Christmas in Michigan

This year, Ernie and I went to Michigan for Christmas. His whole family was going to be there-including his parents from Brasil, and our new nephew, Jordan! We left our house super early Christmas Eve, thinking the airport was going to be busy. It wasn't. So we had 2 hours to kill until our plane left. Southwest just started a new boarding process where you get an actual number with your "A" "B" or "C" boarding group. I liked the change and it helped with all the people that usually cut in line. We had a 3 hour layover in Nashville, so we spent the time eating lunch, walking around and watching a movie on Ernie's dvd player. Much, much later we arrived in Detroit 9:30pm Eastern Time.

First sighting of snow at the airport! I was excited already!

Natali picked us up and we drove 2.5 hours to Grand Rapids were Ernie's family lives. By the time we got there and said our hellos it was already Christmas!

We woke up the next morning to a white Christmas-my first ever! This is a picture of Ernie's grandparent's house. They have a small apartment above the house where we stayed with Ernie's parents, Natali, and Natali's dog Simon.

There was snow everywhere! It was so beautiful.

Christmas morning we gathered our presents and drove to Joel and Lynne's house. Here's Ernie and Jordan meeting for the first time!

They hit it off right away.

I was really excited to see how Ernie's family did Christmas. My family does the same thing every year-we are really in to tradition-so it was cool to get a new take on Christmas day. Everyone got a stocking and opened them at the same time. Then Ernie's dad played "Santa" and would randomly pull a present from under the tree. The person whose name was on the present opened it until all the presents were opened. We had lots of fun!

Ernie and I by the tree-our second Christmas together!

Later, Dad picked up Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas lunch. Here they are with Jordan. So cute!

We spent the rest of Christmas playing games and eating treats. We played our favorite card game, "butthead" and a new game that Joel and Lynne had, "Fact or Crap". It was really fun.

In the days to follow we had more fun playing games and hanging out with Jordan. Look at the 2 pals:

The movie "American Pie" is based on Grand Rapids high school. "Yesterdog" is the hot dog joint that the boys hang out in after school. Dad was nice enough to drive by so I could take a picture.

This was the day Jordan and I bonded. The first time I held him he was squirmy and cried. This time he sat happily on my lap for quite a while. Yeah, Aunt Rachel!

Being silly, "Fat guy in a little coat"

One of the highlights of the trip was when we went tubing Friday night. It was so awesome! The only problem was I couldn't find my snowboarding gloves, and Ernie doesn't have any snow gloves, so I bought us dishwashing gloves, thinking at least they'd keep us dry. (See picture). Unfortunately, it was freezing cold and I thought I had frostbite after the first tube run. Ernie shared the gloves he had borrowed and saved the night!

While we were there the new showed up. I'd like to say that we were instant celebrities with our air time, but sadly, the camera guy left right as we came down the hill. But check out the article anyways, and hopefully the video will work (I couldn't get it to a few nights ago).

Tubing Video

Saturday I got to go to Faye's (Ernie's cousin) bridal shower put on by Ernie's mom Sue and his Aunt Marcia. They did a fantastic job! Here are the Spoelhof sisters having fun!

They bought her a veil and put all the bows from her presents on it.

The beautiful bride-to-be

We played some really fun games like "Famous couples" and Sue read a poem where you could earn points for things like pieces of jewelry, being married, wearing blue, etc. The winner got a prize. I was close, but lost to the lady at our table who was wearing about 16 pieces of jewelry! There was a game where everyone won and I got a beautiful beaded bracelet from Brasil. Score!

Later that night we went to Aunt Karen and Uncle Ron's for dinner. We got to meet Faye's finance, Kurt. Him and Ernie bonded over UFC-I even joined in the conversation for a while, but then abandoned them for finer things like dark chocolate hershey's kisses which were in the other room!! Oh, and of course all the other people who were visiting...right? Right.

Sunday was Ernie's 27th birthday. We started off the day by visiting Bill and Sue's home church. Everyone was really excited to see them, and I got to meet some of their friends which was really nice. After church we went to Arnie's for lunch so that Ernie could get a birthday slice of their famous "Snickers Pie."

We ate good food and dessert, then headed back to Joel and Lynne's for the real party!! We hung out and played some games, and took a minute to take this cute picture with Jordan.

After card games and present opening we started the "official" party-a Dance, Dance, Revolution Party!! Almost everyone got into the action. Here's Ernie with his dad:

Even Jordan was steppin' to the beat.

The real professionals and owner's of the game, Joel and Lynne.

Ernie and I giving it a try. Notice my cool bright green sash? It gave me special dancing powers.

we had a lot of fun and laughed a lot, especially when we would accidentally choose a really hard song or someone would "accidentally" put their opponent on Difficult level.

All in all it was a Christmas to remember. I had so much fun spending time in Michigan with Ernie's family-I felt so lucky to get the opportunity to be there for a whole week. We were definitely sad to go, but excited to see my family who were waiting for us in San Diego...that blog is coming next!