Home for the Holidays!!

I never once pictured myself being “that family member” who flies home for the holidays. But theres a first time for everything, right?

We have been on the road for 8 months, and we were way passed due to go home and see our family! So we bought round trip plane tickets home and headed out of Alaska for 3 weeks.

For me, it was my first time flying commercially so i was a little nervous to say the least. Thankfully Lucas has had a little experience flying and was there to hold my hand. We decide to fly “red eye” as they call it (we left at midnight Alaska time), thinking we would be able to catch some ZZZ’s but that was not the case at all!  Our first leg of the flight was from Anchorage to Seattle, WA (about a 4 hour flight or so) not a bad flight at all except for the guy that sat next to Lucas talked to him the entire flight so needless to say sleep was not an option on that flight. The second flight from Seattle to Dallas, TX was also about 3-4 hours and we were hopeful to get some sleep on this flight, except the guy that sat next to Lucas snored very loudly the entire time! So here we are about 8 hours into the trip and not one wink of sleep 😦 As we sat and waited on the flight to depart from Dallas to Atlanta, GA we were dragging along like zombies! As we touched down in Atlanta we were greeted by my older sister, her husband and their three kids who were holding a handmade sign that read “Future Mr. & Mrs. Freimuth.” It was so good to see them after 8 long months of being apart!

When we left Alaska it was a constant 20 degrees during the day with about 6-8 inches of snow! What a surprise to land in Atlanta, GA to 70 degrees and sunny weather! A complete opposite climate change, but with the warmth came a lot of rain. So much, that it ended up flooding a lot of areas in Franklin and surrounding counties (definitely not the Decembers I grew up to.)

A few days after we got settled in Max (Lucas’ brother), Nichole (Max’s girlfriend), Lucas and I all decided to go out and surprise Lucas’ parents with a nice Christmas tree! We picked out a really nice full 7 foot tall tree for Lucas’ family and a HUGE 9.5 foot tree for my older sister and her family. We decorated her tree first and had a heck of a time putting the star on top (i was on Lucas’ shoulders using a knife to cut the top off so the star would fit). We then decorated the smaller tree with Max and Nichole at his parents house and happened to put so many decorations on the tree you could barely see the green on the tree! 🙂 Lucas’ parents were flying in to Atlanta on December 23rd from the Bahamas (where their boat was harbored at the time). Getting to the airport so close to Christmas was a mad house and the traffic was bumper to bumper most of the time in Atlanta. We had them fooled in thinking we didn’t get a tree yet and they were stressing about trying to find a tree this close to Christmas!

A Christmas Eve tradition for Lucas’ family is to travel over to Waynesville and visit his fathers side of the family. You can count on great company and killer food every year like clockwork. Most all of his fathers relatives gather over there including his grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins. Later that evening we went to my side of the family and spent Christmas Eve with my two sisters and their children.

Christmas began with eating breakfast with Lucas’ family (his mom’s famous breakfast casserole!) After eating that awesome breakfast we began opening presents, even at 26 years old we felt like little kids again! We all opened presents slowly throughout most of the day savoring the moment and taking it all in.

The only time we left town besides going over to Wanyesville was to visit my Mom, her husband Mickey and my brother in Virginia. We spent a weekend up there visiting and doing our Christmas with them, Mom,my niece Tinley and nephew Silas even made Lucas a  birthday cake for his 26 birthday, he was totally surprised 🙂

 

December is a  pretty big month for us, with Christmas, our Anniversary, Lucas Birthday and bringing in the New Year. We had a very eventful few weeks home, and we saw a lot of family while we were there! All of our siblings, parents, our grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, niece, nephews and our friends! But thats exactly what the holidays are about…. friends and family!

The three weeks we were in Franklin seemed to go by so fast! And as sad as we are to leave our family and friends once more, we are exciting to head back to Alaska and finish out our year up north!