What a year! We somehow got lucky enough to spend all three holidays of the Holiday Season with family this year! Not everything went exactly as planned, we were busy, but we had a good time. We are super grateful for this time of year that reminds us to count our blessings and focus on the things that are most important.
Thanksgiving:
The kids and I brought back Thankful Tom this year for the month of November. Each night (or at least the nights we remembered) we each wrote down something we were grateful for on one of Tom's feathers and taped it up. By Thanksgiving Day we had a very colorful, very full-feathered turkey full of many of our wonderful blessings! I have really liked doing this activity with the kids. I really helps us to constantly be thinking about the blessings we have in our lives.
We hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year. Both Mark & Jenna's family as well and Grandma and Grandpa Day came down from Rochester to spend the holiday with us. We had a delicious meal together and some yummy pies to top it off! Both Jenna and Grandma Day helped bring some of the yummy food. That evening, Jon and Mark stayed with Grandma and Grandpa and Jenna and I took the kids to see the movie Encanto in the theater. Movies on Christmas is one of Jenna's family traditions but we were happy to tag along. The kids had a great time! That night I gave my kiddos their Christmas jammies and tucked them in bed then the adults all stayed up to play some games! Grandma and Grandpa left the next morning but Mark and Jenna's family stayed the rest of the weekend. We had fun controlling the chaos, chatting, and taking the kids to Urban Air and letting them play their crazies out.
Christmas:
We tried to fit as many fun Christmas activities into December that we could! The kids all got to invite friends over for a Christmas craft playdate where we made sticker wreaths and tortilla snowflakes. I got brave and we did our first individual graham cracker gingerbread houses. I used hot glue for the structures so it was a little easier but I still botched them a little. Oh well, next year will be better I guess! The kids still had fun decorating them! We took the kids to see Santa at the Winter Wonderland at Bass Pro Shop. That was fun. They always have it decorated so cute and festive and it was fun for the kids to go see Santa (or Santa's helper). They also had some games and activities set up and the kids enjoyed seeing all the taxidermy animals as well as the live fish in their huge tank! So, even though I had to stay up until midnight to reserve us a spot, that ended up being worth it :) Jon and I hosted our annual White Elephant Christmas Party with friends again after taking last year off for Covid. That was a good time! It's always a bit stressful putting it together and getting the house clean enough for several guests but it's fun! The food, Christmas Pictionary, and white elephant exchange are always a hit! I did several other crafts with the kids throughout the month and I even got to go to the school to help out with Zach's school Christmas party.
We went up to MN the Wednesday before Christmas (Christmas was on Saturday). We had been having some coughs go around and Katie had come down with a fever that Monday so we hesitated going up. After talking with family, though, we were convinced we should still go and spend the holiday with family. A quick not on the sickness- Katie ended up having a fever clear through Christmas Day. The rest of us had coughs, sore throats, and headaches. After Christmas, Zach got a fever for several days. Thank heavens for family who love us and wanted to spend time with us regardless and medicine that helped us muster through and still mostly enjoy all the festivities.
We got all our Christmas shopping and wrapping finished and spend lots of time chatting with and playing games with family leading up to Christmas. We also decorated some sugar cookies with royal icing which I might have enjoyed even more than the kids. Jenna brought over some bells and the kids got to play some Christmas songs on an app with the bells. The adults all went out one night to go see Spider Man: No Way Home, which was pretty good.
Christmas morning was fun and the kids all loved their gifts. Every year Jon and I think that we overdid it, and we probably did, but I love seeing their faces when they love a gift! Colton was psyched to get one of the raptor legos he has been wanting as well as another T-Rex lego set, some dino dig eggs, a bed for his stuffed komodo dragon, and several other fun things. Katie was happy to get some crafts and activities. She got a glitter tattoo set, some more film for her camera, some LED lights, some earrings, colored hair extension clips, some stuffies, and more. Zach got some robo dinos, activity books, a bow and arrow, some avenger fuse beads, a Zebra- his favorite animal, and more. Madi got a bride and groom barbie- which she LOVED (I knew it ;) and a barbie car, as well as some stuffies, some princess dolls, a new princess bedspread, some coloring books, and more.
After Christmas we spent a few more days with family, playing and chatting. We did a sharpie craft with the kids. We played some heads up games on the ipad and some other games on the computer. We headed back home the Tuesday after Christmas in the middle of a snowstorm, per the usual.
New Years:
We had planned to spend New Years with some friends but they bowed out because kids were sick and we still were getting over being sick as well so we figured we'd just celebrate on our own. But then, the day of New Years Eve, Jenna texted saying they wanted to party with us! I warned her we were still getting over stuff (Katie had come down with a fever again and we still had some slight coughs and sore throats) but we both figured we'd been around each other enough over Christmas that they'd already been exposed to whatever we had. They came down to Iowa and we celebrated New Years with cousins and fun times! We had our typical finger food dinner and then fondue dessert! The kids played and watched a movie and then we had a dance-party countdown to midnight (10pm). After the kiddos were in bed, Jon, Jenna, Mark, and I stayed up and watched a movie and then had our own midnight countdown.
The next day it snowed a couple inches. It was pretty cold but we encouraged the kids to go outside and play for a few minutes. Katie had only been out about 5 min when she said she didn't feel good. She went inside and threw up. Ugh. That was rough. We felt bad because other sickness symptoms aside, nobody wants to catch the pukes. Katie spent the rest of the day up in mine and Jon's room watching shows and trying to feel better. Mark and Jenna couldn't leave because of the snow and thankfully they were nice about the fact that our kid was puking. Still, we felt awkward and bad but tried to make the best of it. Thankfully, none of the other kids threw up (until a couple days later when Reed did) so that was a blessing that it didn't spread like wildfire. Mark and Jenna left the day after New Years, which was Sunday. By Monday, Katie was feeling a little better but she still had a slight fever so she stayed home from school. We took her to get a Covid test and, as we found out a few days later, it was positive. Later that week, Zach (who was symptom free at this point) had a regular checkup but he tested positive for Strep. As we looked back over all the symptoms our family had dealt with over Christmas 2021 we figured we probably all had both Covid and Strep simultaneously. It was not great, haha, but we mustered through. Once again, thank heavens for medicine! Fast forward, both Mark and Amberly's families ended up catching some symptoms from us but they were fairly mild. Thankfully the mutation of Covid (Omicron) is much more mild (also much more contagious) than previous strains. Everyone made it out ok and we still got to spend time with family over the holidays, so we'll call it a win.
