Travel + Christmas Eve in Mexico

Hola from Mexico; we made it!

Travel to Chicago

Even though I had mostly already packed in advance, I was grateful to have most of the day Saturday to get ready to go. Not sure where so many loose ends always come from, but I seemed to stay busy with misc stuff.

We left home around 2:30 to drop Charlie off at my sister-in-law’s house. 😭😭 This was hard!! He seemed happy in the moment but obviously didn’t know we were LEAVING him there for 2 weeks….

After some snuggles and goodbyes, we hit the road to Chicago. We debated if we should just drive down to O’Hare Sunday morning (a 2 hour drive), but our flight was scheduled to depart at 7 a.m sharp. Meaning we’d have to leave home by… before 3 a.m., not even counting time to park the car etc.

We decided to get a hotel near the airport and planned to arrive fairly early by 5 pm or so to have a relaxed evening and get to bed early.

We left the car there too, so that made the morning easier. Just had to jump on the hotel shuttle.

After checking in etc, we went out for dinner. There is a Dave and Buster’s literally on the corner in front of the hotel- a 3 minute walk. So we decided to just go there.

Shockingly, the boys didn’t care to play the arcade games!! Which is fine, because they are $$$ there (you really have to buy a pass and stay a while to make it worth the cost), but it still surprised me. They were like, nah, that’s ok… let’s just eat.

Dinner was good and they had (loud) Christmas music playing. It was nice.

Back at the hotel, there was live music in the hotel lobby bar. A really quite good duo singing and keyboard/drums. Ivan and I decided to get a drink while the boys went back up to the room.

It wasn’t too busy in there at all- not sure if I thought airport hotel would be extra busy or extra not busy on night before Christmas Eve. Anyway, the music was good and we enjoyed this.

Before bed we got a notification that our flight was delayed by 35 minutes. When I woke up at 4 something o’clock, I had another notification that it was now delayed over an hour!

Oh well.. that actually was nice since we didn’t have to rush to the airport. Showered and packed up and we took the 6:00 shuttle to the international terminal.

Airport

Got all checked in no problem- hardly any line at AeroMexico! (We had checked in online but still had to check just one bag.)

I was glad we were not flying Copa Airlines (Panama, I think) because the line was LONG and did not seem to be moving!!

Got a nice Christmas Eve breakfast 😉:

All smooth sailing minus the delayed flight. Fortunately, no real further delays, although in the end we did take off almost 2 hours after the planned time.

I watched all of White Christmas on my phone, napped, and ate a surprisingly delicious airplane hot ham and cheese sandwich. Kudos to AeroMexico for still providing a full, FREE, hot meal on an only ~4 hour flight.

Arrival to Mexico!

Oh, a funny story that had us all laughing: When we left Chicago, the flight crew was all Mexican. As we stood in line to board, the lady scanning the tickets was obviously greeting everyone. Probably 85% of the people on the plane appeared to be Hispanic, so she mostly spoke in Spanish.

When we got up there, Ivan went first. “Hola”, she said. Next, to Ethan: “Buenos días”. To Asher: “Bienvenido”. Then me… “Hi, good morning”.

😆 Hey! Do I not look Mexican??? 😅 (No, I don’t. lol.)

The boys got a good chuckle out of how they were presumed to be Mexican or Spanish speaking and I, the one who actually speaks fluent Spanish (unlike them who only kind of speak Spanish), got English. 😉

It happened again as we boarded the plane- the flight attendant did the same thing- and then yet again when we landed (a different flight attendant). Hahaha. They all got “gracias”, “gracias”, “gracias”, then “thank you” to me.

Ah, it’s ok. The truth is the boys do look way more Mexican than I do.

The immigration line was the shortest we’ve ever seen and an absolute dream!! We had flashbacks to March when we stood in that same room at 5 am on our way to Costa Rica and stood in the longest immigration line of our lives.

It was all super quick and then we were out and Ivan’s parents were waiting for us!

Outside it was a pretty warm almost 70 degrees and I texted this pic to my parents to let them know we had arrived, captioned “O Christmas Tree….”. Ha. Weird to see palm trees on Christmas for me.

Christmas Eve

We went straight to Ivan’s cousin’s house, right in Mexico City. Not too far of a drive from the airport. That’s where we would spend Christmas Eve.

His cousin had carnitas waiting for us that they had brought from Michoacán.

OMG. They were sooooo good. I was regretting eating that ham and cheese on the plane because I only had space for 2 tacos (plus I ate some extra meat + salsa + guac on the side).

The rest of the afternoon we just kind of hung out. The boys played around with their 13 year old cousin. We sat and talked while his cousin did some prep stuff for later. Ivan and his cousin’s husband went to run an errand, etc. I drank several cups of hot punch (like a cinnamon fruit cider) that they had on the stove.

At one point I went and lay down for a bit to rest my eyes since Ivan warned me the “evening” probably wouldn’t start until like 8 pm.

Eventually we all got cleaned up and changed clothes etc.

They had a piñata to smack up on their roof patio area.

There were lots of flashing Christmas lights all around Mexico City, but they don’t show up very well here.

Also, a LOT of barking dogs. Omg. So. Much. Barking. I think a lot of people just leave their dogs on their roof terraces here in the city while people are over or they are away with family, and the dogs just bark… and bark… and bark… at each other and/or the other noise from neighboring homes. The houses are all piled on top of each other, very close together.

I asked his cousin if people don’t complain about all the barking and she just waved her hand like, oh, no, that’s just normal. lol. (Pretty sure at home someone would call the police to complain….).

Back downstairs, we had Christmas dinner.

First a few family pics:

Dinner was smoked turkey, a spaghetti dish, and these shrimp cake things drenched in mole sauce that I had never heard of but were quite good. Also French bread and salsa of course.

Lingered over dinner and people drank tequila and/or beer and/or hot punch in my case.

There was no Christmas music 😦 but they played lots of good non-Christmas Mexican music. lol. (I personally would have played Christmas music, but I kept my mouth shut as this is not my Christmas to “lead”!)

At midnight there was a toast- I had some red wine. And everyone hugs each other. And then we did the “grapes tradition” where each person gets a cup with 12 grapes and you eat them one by one, making a wish for each month of the upcoming year.

The kids played some dice type game until almost 1 when they finally headed up to bed. The rest of us made it until about 2 am before finally turning in! I was sleepy a little earlier but also kind of in that mode where I felt too lazy to go upstairs, put my pjs on, brush my teeth… so I just kept sitting there procrastinating, tired. Hahahah.

Now it’s Christmas Day and I’m just laying in bed writing this. Not entirely sure what the plans for today are. But that’s the beauty here… I, for once, am mostly just along for the ride. 🙂

Merry Christmas!! 🎄