Christmas in "The South" The Trip and Day 1

For Christmas Eric's mom bought us all plane tickets to Georgia to visit Eric's sister Melissa and her son AJ who we hadn't seen since they moved in June of this year. 

As much as I love to travel and see other places, I have major anxiety about leaving my friends, house and dogs for long periods of time.  Just to make matters worse as we are loading up the car Friday night our smoke detectors start going crazy. Great, so now add to the list of worries that the house will burn down while were away. 

Once Eric silenced the smoke detectors and calmed the dogs we are on our way and crossing our fingers we wouldn't hit traffic. It was an amazingly quick traffic-less trip to LAX that evening.  We arrive about an hour before boarding, easily park, check in, receive our full body scan and head to our gate.  This puts me in major panic mode because I also have a sever fear of flying, well not so much flying as crashing but you know what I mean.  Thank god and Aubrey for Xanax!

On the flight change in Dallas and I was so sleepy from the Xanax I never felt the plane take off.  I remember taxing the runway and next thing I know the pilot was giving us the weather as we started our decent into Atlanta. Good times. :-)  We land in Atlanta ahead of schedule, grab our rental car and we are on the road to Savannah.  We arrived at Melissa's house Christmas Eve about 3pm. At first AJ didn't know what to think of 3 people he didn't remember, but in no time he was very comfortable with us. 

  Christmas morning while still on CA time about 3:18am I am awoke not by the sound of reindeer hooves on the roof,  but the sound of Southern Baptist Gospel music like nothing I had ever heard before.  Dismissing it as a rude neighbor until I later found out it was a Southern Baptist church just across the driveway from the bedroom. Oops I guess that's kinda their point. :-)

The rest of the day however was great. We opened presents and hung out with AJ while Domonique and Melissa made dinner.

We had a great dinner, from traditional food to NEVER been on my Christmas dinner plate before.  Ham, yams, rolls, mac and cheese, green bean casserole, cheesy potatoes, shrimp pasta salad, collard greens and bean stuff. No I didn't forget the name, Domonique and his family literally call it "bean stuff." 

We were joined for dinner by Domonique's cousin Michelle and her husband Tim and their 3 kids.  Tim decided to bring a bottle of coffee flavored Patron and after everyone left Eric and Domonique went to work on that bottle between beers.  By the end of the night one was singing Rhianna and talking about how he needed Maury Povich until he passed out, while the other stood over him offering to share his cheesy potatoes.

   Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.