This year was our year to spend Christmas on our own at our house. We've been trying to do an every other year thing between our place and Grandma & Grandpa Day's house. Things were made extra interesting this Christmas with a big winter storm that came through Dec. 21-23. It snowed a lot and then got really cold and windy. Roads were bad and it was frigid wind chills outside- like negative 40s. I had rushed to get all the shopping for Christmas and groceries done before the storm came so we were mostly fine to stay inside and ride it out. The major disappointment was that Jon and I were supposed to go to a Manheim Steamroller concert in Des Moines that I was really looking forward to. Both our babysitter and our backup babysitter bailed on us so even if we'd decided to risk it on the roads, we had no sitter watch the kids so we weren't able to go. That was a huge bummer. Jon was great though and came up with the idea to go to Applebees as a family instead (since it's only 5 min away) so we just took it slowly on the roads and went out to dinner! Not many people were out so we got right in and didn't have to wait too long for food. It was fun being out with the family over the holiday. Maybe we'll even make it a tradition!
Saturday, Christmas Eve, the storms had rolled out and Jon took the kids out to do some last minute shopping for me and I finished up some packing and cleaning at home. Then I went to Life Serve and donated blood- mostly because I know it's important and try to help where I can but also partly because they gave me a free t-shirt for doing it on Christmas Eve! Win win! I obviously don't love being stuck with needles but it's usually not too bad. This time was especially unpleasant for some reason though so that was unfortunate. That night we had a nice dinner of roast and mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole. We opened Christmas pajamas, watched Elf, and then had a Family Home Evening and read/watched the Bible Christmas story!
Christmas morning the kids all woke us up by 6:30 even though they didn't technically come "wake us up" until 7. The kids were pretty excited about their gifts from Santa- Colton and Zach both got some Star Wars Legos, Colton got a Snap Circuits car, Zach got a Science kit, Katie and Madi got some dress-up barbies they asked for, Katie got an art kit and some perler beads, Madi got the Tiana dress up set she wanted, and they all got Star Wars lightsabers. I think they might have been even more excited about the presents from Mom and Dad though. Colton got the T-Rex legos he wanted, Katie got a new bedding set, Zach got a hoverboard, and Madi got all sorts of fun girly things and some new roller skates.
After a 1 hr sacrament meeting we came home and packed up to head to MN. We got there about 5:30 pm and had another dinner of roast with the family and then had some chaotic fun times opening presents and doing the cousin present exchange with Amberly and Brett's family, Mike and Lisa's family, and Mark & Jenna's family. The kids really love their cousins and doing the cousin exchange every year!
The next few days we stayed at Mark and Jenna's but spent a lot of time playing and visiting over at Grandma and Grandpa's. We got to go sledding a couple of times, decorate cookies together, go iceskating, and play on Mark & Jenna's new bounce house. The kids played with toys, cousins, Nintendo, watched tv, and had a great time. Zach had one random sad day where he threw up a couple times but other than that everyone was healthy and good! The adults enjoyed lots of late night chats, watching some movies together, and going out to dinner all together at a fancy restaurant in Rochester. We came home Friday morning after Jon got in one last pickle ball game with his brothers and we said goodbye to Amberly's family as they headed off to the airport!
*Sidenote on Iceskating- Zach had specifically requested we go iceskating over the break because he had never been before. I haven't been in years since I was a teen and the rest of the kids have never been (minus Katie who went for a bday party once). We made it happen in MN which made it extra fun but my oh my, Madi was a bit of a disaster. Haha. The poor girl has never even roller bladed and she could not keep her feet under her. I tried and tried to teach her and hold her up but she just was not getting it and couldn't keep her feet under her. Even with the helper apparatus things the rink has- she just leaned over on it and hardly moved. It was one of those hilarious but also really frustrating in the moment things. Most of her skating for the day ended up just being basically pulled hand in hand around the rink by either myself and Jenna or myself and Jon. I think she still managed to have a good time but I think she had more fun off the ice than on it. The rest of the kids did pretty well and had a good time!
CHRISTMAS EVE
CHRISTMAS MORNING
MINNESOTA COUSINS EXCHANGE
SLEDDING FUN
MORE FUN
ICE SKATING
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