For the first time since the kids were born 15 years ago, we awoke on Christmas morning away from home. Instead of driving down to visit family the day after Christmas like we normally do, we decided that since the Virginia to Florida drive is so long (16 hours), we would show up on Christmas Eve instead. The stay is too short for that many hours of driving if we wait. The kids are big enough that they didn’t mind being away this once.

We relaxed in sunshine. We saw grandparents, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins. We ate lots of food, visited lots of family. We gabbed. We swam. We shopped. We walked a marina during the day and the beach at sunset.

We looked for seashells.

One of the unexpected gems of this Christmas was the beautiful blown crystal martini glasses my mother-in-law pulled out of a blue Tiffany & Co. box on Christmas Eve. They keep all sorts of good gin at their house — Aviation, Hendricks, Tanqueray — and in addition to all the visiting, beaching, shopping, and other merriment, a highlight of the trip for me was drinking fine gin martinis out of Tiffany glasses.

It was a happy Christmas :-).