Sunday, December 30, 2012

Happy Holidays!

I am a bit behind on my blogging.  We've had some great holidays so far this year!!  2012 has been great and we're looking forward to an even better 2013!

Thanksgiving

We got to enjoy two Thanksgivings this year.  Jon's parents were planning to be in Arizona for the actual holiday so they invited all of the close family to an early Thanksgiving the first weekend in November.  It was a fun little holiday and surprisingly felt a lot like the real thing!  It was kinda weird going through the rest of November after having Thanksgiving.  It just felt like it should be over already!
Me & Jenna preparing our early Thanksgiving dinner.


Thanksgiving Day we stayed in Iowa and invited some friends over to share Thanksgiving with us.  Jared & Sarah Haslam with their daughter Camryn and Greg and Stacey Bredthaur joined us for our holiday.  It was a fun and interesting experience.  It was my first time making a turkey and despite the fact that I found the preparation of it absolutely disgusting, I think I did a pretty good job cooking the nasty bird!  It ended up being quite tasty, which is more than I can say for my fancy stuffing...  Jon called it moist croutons, it was that bad. 
My first Turkey!

That night, Sarah, Stacey, and I went Black Friday shopping at Walmart.  It was nuts!!  It was even worse considering Colton had dropped a 12 oz soda on my toe earlier in the die and I could hardly walk- seriously.  We made quite a haul with our adventure and got to observe people acting totally crazy.
Stacey and Sarah with our cart of Black Friday goods!

Stacey, Sarah, and I Black Friday shopping.


Christmas

We spent Christmas this year in MN.  The day before we were planning to leave for our vacation we had our first snow storm here in Iowa and it was a doozy!  It ended up snowing so much that we weren't even able to leave for MN when we planned because the roads were so bad.  We stayed in Iowa an extra day and had a quiet, fun evening just hanging out.  MN was lots of fun!!  Colton loved playing with his cousins and climbing in and on top of everything!  We were able to go see a couple movies over the week we were there, Jack Reacher and Les Miserables.  Both were good but Les Mis was my favorite!  (Jon's would definitely reverse his preferences!)  We also had fun going to dinner a couple of times with family, pre-christmas and after holiday shopping, sledding, and enjoying some delicious cold stone!  Yum!! 
Me and Colton helping Daddy shovel the driveway.

Such a big help!



Colton loved sledding but he didn't quite get the idea of it.  He cried every time he got to the bottom of the hill.  It was pretty pathetic :)  He wanted all the fun without the work of climbing back up the hill.





Christmas Day was great!  We didn't bring all of our presents for each other or Colton to MN but we got lots of great gifts anyway!  We gave Colton a plush rocking horse which took him awhile to get used to.  He was really nervous about it at first but ended up loving it!  Phew!  The drive home from MN was MUCH better than the way there and we were happy to get home and open the rest of our presents!  We had a great Christmas with family and can't wait til next year!
Merry Christmas!



Colton, not sure how he feels about his horse.
Be brave!
Giving the pony the old stare-down.
Finally deciding he likes his horse!  Yay!

Christmas Day in our new Deere gear!