Holiday Season 2024

 Holidays are the best!  Especially holidays surrounded by friends and family.   My kids love spending time with cousins over the holidays and we've been really blessed to have been able to do that for many of them!  

For Thanksgiving this year we continued the tradition of hosting the holiday and invited the Minnesota Day crowd to join us.   Grandma and Grandpa (Paul and Janice) joined us for Thanksgiving Day into Friday morning and Mark and Jenna's family joined us for Thursday through Sunday.  We had a delicious dinner, made the kids dress up in matching cousin outfits, went to see WISH together, and took kids to see Santa at Bass Pro Shops in Altoona.  That is becoming a fun tradition to do every year!  It was even more fun than previous years because I feel like this was the first Thanksgiving in ages where nobody got sick!  It was fantastic!

We had all sorts of fun festivities to celebrate the holidays between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We had our annual Adults White Elephant Party with our friends, we decorated cookies and graham cracker houses, went Christmas shopping, and enjoyed the warmest December I ever remember having in Iowa.  We missed the snow, of course, but it was nice that kids were still playing outside all through the month!

For Christmas we went up to Minnesota this year and stayed with Mark and Jenna.  Amberly and Brett's family came as well and stayed at Paul and Janice's.  We moved over and stayed there one night on Christmas eve so we could wake up and do Christmas morning together.  I feel like it ended up working out well giving everyone some space for comfort but also lots of get together and chat and hang out time.  Minnesota was also having a historically warm Christmas season so we went for a few rainy walks together to see Christmas lights and I even worked out outside a couple of times.  We went iceskating at the rec center, watched some movies, shopped, ate, and had fun.  We also went to go see "A Christmas Carol" the play and that was a fun new experience for our family- even if it got a little long 😜

We were back home in Ankeny for New Years and Mark & Jenna's family again drove up to see us and stay for a few days!  We had a blast ringing in the new year and playing.  The kids actually all stayed up until midnight this year- hopped up on sugar and overstimulation.  

Des Moines got to host one of the LDS Church's giving machines this year at the mall so that was another unique experience our family got to enjoy over the holidays!  The kids each picked out something they wanted to "give" and we talked to them about how important it is to think and give to others who are less fortunate.