Happy New Year! ...and a sick Christmas?

It WAS a Merry Christmas, because we were with family. But it wasn't the Christmas vacation we expected...

We get to NJ where we discover Joe is sick; my mom and Julia had been sick a few days before we arrived. One of those 24 hour bugs, you know--the one that always comes during vacation. No biggie. We had a wonderful Christmas morning!
We opened tons of presents, including a Wii for the family.




We ate our customary WONDERFUL sausage bake and hot chocolate.

We also spoke to Elder Jett, who is doing very well in Colombia (and who has only eight months left in his mission!!).

Immediately after we spoke to Bill, we got on the road...to Texas! We had decided rather late that we would make the trip. My family had never been to Texas so they said, Let's go! We knew it would be fun because we could show them our hangouts and our favorite places down in DFW and see the Killion family.

Two things happened. The first, and probably the most uncomfortable: Lizzie got sick in the car. Poor lady threw up three times within two hours and proceeded to scream at the top of her lungs. Second, and probably the most scary: the car started shaking. My dad felt that if he stopped fully when he reached the toll booths, the car wouldn't start again. It was that bad.

So we made a quick and necessary decision--we would stop at our place in MD and hold up there until Lizzie was better and until we could get the car fixed. So we ended up in Germantown on Christmas night. Thankfully our mechanic was able to look at the car the very next morning. Its problems turned out to be engine related. A few hours and some $$$ later, the van was set. Lizzie was in much better spirits too.

But because the drive to Texas is long (a full twenty-four hours), we knew our trip would be much too crammed because of lost time if we decided to go. So we said, Hey--we'll stay in MD and visit around the area.

Then Katie got sick.
Then Chris.
Then me.

That was all during last week. We were sick on different days, so we were able to travel despite the virus plague, and here are pictures of what we did!

We went to the Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Lizzie loved the Gravity and Air section for kids. She couldn't get enough of the big balloon!

We even found a JETT--look closely in the right corner of the picture.


We went to the Museum of Natural History.

I managed to snag a picture of the Hope Diamond, even though there were about ten million people crammed into that little space.

We went to the Sea Section, where Liz checked out penguins and we checked out lots of fish!


We walked through the Smithsonian Castle and took pictures in front of the Capitol and the Washington Monument.




We went to the temple to see the Christmas lights. We were also able to attend a harpist concert at the Visitor Center, which was really beautiful.




We traveled to Hanover, PA to visit the Utz potato chip factory. In a word, AWESOME! We're definitely going back again soon! The Factory Outlet Store was incredible. (No pictures were allowed in the factory or the outlet store.)




We went to Hershey, PA to get some chocolate!

We took the tour ride and loved every minute of it,


especially the minutes we spent at the store...

Dad's favorite section was the Reese's section, of course.


Despite our change of plans and the bouts of the virus that got each of us at one point or another, we had a good Christmas vacation--a memorable one at that! We hope you had a Merry Christmas and we hope you have a wonderful New Year! :)