Yesterday, we watched the odometer turn over 3,000 miles and crossed another time zone somewhere in Tennessee between Nashville and Knoxville, and for the most part I’m already having trouble remembering what day it is and where we’ve been.

It’s an interesting thing to travel during the Christmas season; something we’ve never done before.  And now with just over 2,500 miles and 10 nights on the road behind us, I’m finding myself in a bit of a reflective mood, thinking about where we’ve been and how far we’ve come.

I was all prepared to write a raging bitch rant about how much it sucked to drive 500 miles from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Abilene, Texas – known forever in my head as Hwy 20 from hell across west Texas – but then I thought, what would Pollyanna say?

Who says the desert isn’t beautiful?

After our marathon drive from southern Oregon to southern California, we awoke to blue skies and just a slight chill in the air and guess what, we were just 1 hour north of Anaheim, which, if you don’t know is home to Disneyland.

I’m looking at the time and realizing it has been 12 hours, almost to the minute, since we rolled onto Interstate Highway 5 this morning.  And although we logged nearly 650 miles we are not where we thought we’d be at this time.

As I sit here, I can smell the turkey sizzling and crackling in the oven.  Abi is outside working in the yard – something he never tires of doing – and I’m puttering, continuing to ready ourselves for our upcoming road trip.

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words,

but to live by them.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

When was the last time you sent a postcard to someone while you were traveling? For that matter, when was the last time you received a postcard from someone who was traveling?

“Will you marry me, Patti?” quipped Pat Sajak, the host of Wheel of Fortune, to which of course I replied, “Sure,” even though I was obviously already married.  But because I wasn’t sure what to write on my bio card, I wrote, pastry chef, which was true at the time as I baked a lot of the desserts for our restaurant and it’s why Pat asked me to marry him.  Apparently, he liked desserts. But back up…