I hope you are all enjoying your Christmas vacation. Sadly, mine is already over, as I have deadlines piling up. We've had an exhausting few days and I'm just about ready to collapse, but I have a few holiday moments I would like to share with everyone.

This was a special Christmas for the Cottrells, as it was Lois' first time to celebrate the holiday. This year also marked a new and already retired Christmas tradition: driving out of town with two children and a dog. We will get to that part later, though.

Jason to Santa: "Meh."

I really hoped that this would be the first Christmas when Jason could get excited about the gifts. I imagined that he would walk into the living room, see Santa's unwrapped toys (particularly Butterscotch), and jump for joy. At the very least, I was hoping to hear him say his cute little, "Oh, wow."

As soon as he woke up, I stood at the end of the hall with a camera to capture his surprise:


Yeesh, I would expect this kind of apathy from a teenager, but not a two-year-old! Once he woke up a bit more, he did decide that Butterscotch was pretty cool and began to "feed" her any kind of food he could get his hands on.

Unfortunately, Lois decided that the horse was absolutely terrifying and refused to enter the living room until we removed the creature. So, Butterscotch is currently standing guard over our comic books in the unused study. Eh, they'll grow into it.

The Fisher-Price Grand Piano, on the other hand, was a great success:

Christmas in Exile

After presents were dispersed, the Cottrells piled into the car and headed off to a rented cabin in the woods. Yes, we decided to leave the trappings of modern technology behind for a few days and get in touch with nature.

Okay, this was all my crazy idea and my lovely husband went along with it. Praise Jesus, we did find a Christmas miracle waiting for us
at this unhosted bed and breakfast: a small television with a satellite hook-up.

It warmed my heart when we all hunkered down to watch a Christmas episode of "Justice League" on a tiny television in the woods. Then, Brian and I shared a laugh when we realized that we had just driven 60+ miles away from home, baby screaming the entire way, to watch television in a strange location.

Still, we had our fun in the little cabin and the kids slept on a palette I made for them. I watched them curled up all peacefully on the floor and all was right in the world.

Then, Brian killed a spider the size of my head and we high-tailed it back to the suburbs. FYI - the baby screamed the entire way home, too.

Overall, I would say that we had a successful Christmas. No one hacked us to pieces while we were in the woods, Butterscotch hasn't overridden her prime directive and trampled the children, and Brian gave me an awesome Captain Marvel t-shirt.

It was a Geek Parenting Christmas!