Christmas Is Coming

It's been a rather subdued December, and probably more so after the Newtown, CT mass shooting.  My heart goes out to those families.  As with everyone else, all I could do was hold my own daughter a little tighter, but as with everything else in life, we must go on.

I did manage to take Lauren to see her cousin Michaela's performance in the Nutcracker ballet on December 8, 2012, and afterwards Mariah came home with us to spend the evening for a sleep over which both the girls enjoyed quite a bit.  On Sunday, when my sister came over to pick up Mariah, with Michaela in tow, the three girls put together a gingerbread house for the holidays.

Lauren also had her girl scout troop holiday party where each girl had to bring in 3 dozen holiday cookies that they baked themselves for a cookie exchange.  So I helped Lauren mix up Betty Crocker sugar cookie and gingerbread cookie mix, roll it out, cut out holiday shapes and bake the cookies.  Afterwards, she and I decorated them with frosting and sprinkles, so we had a nice batch of cookies for her cookie exchange.  She had a lot of fun at the party, and came home with a large assortment of cookies, and earned her badge in Christmas baking.

We've got our decorations out and our tree up, but Lauren still complains we haven't done enough.  If it were up to her, we'd have the most decorated and lit up house in our neighborhood.  We did concede and changed out one of standard decorations, a blow up snowman that's decorated our front yard since Lauren was born.  Instead this year we have a blow up penguin that Lauren selected.

This past Monday, I did something I've never done in over 20 years of flying airlines for business.  I did a mileage run.  A mileage run is when you take an airplane flight just for the miles.  I took a flight from San Jose to Dallas, arrived in DFW, and took the very next flight back to San Jose without leaving the DFW airport.  I did it solely for to obtain the miles necessary to move me to the next frequent flyer status at 50,000 miles (Platinum status on American Airlines).  As airlines have reduced the benefits for frequent flyers, 50,000 is really the minimum status you need to get any perks.  I was 3700 miles away from that status level, and this day of flying brought me over the top.  With some already scheduled international trips next year, this status will help make my trips more comfortable.

With 7 days to Christmas, I wish you and yours a very Happy Holidays.