Christmas Break

We are back from our Christmas vacation and just trying to get re-adjusted to the time change, a process that always stinks coming back this way. We left Boston last Monday night and made it back to our house around 1pm on Tuesday. Asia our housekeeper was here and she brought back Stella so we were very happy to see her.  But she of course wanted nothing to do with us, she gets mad when we go away so she gave us the cold shoulder for most of the day until she finally warmed up to us. Unfortunately Asia told us she had been a bit sick over Christmas and she had to have the vet come to her house (one of the perks of living in Poland - doctors make house calls, even vets!!). She had a lot of blood in her urine but it cleared up after a round of antibiotics thankfully. I'll have to take her back to the vet next week to make sure it's nothing serious, but she is acting normal again so I am not too worried. The vet mentioned that he thinks that stress played a part in it, which was his original diagnosis when we brought Stella to him after we moved into a new house and she kept peeing everywhere and lost a ton of weight. We will see what he says next week.

We had a great time back in the U.S. but it always a big undertaking to go back, especially around Christmas when we try to fit in lots of family visits. We arrived in Boston on December 17th after a nice flight. When we fly back we have 2 choices of flights- a 6:30 am one out of Katowice airport which is an hour away, with a 3 hour layover in Frankfurt so it gives us plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast or to get any kind of shopping done, and there is virtually no chance of missing our connection. Pretty much the only reason we consider this flight is so we don't get stuck in Krakow because of the smog -I thought I had posted about our horrible experience getting stuck at the airport a few years ago but now I can't find it, but after that incident I vowed never to fly out of Krakow during the winter again. But then I changed that to, never fly Ryan Air out of Krakow during the winter, because they don't care about their passengers at all. The second flight option was 1pm out of Krakow on Lufthansa, connecting through Munich but with only an hour layover. This is not much time when you have 2 kids and need to go through customs, so it's a bit risky. We decided to chance it, because really, who the heck wants to get up at 3 in the morning and drive an hour to an airport when we live 7 minutes from the one in Krakow? Unfortunately for us, the smog/fog was bad the night before our flight so several flights had been cancelled, causing lots of the delays on the morning of the 17th, including ours because the plane had not arrived in Krakow as planned the night before. Mike was a bit annoyed by the thought of us missing our connection but to be honest, I wasn't too bothered by it because we weren't rushing back for anything in particular arriving one day later wasn't so bad.  Plus the thought of having to spend the night in Munich didn't bother me at all, because it's a great city, Mike has never been, and we were all together so I actually thought it would have been fun (not considering having to lug our 8 overstuffed suitcases back and forth). Fortunately we were only delayed about 30 minutes and they were able to make up some the time in the air, so we were only delayed about 10 minutes when we got to Munich. However, our flight attendant told us to go straight to the gate just in case, which made us nervous, so this caused Mike to not allow me to stop at the neat German souvenir shop where I figured I could pick up last minute gifts for my dad and brother. So we made our way straight to our gate only to find out that the flight was delayed an hour! Figures. As we were waiting we heard 'the McDonald family' being paged over the loudspeaker. Oh no, this can't be good! Imagine if we were booted off of the flight because it was overbooked or something? When we go to the counter the woman asked us for our boarding passes, then told us that they were going to reassign our seats because we would be flying Business Class with them. What a nice Christmas surprise! The kids started jumping up and down and I though Jack was going to pee his pants with excitement. Every single time we fly the kids ask us why we don't ever fly Business or First Class 'where the nice seats are', they just don't understand how insanely expensive it is. Finally their dream was coming true! To be honest I was pretty excited about it as well. So needless to say we had a great, albeit long flight. It's always hard to sleep during the day flights, so we watched lots of movies and the kids got lots of electronics time in.

We did a bit of traveling while back home, the kids and I especially. That Monday the 3 of us picked up the rental car and then got on the road to visit my dad and Mickey while Mike went to work in the Boston office. It was about a 4 hour drive with a pee stop. My brother and his girlfriend Lin arrived from LA that night and we had a good visit.  We got back to Braintree Wednesday around dinnertime, then on Christmas day we loaded up the car again and the 4 of us drove another 4 hours to my mom's. After a nice few days in the mountains we were on the road back to Braintree on Monday after Christmas. Then on Mike's birthday (the 30th), we packed up the car yet again and finally made our way down to our house in Falmouth. We spent New Year's down there, had a relaxing time with Nina eating Chinese food and playing Just Dance on the new XBOX. Even Nina danced! Then it was back up to Braintree for a few more days before we left for Krakow. While it is great getting to see our families, it's a bit tiring and the worst part of it is keeping track of all our stuff. I managed to lose a brand new pair of Ray Ban sunglasses, ones that I bought to replace the pair I lost during our October visit. Then as we were packing to leave, I realized my iPad was missing - and I remembered I had slid it down next to the console as I was getting out of the rental car, because I didn't want to leave it in plain view on the seat while I ran into a store. Damn it!! I immediately called the rental car agency but unfortunately they had already rented the car out to someone else. We had to get to the airport and I was just so annoyed that I lost something else. I almost even left my brand new book in the seatback in front of me when I got off the plane, but luckily I realized it before I got off and had to fight my way back down the aisle to get it. Usually I am not the one losing things!

Look at all that leg room

Fully reclining seats. Now only if he felt like sleeping!

Unlimited free OJ and sparkling wine for these high rollers

Our kids hate plane food, they selected the pasta dish but the flight attendant asked if we would be willing to give up one of their meals for a vegetarian who didn't have a meal (maybe they should have pre-ordered one like you are supposed to?!) I agreed because it was pesto pasta and Jack wouldn't have eaten his anyway. So they brought him another meal, and I was super-excited when I saw it - sauerbraten, dumplings and red cabbage, my absolute favorite! I stole it from him but when I tried the meat it just didn't taste right....so I checked the menu card and it was duck, not sauerbraten. Blech! At least the dumplings and cabbage were yummy

airport sunset

Funny to see planes driving over the highway!