detroit christmas

after spending twelve hours in various airports i finally made it from atlanta to cleveland on december 21 only to ride for another three and a half hours the next day to detroit to spend christmas with Jerone's grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. a whole new experience for a small family girl!

to kill time in the car we sucked candy sticks. they are a of course a christmas essential and come in big boxes in the grab area of the supermarket right next to the cash register.


another must is rudolph who was greeting us at the entrance to the house.


Inside the house waited many people, many more than my family ever featured so I had to do some name memory game. In addition to his three grandparents there were richard and rachel with marcy, theron and Kendra with Kevin, ryan, and erin, carol with andrew, mary and phil with sam, christine and chris, and kevin and lisa with jenna and ryan plus Jerone's siblings sarah and erik. So we had a nice round up of lots of people to do some merry-making e.g. playing with the bongo board.

and for a brief moment time stopped and I could hold my balance on the bongo board. yeah!! but it turns out that was nothing special as it seems to be a natural talent among jerone, his siblings, and cousins to master this vicious toy for minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes...

after my bravery jerone rewarded me with a hug...

...and his sister sarah introduced me to the "yule log" - a big small tree branch like looking rolled chocolate cake. a real yummy treat! mmhhhhh!


along with the yule log came cookies... i decorated the santa claus cookie on the left lower corner in the picture. hh the memories of childhood days!

the plastic christmas tree was a convenient precaution with all the wild running children. It looked so much happier with the uncountable creative motley christmas ornaments than solemn uni-color german tannenbaums.

underneath the Christmas tree waited presents for the wee ones and gifts for the older children. one drew the attention of the tech geeks in the house (i.e. jerone) - a digital picture frame which had all its buttons fingered by a bunch of teenage boys in no time.


in order to have more pictures to display on the new toy the family photographer had to paparazzo his way around...

taking pictures and giving technical advise makes tired.

the little paparazzo took one more picture of the cleveland skyline before returning to his one house to take another nap.