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! :)

Another Visit to Santa!

On Sunday after church we went to Center Grove Orchard for some more Christmas fun!  Yes, we had been to Center Grove before in the fall, and Jeremiah was quite excited to find out that Santa was going to be at the apple orchard!  We grabbed lunch with some friends after church, and then headed up to the orchard.

Jeremiah was THRILLED to see Santa at the door to greet him!

Sorry Grandparents... apparently you've been replaced by Santa!

Rudolph was there, too.  J wasn't quite so sure about him!

 J wanted to get right down to business and talk to Santa.

"A BOAT, SANTA!  I WANT A BOAT!"

Jeremiah's friends also took their turns to visit with Santa!

Ruby was super excited to see Santa!  But then she got a little shy...

Parker was a little sleepy!

There was also cookie decorating and coloring!

Ruby's mommy is the expert!

Isn't Ruby's "Cheese" face awesome?!? :)

 And this is when J found out that we would NOT be heading outside to see the animals and going for a tractor ride.

He was not pleased.

Phew.  He got over it.  Probably because Ruby gave him a bag of treats.

 Overall it was a fun day with good friends!  I think we will plan to visit Santa at the orchard again next year-- quite a fun set-up they had there! :)

Oh, and today is Adam's birthday!  Happy birthday to the best hubby and daddy ever! :)

"SANTA!!!!! I know him!!!!"

Okay, so Jeremiah's reaction to Santa was a little less enthusiastic than Buddy the Elf's.  But he was pretty excited!

We took J to see Santa for the very first time on Friday evening.  He has minimal knowledge and understanding of Santa, but he was excited because he associates Santa with Christmas!  We decided to take him to see the Santa at Bass Pro Shop after our daycare provider recommended it.  After looking it up online, I saw that they also have a little "Santa's Workshop" set up with games, crafts, activities, etc.  FREE!  Plus, a free 4x6 picture.  Can't pass that up, people! :)  We got there about 4:45 (in an effort to avoid the evening rush!), and the line wasn't too unbearable.  I'd say we waited in line maybe 30 minutes?  And J kept himself occupied.

The people at Bass Pro aren't stupid.  They had every kid's dream of toys lined up right next to Santa's line. :)

So once we got closer to the front of the line and J saw other kids sitting on Santa's lap, he grew a bit more hesitant.  He even told me he didn't want to sit on this Santa's lap, he wanted to sit on "the REAL Santa's lap."  What?????

So HERE IS THE VIDEO of J's first encounter with Santa.
A couple things to note:
~Notice his "monkey legs" around me as we were walking up to Santa.  He wasn't so sure...
~You can't hear his conversation with Santa very well (but you can hear everything the people next to us in line were saying).
~This was basically the conversation:
Santa: "And what's your name, little boy?"
J: "Jeremiah"
Santa: "Oh, well that's a nice name!"
(Cheese!  Picture taking.  J looking frightened.)
Santa: "And what do you want for Christmas?"
J: "A boat."
Santa: "Oh, a boat.  Well, you make sure and be good and clean your room."
J (totally confused): "Okaayy."

"Cheese!  I think I'm supposed to be excited!!!!"

Tonight we did another fun Christmas tradition activity-- went to look at Christmas lights!  We did J's bath and jammies a bit early, then popped some popcorn, made J some chocolate milk, grabbed blankie and Giraffey and hopped in the car for a "Christmas ride." 

All ready to go!

After a stop at Starbucks for Mommy and Daddy, we stopped at a neighborhood in Ankeny where they have a "Gingerbread Lane" or something like that, and a cul-de-sac that has signs telling the story of "Frosty the Snowman."  Then we headed out to Beaverdale, 2 streets there had very impressive lights!  We drove around a bit more searching for another neighborhood or 2, and then headed home in the rain/snow/sleet.

**Disclaimer**
We haven't really "taught" Jeremiah about Santa, nor are we planning to.  He obviously has some knowledge of who Santa is, though.  At about 19 months old he was looking at a maternity pic of me and said, "Santa!!"  So, yep.  It's hard to NOT have your child exposed to Santa.  I wouldn't say we are encouraging J to actually believe that Santa brings his gifts on Christmas Eve, etc... I mean, how would that work anyway, when the kid has like 3 different Christmases?  We are definitely, of course, teaching J about the TRUE meaning of Christmas-- he knows all about Baby Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, and loves to sing "Away in a Manger."  But we see him visiting Santa, etc, as harmless fun.  As of right now, he told us that "When it snows, Santa will come."  He also thinks that Santa lives at Bass Pro Shop.

December Fun

Well, you would think that a post entitled "December Fun" would somehow involve SNOW or some other winter activity here in Iowa.  Nope.  We have not seen a snowflake yet!  And yes, I realize that I probably just jinxed it.

J got a "brand new bicycle" (he really does call it that-- he never calls it a "bike."  Always a "bicycle") from Grandpa and Meema Wissink, and Adam put it together for him last weekend.  He sat on it for awhile in the living room, and then after a few days Mommy got sick of it taking up valuable living room space.  So we hung it up in the garage, thinking we'd get it back out in the spring.

Well, Iowa weather is weird.  We were not anticipating 60 degree temps the past few days!  So yesterday after we went for a walk, J saw his bicycle hanging in the garage and just begged and begged to get it out!

He thinks he's pretty big stuff on his Big Boy Bicycle!

He can't pedal it.  Seriously!  For some reason all he does is try to pedal backwards, which is the brakes!  So he only goes anywhere if we push him, and even then with some momentum he can't pedal it!  Yet.  We'll try it again in the spring. :)

So then he was frustrated and wanted to get his old bicycle out!

It's so fun to try to run Mommy over!

Now that, he knows how to pedal!  Fast!  Especially when going down the driveway!

It started to get dark, so we had to head inside.  This is how J felt about that!

Sure wish this nice weather would stick around longer!  It actually is still nice today and will be again tomorrow, but then I think it's supposed to cool down again.  Hopefully our outside lovin' boy will get some more play time in the next couple days before it cools down.  Still no snow in sight!  Sad for Adam, he is dying to get his new snowblower going!