Christmas!

Our Christmas celebrations have finally come to a close.  Sad.  Jeremiah still has high hopes for more presents, though!

We started off with a lovely blizzard to kick off Christmas break.  Thursday and Friday were snow days for me, as 10-12 inches of snow in central Iowa AND strong winds made for very bad conditions (and as nice as it was to start Christmas Break 2 days early, I am not really looking forward to going back on Jan. 2 and having to do our Christmas parties!  Plus, that means we have to go 2 days longer in May!  Boo!  No more snow days!).  But even the schools in the city had to take 2 snows days, not just my school way out in the country.  By the time we left for WI on Saturday, the roads were still not great (that's like 72 hours after the storm!).  We are really hoping that by the time we get back from WI, all the roads will be clean and dry back home.  Thursday we were all hunkered down at home.  Adam worked from his office, but J and I hung out in our jammies and watched some movies.  Of course, Adam needed to get out the snow blower to clear off the driveway, and J was not about to miss out on THAT!

Ready to help with the shoveling!

That's a lot of white.

Warming up with his first hot chocolate!  He likes it! :)

Friday night we did our own little family Christmas.  We went out for dinner and then headed home for presents!  The still bad roads made things take a lot longer than we would have liked.  We may or may not have cursed the City of Ankeny (put some salt down, for heaven's sake!) as it took 45 minutes to get to Outback, which is like 4 miles away.

Jeremiah was happy to get home to his presents!  Adam and I are getting each other new phones for Christmas, so this present-opening was all about Jeremiah.

J and his new doggie, Truman.

He's a pretty good present opener!

Looking very excited (and kinda scary!) about his new tractor and cattle truck!

Saturday morning we packed up and hit the road for Wisconsin.  We, of course, needed a quick stop for donuts and coffee before hitting the (poorly plowed, bumpy, icey) roads!

J made quick work of eating all the frosting off the top of his donut.

The roads between Des Moines and Iowa City were not great, and it was slow-going for awhile.  Adam counted more than 100 cars/trucks/semis in the ditch!  Once we got out of Iowa, the roads were perfect and our trip went much more quickly.  We left Ankeny about 8:30 am and arrived at my parents' house in Brookfield a little after 3 pm (that included a lunch stop, too!).  Hopefully our trip home tomorrow goes a bit faster.

J was pretty excited to get to Grandpa and Meema's house (and to get out of the car)!  He was excited to see some visitors in the backyard, eating from Grandpa's bird feeder, too!

They apparently have no fear.

J loved watching the "reindeer"!

Sunday we went to church, and then Abby, Neil, my mom, and I all headed to Cedarburg for lunch and a bit of shopping!  And I don't have any pictures!  Bummer. :(  Abby and I LOVE going to Cedarburg and having lunch at the Creme & Crepe, and shopping at Downtown Dough and all the other cute shops.  And of course, a trip to Cedarburg is not complete without a stop at Amy's for chocolates and caramel apples!  It was wonderful.

Sunday evening we went over to my Uncle Lew and Aunt JoAnne's (or, Unca Noo and Jo-uh-Ant, as Jeremiah says) house for dessert.  J loved playing with Uncle Lew's toys! :)

And he took a look at Aunt JoAnne's Christmas book, too!

On Christmas Eve, Jeremiah wasn't quite feeling 100%-- was kind of stuffy with a cough and low-grade fever.  What a day to feel sick! :(  But, he did not let that hold him back!

We had lunch at Bravo, and they won Jeremiah over right away.  The waitress brought out a ball of dough for him to play with while we waited for our food!  Kept him occupied for quite a while. :)

Makin' a pizza!

After some ibuprofen and a good nap, Jeremiah seemed to be feeling much better, so we all headed out to the Christmas Eve candlelight service at BCRC.  I LOVE candlelight Christmas services!  And since J was not feeling 100%, we decided to keep him with us in church.  He did surprisingly well and made it through the whole church service, and seemed mesmerized by the lighting of the candles and singing of "Silent Night."  Such a special service-- I am glad we decided to let Jeremiah experience it!

After church we did our normal appetizer snacks for dinner.  YUM!

And then it was time for presents!  Finally we could answer Jeremiah's frequent question of, "Can we open presents NOW?" with a "YES!" :)

J got a cool Play-Doh truck from Auntie Abby and Neil!

 AND....... YES.  Jeremiah did indeed get the boat that he was hoping for!!!

He's one happy boy!!!

And HERE IS THE VIDEO of J's reaction when he opened up his boat!  I'm so glad that Santa (AKA Grandma) came through! :)

 He also got a cool Hawkeye's uniform from Uncle Matt and Aunt Cheryl!  For some reason, he was not too excited about the pants or jersey, but he LOVED the helmet.  HERE IS THE VIDEO of him opening up his Hawkeye gear!  He AND Daddy were pretty excited. :)

Jeremiah really enjoyed opening presents this year!  He got lots of cool toys that will (hopefully) keep him very busy.

He ended the evening with some stories with Grandma before bedtime.  He was not too sure that he wanted presents to be over, but we were able to get him to bed with the promise of more presents in his stocking on Christmas morning!

We had a very nice, relaxing Christmas Day.  As always, it started with Grandma's butterhorns for breakfast (and cinnamon rolls for the people..... ahem, ME... who don't like butterhorns).

J did a great job of licking the frosting off his butterhorns!

After breakfast, it was time for stockings!

Train jammies!

Pure cuteness.

J got in some play-doh time with his new truck and Abby!

During the afternoon, Ben, Abby, Neil, Adam, and I all went to a movie while Grandpa and Meema babysat.  Yikes, movie theaters are so busy on Christmas!  But it was lots of fun to have a "date" and hang with other adults.  We haven't been to a movie in ages!

And then we had a yummy Christmas dinner of ham, cheesey potatoes, rolls, and green beans.  No pictures of all of that, though.  Jeremiah was throwing a minor fit as everyone was sitting down to eat.  Gotta love 2 year olds!

Ending the day with a bath in Grandma's pink bathtub!

Today was a quiet day here at Grandpa and Meema's house.  Abby and Neil left this morning for Ohio to spend time with Neil's family, and soon after that Ben left to get back to Chicago in time for work.  So it was just us!

Some iPad time.

Grandpa brought up our old plastic sled from the basement to give Jeremiah a ride in the snow!  He was not too keen on it at first... he could not quite understand why Grandpa would not pull him AND Daddy in the sled.  But after awhile, he thought it was fun!

We took one ride down the little hill across the street!

J is not much of a thrill-seeker or too daring.... so one trip down the hill was all he needed.  Then he wanted to make a snow angel (much safer).

He also wanted to make a snowman, but the snow wasn't right for that. :(  So, we had to settle for going inside to warm up with hot chocolate!

After Jeremiah's nap, we headed downtown to check out some Christmas lights!  First stop, Potbelly's for dinner.

Des Moines needs to get with the program.  Potbelly's rocks!

Then we walked to the BMO Harris Bank building to see the winter display in their lobby.

No, he's not scared of that huge bear.  He's excited!

Pretty!  And cold!!!!

The second thing we wanted to do was ride the Jingle Bus around downtown to see the lights in some of the parks.... unfortunately, the times for that were extremely unclear on their website and we found out that the Jingle Bus was not running tonight.  Boo.  So we drove out to a different light display that also happened to have a room with an awesome train display!!!  Right up Jeremiah's alley! :)

He did a lot of this... pointing and talking.  He's a train expert!

He would stay here all night!

And then it was back home to Grandpa and Meema's house for stories and bedtime.  Tomorrow we will be packing up the car with all our loot and heading back to Iowa (keeping our fingers crossed that our roads are normal again!).  Not quite back to reality, though-- Adam and I both have off of work/school through New Year's so we'll have some time to relax before it's back to work! 

Hope everyone out there has a Happy New Year! :)