Thanksgiving and Christmas Round 1

We spent the long Thanksgiving weekend in Sioux City with Adam's family!  We left Ankeny about 4:30 pm on Tuesday, and arrived in Sioux City about 7:45 pm (that included a dinner stop at "Suvway," one of Jeremiah's favorite places.  We made great time!).  We squeezed in Thanksgiving AND Christmas in this visit.

Breakfast on a barstool at Grandpa and Meema's-- he thinks he is pretty cool sitting up there!

On Wednesday, we just did some hanging around in Sioux City.  Jeremiah has good ears, and could hear every. single. train that went by near Grandpa and Meema's house (don't hear many trains in Ankeny).  Every time he would hear one, he would say, "(GASP)!  Can we go see it?????"  Well, no we could not go see one every time we heard one.  But we did take J on a little driving tour of the railyard in Sioux City.  He even got to see a train engine with its headlights on!  He was pretty excited.

We also stopped and visited Meema at work at Chik-Fil-A, and J was able to check out the brand new play area!  He approves.

Look closely at the tire. :)

 And we paid a visit to the mall as well.  And wouldn't you know it, they had a TRAIN that drives around the mall!  We could not pass up a train ride!  Plus, it was not very busy at all, so we were the only passengers.

Buying our tickets from the little engineer-- J is scoping out which car to ride on.

Pretty excited!

A little claustrophobic!

So so proud of his train ticket-- he carried it around most of the day!

Later in the afternoon, we drove the hour north to Adam's hometown of Hull to visit his Grandma Wissink.

Jeremiah and Giraffey gave Great-Grandma a nice big hug!

Pretty sky driving south from Hull.

 On Thanksgiving, we headed up to Orange City to Uncle Kelly and Aunt Rachel's house to have dinner with Meema's side of the family.  J was in heaven with all the trucks/cranes/tractors to play with inside AND the trucks/snowmobiles/campers to see in the shed outside!  It was a very relaxing day full of good food and family.

This cool dude needed a Starbucks stop before we hit the road!

Playing Lego's with Avery!

"Yep, I'm big enough to ride this."

"Daddy, can I touch this button?  Can I touch this?  How 'bout this???"

 J (and Mommy) even got to go for a ride on Uncle Kelly's Ranger!  By this time, the temps had dropped from yesterday's warm high 60s to VERY chilly and windy!  So Mommy did not last long, but Adam, J, Kyan, and Kobe rode for a long time!

"Let's go, daddy!"

It's not just the angle of the camera-- his cheeks really ARE that chubby and kissable.

Happy (and cold) guys at the end of the ride!

 On Friday, I got to go out for a morning of coffee and visiting with my best friends who live in Sioux Center!  We met half-way in LeMars at a super cute place called Habitue (accent on the "e", I don't know how to type that).  We exchanged Christmas gifts, since we won't be back to this area at Christmas time.  Such a fun time!  Drinking coffee, chatting with friends, catching up, LAUGHING a lot-- there's nothing better! :)

We occupied this booth for several hours. :)

 Don't worry, J was busy having "guy time" with Grandpa and Daddy.  They ran errands, visited Meema at work again, and went shopping at Bomgaar's.  Pretty sure J would live at Bomgaar's if he could.

Friday afternoon we took J on his very first bowling excursion!  He was a little overwhelmed by it all, I think.

Rockin' the bowling shoes.

 But he soon figured out that after Grandpa bowled, then it was his turn.  He and Daddy would go get the bowling ball while Mommy put the ramp in place.  Since he has the attention span of a gnat (as Adam likes to say), it was a long wait for the ball to roll down the alley and knock down the pins!

Ready to bowl for the first time!

The one second he paused to watch his ball...

He broke 100!

We grabbed dinner afterwards at the House of Q, where Jeremiah did some after dinner dancing to a little Johnny Cash.  He really has some moves, don't you think? :)

Saturday was Christmas!  Well, for us it was Christmas Round 1, with Adam's family. :)  J made out like a bandit, of course!

Stockings first!

"Hold this Daddy, I've got more stuff to check out."

He is a pretty fast present opener!

A boy in love.

 This was funny.  J opened a present, I said to him, "Hey buddy, do you know what these are?  They're big boy underwear!!!!"  His response: "But I don't like underwear!"

Cheese!  I got puzzles!

J with his "brand new bicycle" as he calls it.

On Sunday morning, we packed the Nitro to the gills, and headed home.  That "brand new bicycle" that J got took up quite a bit of room! :)  It was good to be home and get unpacked, laundry done,  and get prepared to head back to reality Monday morning.

This evening J and I got out the Christmas decorations!  I had wanted to get the stuff up before we left for Thanksgiving, so we wouldn't have to worry about it when we got home.... well, obviously that didn't happen.  But when J got to daycare this morning and said, "Wow, Shell, I like all your Christmas stuff!"  I decided it was time to get our Christmas stuff out!  J was a big help.

He decorated the bottom half of the tree.

He cleaned up all the tissue paper with his excavator.

No, our ornaments don't match or coordinate, but every single one has a story!