all over the place. It didn’t help that I threw out my neck the first morning when playing with her on the bed. And she only wanted to be held by me. Really, she was an angel, but we are so used to just riling our nieces and nephews up and then leaving the aftermath to the parents. That’s what we’re good at. But we had to face the consequences of our “riling her up” and so I have to apologize to my sisters and Billy’s brothers. I didn’t realize all the chaos we’ve been creating for all these years. We couldn’t take our eyes off of her for one second. At one point, she may have drunk some of Hadley’s pee from the toilet. Sisterly bonding, right? And both of us were there the whole time—we were able to trade off who slept in and who got up with the kids in the morning. I really don’t know how you moms do it. Especially in the winter. Mickey Mouse Club House became my best friend. And now that I’m away from the kids everyday, whenever I’m lonely, I go look through all my videos of them and wish I were watching them again. Is that too depressing? Basically, I miss their guts.

This post is getting long and drawn out and I have a lot more to say about our break, so I’m splitting it into two posts. My 2 readers are so lucky I’m considerate of their eyesight. Looking at a computer screen for too long is bad for your eyes and brain.

Uncle "Wobbie" is the best. We all missed Gus Gus though!

Star Wars game face

Looking rough at Christmas dinner.

Christmas dinner at Old Town Grill in Leesburg

My sweet Caroline

Christmas Eve dinner. Guacamole is best eaten with a spoon

My mini-me, MG

Sawyer has the whole Minions movie memorized and loves to tell me the whole movie--it's the best! So, I got him a Minion's hat for his birthday (his birthday is in May, but I didn't get any of the nieces and nephews presents on the day of their birthday, so I got them each an extra present after Christmas. Gift-giving is definitely my love language.

Soaking up all the snuggles I can with my two thumb-suckers. Just like their aunt Tor Tor

I got booted out.

Changing a diaper with a thrown-out neck. I got skillz

Can you see the two teeth marks? Ari was snuggling me and then decide to chomp my neck. Crazy vampire baby.

While watching all of the nieces. Lots of screen time.

My heart.

I could hang out with these girls all day. They keep me young and hip.

We decided to go on a walk during the coldest day of the year. Ari was pissed.

Ari Jane is also known as trouble guppie. Anything she shouldn't do, she wants to.

Snuggling with a thrown-out neck

Sadie is really good at the selfies.

Never a dull moment with these three.

We were so happy that Grandy made the trek out to come see us and the new house. His genes are the ones that I'm counting on for our kids to be basketball players.