Christmas Vacation 2014

So my mom and I drove out to Green Bay to visit family for Christmas again. To be technical, it was the week after Christmas, so more like New Years with a side of late Christmas.

Leaving Haslet.

Mom didn't know I took this, but if she did she'd be very upset.

Just inside Oklahoma.

Oklahoma has these cool rock walls from where the roads were cut into the hills.

Eventually it started snowing. We didn't know it at the time, but despite the fact that we were headed to Green Bay, this was the most snow we'd see the whole trip.

This is the 2nd-story back porch view from my Aunt/Uncle/cousins' house. You can kind of tell in the below photo that the bay is frozen over.

The basement is pretty cool.

And these are my cousins. Left-to-right: Rhiannon (Rio) (15), Sierra (19), Colin (17), and Celine (20).

They got a new kitten. He apparently liked my leg.

Celine also got a chameleon recently. I persuaded her to name him Pascal after the chameleon from Tangled.

Rio watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

Even super nice/fancy restaurants in Green Bay have Packers logos on their cups.

My uncle Mike and Sierra completely dead asleep.

I played a bunch of X-Wing Miniatures with Uncle Mike. As you might imagine, it's a strategy game using miniatures. Uncle Mike really really likes strategy games, so he got really intense with it.

Celine with the cat.

Celine and Sierra after a long day.

Everybody watching Oculus. Which I did not finish because stressful.

I guess in hindsight Celine was on her phone a lot.

There actually wasn't a whole lot that went on during this trip. Most everyone was busy doing their own thing, so I spent most of my time alone playing video games at the house. Not that I'm complaining, exactly. I wasn't sad/angry/disappointed. It just kinda turned out to be a "pretty decent" trip rather than the usual "that was awesome" trip it usually is. Maybe if we'd actually been there on Christmas day it would have been better. I dunno.

Probably not, actually, because most of my cousins are getting older now. Celine and Sierra are both adults, with their own lives. College, working, driving places, seeing friends, et cetera. It's not that they didn't want to spend time with us while we were there, it's just that they have lives now. I kinda always figured it would happen, and I sort of figured I'd be more sad about it when it did. But I think it almost feels normal, really.

On the way back down to Texas, my mom asked me if there was anything I still wanted to do or anywhere I wanted to go. I said the only place I really wanted to go to was Metropolis, Illinois, a tiny town that's famous as "the home of Superman." Stephanie went there on a road trip earlier in 2014, so it was sort of fresh on my mind. But it was way out of our way, so it wasn't really an option.

When I got home, I found a Christmas present package from Stephanie. Inside was a deck of playing cards and some green rock candy... from Metropolis, Illinois.

I can't even explain how awesome that was. It was like finding a piece of a dream in reality. Also, the timing was just too perfect.

So yeah. That was my trip. Pretty uneventful, but nice. Sorry it took me a week to post this, but I've been out of the blogging habit. Oh well. Hopefully that will change.