I've never missed a Christmas at home with my family. It's a time of year and tradition that I cherish, and no matter where I am in the world, I've made it a point to always spend Christmas with those I love most.
This year, we went home a week early so that Dustin could go into the office for a week before the holiday. We found a reasonably priced marina in Jacksonville Beach, called Palm Cove Marina, where we kept the boat while we were away. We rented a car and drove 17 hours home, which took more like 19 hours with stops. We left at 5am and didn't arrive until midnight!
The morning after arriving in Michigan, we went and said hello to my parents and my sister, and I helped my mom and dad decorate their Christmas tree, just like when I was a kid.
Later that night, we met up with Dustin's mom and went to dinner at the What Not Inn in Fennville to get dinner and hear some music, then we went to a drive through light display at Crane's Orchards.
We both had to work that first week while we were home - Dustin had to drive into the office each day and I worked from our hotel room. After work each night, we soaked up as many precious moments with friends and family as we possibly could! It was so good to be home and see our family! I even worked from my parent's house one day just so that I could be in their presence a little longer. I miss my family so much when we are away and our time at home never feels long enough!
We did all kinds of fun Christmas events throughout our time at home! One night my mom, sister, and I went to a Christmas themed cocktail class put on by a company called Cocktail Couture, where we learned how to make delicious and beautiful winter cocktails or mocktails for entertaining. We made a pomegranate lime gimlet and a winter white coconut margarita! Both were very tasty! They were garnished with rosemary sprigs and cranberries and looked very festive!
Afterwards, Mom and I went to Clementine's, a local favorite that is always decorated beautifully for Christmas! They always hang hundreds of huge paper cut snowflakes from the tin ceilings and something about it is just magical. Dustin and I actually went a separate evening while we were home so he could enjoy it too! While Mom and I were enjoying our meal, it had started snowing. The snowflakes outside were nearly as big as the fake ones hanging in the restaurant! As we were leaving, we stood outside in childlike awe, admiring the snow gently falling from the sky. A grin crawled across my face as I looked at my Mom in pure gratitude that I could be there in person to experience this with her. Soon, a familiar voice yelled from a car at the stoplight. Dustin and his mom were out driving around looking at the snow and Christmas lights also! Too funny! We would've hopped in together, but the cars were full of presents, so we each drove all around town with our moms looking at the different light displays, and it was simple fun.
The next night we met up with a good friend of ours for pizza at our favorite spot, DiMaggio's!
Another night that week, my sister and I had a girls night and made gingerbread houses together while listening to music, talking, laughing and sharing some wine! My cookie wreath fell off the house and smashed my gingerbread people and my roof caved in, letting all the candy snowflakes inside. I'm not going into the construction field anytime soon, but we had a great time making them.
That first Friday that we were home, we went with my family up to Richland to the Gilmore Car Museum. They had a top notch Christmas light drive-through and the museum had hundreds of cool old cars on display. My favorite era were the 20's and 30's. The museum was giving rides through the lights in a vintage Oldsmobile Chieftain, and we couldn't resist, so we all crammed inside (7 of us)! It was a very tight squeeze, but we all fit and it was a unique way to experience the lights! Afterwards, we popped into Ned's on Gull Lake for a late night meal on our way home. They had some interesting and tasty entrees, like the peanut butter and jelly burger that my mom ordered!
The next day, Mom, Karly, and I went to Kalamazoo to a place called the Aroma Labs. They had us start by sitting down and smelling dozens of essential oils and notating the ones we liked best. Next, we took our favorites and started concocting blends that we thought might smell good together to create our own signature scents. I made probably about 20 blends before I came up with a few that I loved. Each person is able to make 5 blends and then the "recipes" are saved into an account. We could choose from perfume, cologne, body spray, body scrub, body wash, room spray, beard oil, reed diffusers, car air fresheners, etc. and each could be crafted using our own signature scents that we came up with! Coming up with a name for our blends was half of the fun. I made one with notes of maple, bourbon, and bergamot and named it "Call Me Old Fashioned" then I made another for Dustin that smelled like Abercrombie for men and named it "Dibs on the Captain ;)" LOL. My mom and sister came up with some funny names too and the girl working that night got a kick out of our creativity! The whole experience was free, in the hopes that at the end each person would make a purchase. We each bought at least one item and it was so much fun! I made a blend that I named "Bilge Be Gone" for the boat and ordered a room spray of it! LOL. The blends that we came up with were saved to our online profiles and now anytime we need a refill, we can go online and order them! I highly recommend this - it was a lot of fun!
On the way back to the cars, we walked, more like ran through Bronson Park to look at the lights. It was 14 degrees outside that night and painfully freezing so we did not dilly dally and many of the photos were taken as we ran past without stopping! Ha!
We spent Christmas Eve with Dustin's mom and extended family in Mattawan and had a really nice night hanging out with everyone and catching up! Dustin's mom had given us a pop up Christmas tree for our hotel room to make it more festive while we were home and it really made it so much more cozy in there for our stay!
Dad has been experimenting making different kinds of bread and on Christmas morning, he made us all quite a feast including some Italian bread, Norwegian rice porridge, homemade cinnamon rolls, quiche, steak tips and mashed potatoes and gravy! It was all delicious and he really outdid himself. One of his Christmas gifts from us was a 100 year old Norwegian sourdough starter kit that was shipped from Oslo. We found that we might have some Norwegian heritage and it has been fun learning about Norway, especially since visiting as a family this past fall!
On Christmas, Dustin surprised me with a trip to Thailand this coming October!!! 2025 will see my 40th Birthday and our 10 year anniversary, so he wanted to do something extra special to celebrate! He cut up a copy of the itinerary into a puzzle and made me put it together to figure out where we will be going!! I've always dreamed of getting a surprise trip for a gift, so this was literally a dream come true. We'll be flying into Bangkok, then visiting Chiang Mai, Krabi, and Phuket! To say I'm excited is a serious understatement!!!
Later in the week, my family got together and all made some homemade pizzas at my mom and dad's. The guys made pizzas from scratch, dough and all, and I made us some artisan pizzas using flatbread from Aldi and a bunch of different toppings! They all turned out so yummy and it was a lot of fun!
The day before we headed back to Michigan, I went over and spent some time with my Grandma Dow. We had given her a digital picture frame for Christmas, so I wanted to go get it all set up for her before we left. I can upload pictures to it from my phone from wherever we are in the world and they show up on her frame in real time! It's actually pretty cool and I think she is enjoying keeping up with the family on it. I gave other family members access to it to so we can all upload photos to it for Grandma! My parents have one and so do Dustin and I so it's been kind of fun adding photos to each other's frames! :)
Overall, we had such a wonderful trip at home! As usual, it went by way too fast, but we were definitely ready to get back to some sunshine after not seeing the sun for nearly 2 weeks straight. I wasn't ready to leave my family though - I never am! I am hoping we can get them down to Florida this winter for a visit!
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