Christmas 2013 - Act II

Charlotte

Chicago

Dec 31. Tuesday afternoon, we headed out to the Charlotte airport for the second part of the adventure.  We caught our flight (about 45 minutes late coming in from Houston) from Charlotte to Chicago Midway. We didn’t change planes at Chicago so we didn’t have to worry about making the connection to Vegas. Good thing, too. Chicago was a mess. Snowing and cold we were running over an hour late by the time we got de-iced and took off to Vegas. When we got there, Mike met us at the passenger pick up area, and took us to his house. Dad was there with Kelly when we arrived and we were able to visit for a while that evening. Since it was about 1am according to our Eastern Standard Time bodies, we didn’t visit for too long.

On New Year’s Day, we packed up Kira’s car and headed to where else…. Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast. Then we headed to Cedar City. We met Jessi and Peter at Cracker Barrel for brunch in St George. Peter and Gary took Kira’s car and headed up to Cedar, but us ladies needed a “shopping” fix. We shopped for a couple of hours and picked up some dresses for the girls, had lots of fun and then headed to Cedar in the Accord. That evening everyone pitched in to help wrap Christmas presents and we went to Smith’s to get food for “Christmas Dinner”.  No ham of course, but we made do with a pork roast.

Jessi wanted to do a tradition Turek Christmas morning, so we got up early on Thursday Jan 2, to open

presents. Everyone had lots of fun and I think got pretty much what they wanted.  Gary and I even got a little something.  I got some fantastic caramel sauce the girls had picked up for me in SLC. That was easier for us from the east coast that for the locals. Peter made us crepes for breakfast, which were fantastic and then we watched a movie, “The Kid” that afternoon. We also made some of our famous candy cane pastries and Peter made rolls. We had a good dinner and then we once again played iPad Charades, and once again we had a GREAT time.  We laughed and were very silly. To top it all off, Peter had a wonderful fire going to enhance the atmosphere.

On Friday Jan 3, we got up fairly early and went down to St George to do a temple session. Gary and I really enjoyed the session at St George. It seemed to go quicker and there was a lot less stress for some reason. We had been sealed in St. George when we got married and I don’t think we had been back.  It

was a wonderful experience.  Afterward we took some pictures outside the temple. There was still some snow on the ground from a storm they had before we got there.  We were all hungry and since Kira had been craving a good hamburger, we headed to Smashburgers for lunch. It was very good.  There were some shops back behind the Smashburgers, and we found some really good deals at DownEast. We then stopped at Target before heading back to Cedar. That evening we tried to go to Café Rio, but it was too busy, so we went to another Mexican restaurant called Brodys which Jess and Peter had eaten at before.  It wasn’t busy and the food  was pretty good, too.  As you can see Eating is a BIG part of our trips.

Smashburger in St George

On Saturday, we kind of puttered around the apartment, helped take down some Christmas decorations so Jess wouldn’t have to worry about them before going back to school and then we packed up to go to Vegas. We tried Café Rio again and this time we were able to eat there. We really like Café Rio and since we don’t have them back in SC we wanted to get our fix before coming home. When we got to Mike and Kelly’s house, they already had Kevin and Anna staying there  We told Mike and Kelly we would be back

Visting at Erin's house

on Saturday, but somehow forgot to mention that Jessi and Peter were coming back with us. Oops. Sorry about that. We had to do a little shuffling but everyone had a place to sleep that night and we all slept well. We had planned on going to Macayos with the whole family that evening, but when we got there it was going to be a ridiculous wait to get a table for about 20 people. We finally gave up and headed to Erin’s house to have pizza. It actually worked out better because we could visit with more people, not just the one we were sitting near at the table.

Sunday morning, we got up and went to church with Grandpa Ed. Afterwards we went to Sherri’s house where Sherri, Kira, Jessi and I made chicken salad sandwiches for lunch. We relaxed around the house for a while. Peter and Grandpa and Jason watched TV while Gary, the girls, and I went out to Lake Las Vegas.

 
 
This is a reproduction Italian village (a la DisneylandJ) on some lakes they made by damming up Las Vegas wash. I want to go back the next time we are in Vegas and do a little more roaming around.  We hung around out there until late afternoon then headed back to town. We had to tell Jessi and Peter goodbye (sniff) and send them back to Cedar, and we had to go back to Mike and Kelly’s to pack up ourselves.

Monday morning, 6 January. Some of the worst weather in a long time was plaguing the country, including Chicago where we had to change planes. Gary checked our flights first thing in the morning and they were all running. We went for a walk with Kelly and Kira early, but then Kira had to go off to work. She was NOT ready to go to work and have us leave at the same time. That was really hard for all of us.
BUT, it gets better. I checked again on the flights and the flight from Vegas to Chicago was running so late there was no way we were going to make our connection to Charlotte. And we DID NOT want to get trapped in Chicago. I got on the phone with Southwest airlines and the best they could do was a flight on Wednesday going through Baltimore. I had to scramble to get a substitute for Tuesday and Wednesday and Gary called Renee and let her know. He was able to work some on Tuesday remotely. I called my school and found out I wasn’t the only one stuck out. There were a couple of other teachers who were stuck in Chicago. Kira was pretty happy when we texted her and asked where she wanted to have lunch. We met her at Café Zuppas. That evening we fixed chicken enchiladas and 7 layer treats for supper for Mike and Kelly.Tuesday I worked from Mike and Kelly’s living room until we went out to Deseret Books with Kelly. Other than that we just visited. 

Wednesday morning, we were finally going to get out of town. We said our goodbyes and headed to the airport. The plane was running on time, and soon we were on our way to Baltimore. (We won’t talk about the overweight passenger who sat next to me and made the trip very uncomfortable.) The flight to Charlotte was running late, but soon we were back home. Both Gary and I had to be at work the next day, so we just dumped everything and went to bed. 

Ready for push-back in Las Vegas