Christmas Vacation Part 3: Washington & Minnesota

We got in Friday morning to Washington and had a day to try to re-coup before our next flight. It involved a lot of this....as we were pretty messed up on time zones at this point.

The next morning we squeezed in a family breakfast and white-elephant exchange with my mom's family.

Then we hopped on our flight to Minnesota. I have to point out that packing for this vacation was very tricky...fitting swimsuits and sandals in with pea-coats and boots plus Christmas presents made for very full suitcases. 

We lucked out and Paige had a seat to herself. She didn't sleep at all, and broke the headphones, but was pretty pleasant. 

And this is what we do before we even get off the plane in Minnesota. I told Paige we were going to the North Pole.

It was a special trip with Ben's family this year because for the first time since we've been married all of Ben's siblings were together. That meant 23 people (from the Caribbean, Colorado, California, Utah, & North Carolina) all staying in 1 house! It was a little crazy, but luckily we have a toddler so we scored a bedroom. We did a lot of hanging around, chatting, and Paige loved playing with her cousins. 

-A big highlight for the boys was watching the Vikings game

-Paige hanging out in her jammies with uncle Jordan

- She loved playing with Piper.

-With the boy cousins: Quentin, Jackson, & baby Vince

-We got brave and ventured out a few times: Eddingtons for soup and breadsticks, Spanish branch for church where Ben spoke in Spanish and we all sang I am a Child of God in Spanish (Ben's dad is the high councilman over the branch), Target run to pick out Andi's New Year's dress, Punch Pizza, and... Mall of America!

 This was my first trip to Mall of America, and it lived up to my expectations. It is absolutely huge! With a full on amusement park in the middle.

 Paige was spoiled by her cute aunts while Ben and I rode an awesome roller coaster

 We wore these babies out.

We also did a fun white-elephant with his whole family (best gift was creepy beach wear/lingerie from the Caribbean).

 It was so fun catching up with all the Holms and having Paige get to know her aunts and uncles and cousins better. We were a little nervous one night when Paige lost her binky. A little background: Paige was totally addicted to her binky and I was terrified for the day when I would have to ween her off it. Well this was her last binky and it was late, so we decided to just see how she would do. And it wasn't that bad! So even though Ben's brother found it the next day, we just kept her off it and she hasn't had it since. Really it was a huge blessing since I know I would have kept caving in with it. And we realized she knows so many more words that we thought, she just wouldn't talk because she always had a binky in her mouth.

We finally headed back to North Carolina. Over 3 weeks, 4 time zones, and 9 flights later, we were ready to be home (and Paige had developed an ear infection) but we loved getting to see so much family! Thanks family, and thanks Duke for such a long Christmas break!