Christmas vacation, a success

We survived the horribly long line at LAX this afternoon, the one designated for people who still use non-electronic tickets, push their luggage on a cart, or travel with infants and babies. We learned, perturbed by the rapidly declining "customer service" of Southwest Airlines, that this line gets treated like a dirty diaper. Not only do the agents look miserable and scold customers, the line itself moves at a snail's pace, about 1/5 the speed of the electronic line.

Anyway, we finally made it to the counter, only to learn our flight to San Jose was canceled. They put us on a later flight that was further delayed for over an hour. Several hours after we were scheduled, we finally landed in San Jose.

Now very hungry, we refueled ourselves with Vietnamese food before hitting the road. It's a good thing we ate because I got lost on the freeways and then had to refuel the car at the only gas station I could find (at CostCo of all places). Finally, almost home, the dark night skies opened up and poured rain in great torrents, not the Torrance from which we started the day, but torrents as in lots of water.

Tai was in good spirits when we burst through the door of our homey condo, glad to be back home. But he let out a terrible wail when we put him in his crib to sleep. Later, we figured it was extremely cold in his room, and now he's sleeping in between his parents, warmly resting from a four-day Christmas vacation.

Check out our Christmas photo set to see 94,000 words worth of images because I'm too exhausted to recap the many joys we shared of Tai's first Christmas. Among Tai's highlights: opening gifts, lighting the Christmas candle at church, visiting Kaylee and newborn Brian, soaking in the Christmas Day sun, playing with cousins (esp. Marisa), opening more gifts, meeting Ian and Maya, greeting Daniel and Uyen, and finally, playing the piano!