Pittsburgh for the Holidays Part II: Christmas Eve Eve and Beyond

Pittsburgh, PA/Wauchula, FL - Events of Monday, December 23 to Sunday, December 29, 2019

The church Lora and J. Michael attend has several services on Christmas Eve, and they also have one service on Christmas Eve Eve. Because we always go to J. Michael's brother's house on Christmas Eve, we went to church on Christmas Eve Eve. It was a very beautiful service in its simplicity.

We finished up with holiday preparations during the day on Christmas Eve, then headed to J. Michel's brother's house in the late afternoon. We had a good time as usual visiting with J. Michael's family, and we also enjoyed lots of good eats.

Lydia awoke on Christmas morning filled with excitement. She got a wide variety of gifts including several baby dolls. The one she is opening in the photo below is called Baby Alive. Baby Alive moves her lips when she talks and when she eats and drinks. She also wets her diaper.

Lydia opening one of several baby dolls she got for Christmas

Lydia got lots of other gifts including a tool kit with real tools, not plastic toys, so she could help Daddy in the workshop. One of the things she can do with her tools is use them to build the birdhouse kit, which was another one of her gifts. Yet another gift was a book of paper airplanes. The pages, all of which have different designs printed on them (birds, camouflage, dragons, etc.), can be torn out and folded into different shapes of airplanes.

Lora continued the family tradition of baking up a batch of scratch-made cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas morning. They were delish!

Back in the 80s when Lora was young, we got her (and Paul) ColecoVision for Christmas. ColecoVision was a video game console that was similar to Atari. That year, we were having so much fun with the video games we decided to abandon the big Christmas dinner in favor of snacking our way through the day. The next year, the snacks evolved into appetizers, and over the years we have continued the tradition of having appetizers at various times during the day in lieu of a big Christmas dinner. This year, we feasted on mushroom rolls, spanakopita, candied kohlbassi, Little Smokies wrapped in Crescent rolls, and dried beef/cream cheese appetizer pie throughout Christmas afternoon and evening.

Thursday was a day of relaxation. We took turns showing Lydia how to play a couple of the new games she got, and we helped her fold paper airplanes to fly from the second floor balcony. The book shows you how to fold several different styles of paper airplanes, and all of them fly amazingly well.

On Friday, Margery and Lora went to tea at Uniquely Yours Tea Room located in nearby Hickory, Pennsylvania. The girls had great mother/daughter time together.

Lora and Margery at Uniquely Yours Tea Room

This was their first time at this newly-opened tea room. Although the price was a little higher than other tea rooms they have gone to, the atmosphere and the food were definitely on a much higher level.

Some of the delicious food at Uniquely Yours

The girls stopped to do a little after-Christmas shopping on the way home. Lora got lots of nice wrapping paper at a great price, which was a really good thing because we mooch wrapping paper from her every year. After the girls got home and showed off all their purchases, we did some packing in preparation for our departure the next morning.

On Saturday, we were on the road by 7:30 a.m. There was some morning fog and drizzle, but traffic the entire first day of travel was relatively light with no delays.

As we mentioned in our last post, we stopped on the way north where we always stop on our way to and from Pittsburgh, which is at the Hampton Inn in Rock Hill, North Carolina. Rock Hill is about 8 hours from Lora and J. Michael's house and about 10 hours from home. Traffic is usually light going both ways in summer, and it's also relatively light going north in winter, so the imbalance in driving time between the two days isn't a big deal. However, traffic is much heavier after Christmas heading south, and it gets even heavier the farther south you go making the second day of travel even longer. It also gets dark earlier in winter, so we moved our overnight stop for the trip home about an hour farther south to the Hampton Inn in Columbia, South Carolina, in order to try to get home before dark.

A new place for our overnight stop also gave us new options for dinner. BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse is a nationwide chain that Lora, J. Michael, and Lydia like a lot. Since there is a BJ's located a few minutes from the Hampton Inn in Columbia, we decided to give it a try.

We both had Bistro Burgers ($13.50) with a side salad substituted at no extra cost for the fries that normally come with the burgers. The Bistro Burger has bacon, caramelized onions, goat cheese, garlic aioli, spinach, and pickled onions. Yum!

BJ's signature dessert is the Pizookie. A Pizookie consists of a low pan about 6" in diameter containing a freshly-baked cookie (white chocolate-macadamia nut, traditional chocolate chip, chocolate-chocolate chip, caramel, peanut butter, etc.) or a freshly-baked brownie topped with two to three scoops of ice cream. Most of the Pizookies also come with sauce such as caramel or hot fudge. We shared a hot fudge brownie Pizookie. Double yum!!

Paul about to dig into the hot fudge brownie Pizookie

On Sunday morning, we took advantage of the free, hot breakfast at the Hampton Inn before hitting the road around 6:30. Traffic was a little heavy, but it moved well for the first several hours all the way through South Carolina and Georgia.

It started to rain just before we got to the Florida-Georgia line, and we weren't more than a mile or two inside Florida when we hit our first backup. There was a fender-bender, probably caused by the rain. Although the cars were off the road and on the left shoulder, rubberneckers slowed things down for about 10 to 15 minutes.

It was still raining when we got to another BIG backup just south of Jacksonville, Florida. Google Maps showed at least two accidents (there may have been three) within a mile of each other. Google Maps eventually tried to navigate us on a detour around the accidents by telling us to take the exit that was right beside us. Unfortunately, we were in the far left lane and couldn't get to the exit, so we had to just sit there and creep along for the next 45 minutes.

After we finally got past the last accident site, traffic continued to be heavy, but there were no further delays until Orlando. Although it was Sunday and there was no rush hour to contend with going through the city, traffic was backed up west of Orlando at the attractions (Disney, Universal, etc.). We followed Google Maps' suggestion to avoid some of the slowdowns by taking toll roads around Orlando. It was about 15 miles farther, and it cost about $3 in tolls, but it was well worth it because it saved us about 20 minutes...and we kept moving the entire time instead of having to contend with stop-and-go traffic.

We stopped for supper at an Arby's about half an hour from home. Finally, after over 10 hours on the road (it should have been about 9 hours without any traffic delays), we pulled into our driveway around 4:45. It was a long travel day, but we were glad we moved our overnight stop farther south to Columbia because that's what enabled us to meet our goal of arriving home before dark. It was a great visit with family, but it was also great to be home again.

Comments

[Karen Cordaro]

Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2020 to both of you!! I have so many happy, wonderful memories of both of you. Paul, I am fixing up the kitchen and think of you all the time as I clean up the cabinets you so lovingly built for us. Thank you for your friendship.

[Sandy]

Love the salads at BJ's.