Before we hop into attempting to capture two holiday trips in one blog post, I’d be remiss not to celebrate 10 years of our Elf on the Shelf, Sparkle Heart Gem. That’s right, for a decade, I have (almost) flawlessly moved that elf every night from the day after Thanksgiving when the tree goes up, to Christmas Eve. You do the math. This year, I had a teen helper, who is now in on the “Christmas thing”, though she doesn’t actually want anything to do with the Santa part. She likes to be surprised.

Now onto the Holiday Travel Extravaganza! I can’t even remember the last year we’ve traveled for both Thanksgiving AND Christmas, but this year we pulled it off. Both trips were fabulous, but the lead-up to each was very different. Up First: Georgia for Turkey Day.

Turkey Day 2024!

For anyone who knows me, it will be no surprise that our trip to visit my family started with a Google sheet, mapping out every day by the hours available and creating a to-do list, followed by lots of communication. As I mentioned in the last post, my mom was recovering from a leg and foot issue, so for this trip we spent as much time as possible close to Marietta, but that didn’t dampen our fun one bit!

We worked in dinners and lunches with family and friends, a movie (Wicked!), an escape room (OK, two–and we got out of both), a Murder Mystery at home, a full Thanksgiving meal at my sister’s lovely home, and even a show at the respite care facility featuring the Johnson family. You read that right. Our fabulous piano teacher, Miss Beth, orchestrated a musical extravaganza, complete with props and crowd interaction, and including performances by Zoe and Ella–and the Von Johnsons…

For the right price, I’ll send you the picture of the Von Johnsons, but above you’ll see Zoe Elvis, who performed Blue Suede Shoes and my beautiful mother, who led the way in crowd participation!

We had a brilliant crew for our escape room adventures at Urban Escape Games, including my uber brilliant niece and nephew (though seriously, the entire Lieth family is FIERCE in an escape room). Together we survived the Pharaoh’s Curse and fulfilled our Ancestral Quest. Victory pictures follow:

In addition to all the fun above, we managed a quick trip to visit my dad in Franklin County and hosted a rowdy bunch of family for an incredible home-cooked meal, wrapping up a whole lotta Thanksgiving fun.

And to top it off, we got a photo of the girls for our Holiday Card in the tree swing in my sister’s front yard, bringing back memories of cards past and highlighting just how much these girls have grown. Here are comparison pics from our cards in 2015 and 2024:

Christmas 2024!

The lead-up to this trip to visit Bart’s family was, let’s say, less structured… Thankfully, Bart’s sister sent the group an Apple Note with some suggested ideas and timing. Without that, wrangling this group would have been quite the adventure. Regardless, we had a blast, with more eating with friends and family and an extra special treat: Winter.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. We arrived in Minnesota six days before Christmas and brought the snow. We landed in the late evening and the morning after we arrived, the girls woke up to a snow-covered world and light snowfall. It was gorgeous.

Though you’d think these cold weather lightweights would be freezing and want to stay inside, they had so much fun with their cousins and friends that they spent HOURS outside making snow angels, digging in the snow, sledding, tunneling through a snow mound and, as you probably remember, eating it.

But I’m getting ahead of the story. We started off the family fun at the Hilltop for breakfast, with homemade muffins and the warmth of family time on a cold, cold, cold (did I mention cold?) day. I can’t imagine how people live in wintry places, but I must agree, they’re fun to visit!

We also had the good fortune to stay with a friend who has kids near Zoe’s age, and we got to see Sonic the Hedgehog 3, spend time at the Punch Bowl Social and hang out for some really awesome chill time in between family activities.

With the Johnson family, we played the most high tech round of mini-golf I’ve ever seen at the Putt Shack in Edina, and believe me, it’s no shack. Their site says this, “Forget the old-school pencil-and-paper scorekeeping with our proprietary Trackaball™ Technology. Our golf balls track every trick shot, hazard, and bonus point, so you can focus on crushing the competition…“, and it’s true! There was even interactive trivia between shots and a scoreboard with instant rankings.

As a bonus, the girls got to visit the Mall of America, the “largest mall in the United States, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, and the twelfth largest shopping mall in the world.” It’s so large that inside there’s a theme park called Nickelodeon Universe, complete with a roller coaster and so much more. Ella is not a coaster fan, but Bart and Zoe enjoyed it, and both girls found a fun climbing course:

The icing on the cake was a huge family gathering at the fabulous home of cousins Katy and Mac, where everyone gathered for delicious food, lots of laughs, and of course, more snow play in the backyard for the kids with their super cute dogs.

We traveled home the day before Christmas Eve to beat the travel rush, which I highly recommend! Bart and I agreed beforehand that as long as we have a “believer” in the home, we’d be at our house for Santa to visit. What I wasn’t prepared for was how much planning had to happen before we even left to pull off Christmas, but it worked! Santa found us, no problem, and we had a fabulous holiday.

Back in LA, we went back to Holiday Road, one of our favorite Christmas traditions, where the girls basically rushed through the walking “road” to get to the “snow”. They’re addicted:

We wrapped up the year with our good friends, where again the kids made (most of) the dinner and we closed out 2024–and braced ourselves for 2025–with our annual New Year’s Eve traditions, including the Oreo Challenge.

I will never tire of this video of Ella at this same celebration back in 2019 (half her life ago!) trying to get an Oreo down her face, and I’ll argue as we enter (gulp) February of this year, that videos of this cutie are exactly what we need. Happy New Year!