Our original plan was to spend Christmas Day evening relaxing by our imaginary fireplace, sipping egg nog while the kids ambled happily around with their various new toys bought for them by people other than us. We would wake mid-morning on the 26th and head leisurely up to the farthest tip of Long Island, where we would visit with new cousin Baby Whalen for a couple of days before heading to Miami for a mysterious conference.

Foolishly, at around 6:30pm, we decided to check the Accuweather forecast.

The blizzard was on its way. Our options were to leave immediately, or to perhaps not make it to Long Island at all. And so, we frantically packed our bags and hit the road, leaving our living room in all sorts of post-present-unpacking disrepair.

(For those of you prone to worry, we did unplug the Christmas lights. For those of you prone to theft, we did lock the doors and ask a neighbor to look after the cats.)

And we headed north. We called ahead to a motel in Southampton, which I had quickly determined to be near our final destination (Baby Whalen was actually going to be arriving in Long Island the next day from Brooklyn). After a long but uneventful and snow-free journey, and approximately ten minutes before we arrived, Matthew noticed that although the motel I had chosen was a few miles from our final destination as the crow flies, it was also located across a largish body of water, which would require us to backtrack for 20 minutes and drive the opposite leg of the triangle for another 20 minutes. We decided we would just live with it. We rolled in at 1:30 in the morning, woke the kids and piled into the motel room.

Of course, this was exciting stuff. A much finer establishment than we had stayed in South Dakota.

For example, one could hang out in the fancy bathroom, which, astonishingly enough, is just off the bedroom, instead of up one small flight of stairs, across a rather large barn-sized loft, back down one long flight of stairs, and around a corner through a narrow gauntlet of pottery and pottery supplies.

Or one could have a nice picnic on the plush wall-to-wall carpet.

Or one could watch the snow fall out the window while getting one’s hair dried by the in-room heater.

Or, finally, after one’s exhausted parents could no longer entertain any of the other possibilities, one could relax in one’s own queen-sized bed reading a Woody and Buzz magazine.

It was all quite exciting, so much so that though we begged the desk lady at the motel to let us check out late the following day (the place we were staying with Baby Whalen wouldn’t be opened till 4pm), everyone was bursting with enthusiasm at approximately 7 the following morning.

We headed out on our backtracking trek across the island through blizzard-ish conditions.

But not before we got our Christmas photo. It is our tradition to take a photo on Christmas day (started in 2000 on Cumberland Island, GA when it was just me and Matthew) and this is the first year that we forgot. But a Day-After-Christmas-Day-at-a-Random-Motel-on-Long-Island photo is just as good, I suppose.

More news on what’s to come. But FYI, we made it, and so did Baby Whalen. We’re all settled in for some family time, good food, hot chocolate, and snow drift watching. Happy Day.