{the Dempster Dailies}: Christmas, My Very Special Guest Photographers and the After-Christmas Aftermath

Joe and I spent Christmas 2009 (not a typo, I am that far behind) in Boston with his family. Once again, David and Melissa were kind enough to open up their home and have us as house guests for a few days. And once again, I have very few pictures. If I had to guess, it's because we spent most of our time playing, coloring and whatever little David and Sarah wanted to do. :-)

Joe and I left for Providence, RI on Christmas Eve morning and Meaghan was an awesome sister/sister-in-law and picked us up bright and early from the airport. Now, one of the bad things about storytelling many months later, is that the details always seem to escape me. Some of the highlights of our Boston trip include: finding my PR figurine (after an unsuccessful search in VA pre-Blizzard 2009); Melissa's trifle; having Sarah wake us at o'dark thirty with a loud whisper, "Unca Joe, Aunt Eeer-rin, Santa was here!" and watching her and little David open their gazillion presents; watching the Chargers demolish the Titans on Christmas Day while live-texting with my Charger fan mom and brother who were watching the same; and watching little David at hockey practice. I know there were many more highlights, but I can't for the life of me recall them. (Booooo, I know.)

And now, my special guest photographers. San Diego peeps you may remember them as they were when you first met them:

The night before we left, I took my camera out of bag, hoping to snap some last-minute photos of the kids. Little David immediately jumped on it and asked, "Can I take some pictures?" Sure, why not?

His pictures:

And of course, Sarah had to jump on it too:

By this time, Sarah was running around with the camera and David wanted it back. I decided one last picture before we put the camera away -- one I thought turned out pretty good:

Shortly thereafter, it was time to pack and get to bed; we had an early flight out of Providence the next morning.

Fast-forward to 4:30 a.m., we get in our rental car to make the 45-minute drive to PVD. When we arrived at the United check-in area, we found that our flight had been canceled. Now, if I were writing this immediately after this incident, I'm sure I'd have all kind of stories to tell. But I don't. The one thing I do remember was this twenty-something gal who (just like the rest of us in United's check-in line) would be missing her flight. She was visibly upset -- hysterical even, telling the very lucky person on the other line of her cellphone (who we found out later happened to be her mother), that she was missing her flight to Barbados and how she just had to get there this morning. She was yelling and screaming, maybe in hopes that the yelling and screaming would magically make the lines move faster or perhaps "un-cancel" our flights. In a very thick Boston-accent she yelled into her cellphone, "But Ma! All these people are looking at me like I'm a crazy person." Ah, yes. Yes, we were.

We finally got to the ticket-counter and found that United had canceled all of their flights that day to Reagan and there were no available seats to flights to BWI or Dulles. We later find out the cancellation was not due to inclement weather but because United's terminal at Reagan had flooded. You would think that they could have the planes taxi to another terminal, but no. They would just cancel all those flights. (And here, I ask in my best Hilary voice, "Really? Really?") But I digress. Because I had work the following day, we had no choice but to drive on a post-holiday weekend (I'm cringing just thinking about it) from Providence to Alex. Normally, I'm guessing this trip is about a seven to eight-hour drive. With the holiday traffic, even leaving at o'dark thirty, this trip took us eleven hours. And as Meaghan knows, Joe does not like stopping unless he has to and when you do, it's never for more than five minutes.

During the trip, I did take the opportunity to snap a few photos along the way. Unfortunately, it was still dark out until we got to New York, so my pictures started there: