A Belated Wisconsin Christmas
We packed up the car with gifts and headed north on January 5th. The only thing missing were the reindeer! We decided to change it up and take Hwy 151 through Dubuque into Wisconsin. Even though it is 7 miles longer, it seemed shorter. There was a lot less traffic and hardly any semi's to deal with. We arrived at my mom's at 10:45pm.
The boys didn't fall asleep until 2 hours before we got there. I was hoping to bring Anthony in the house and put him back to bed, but that was not to be. He woke up and was ready to go again. Chase was all excited, because he knew he was going to be getting more presents all weekend. He immediately wanted to open presents when we got there. My mom said they could both open one, because we were doing our family Christmas in the morning. Chase got a Floam kit. He is fascinated with Floam, and played with it for the next hour. Anthony got this cute toddler drag strip toy. I made the mistake of using my foot to launch the cars, so he had to keep trying to do that too. It was very cute. We finally all went to bed by 1am. The good part of that was Anthony slept until 8:30am. I was very happy to get 7 hours of sleep.
My brother, Madilyn and Hanna were suppose to be at my mom's by 9:30am. So we all hurried to get showered and dressed. Then we started making breakfast. Chase was so excited to see his cousins. At 10:30am, Justin still wasn't there. So I called his house and there was no answer. So I told him Uncle Justin must be on his way. Well, by 11:30am we finally figured out he must not be coming. So we let the kids open the rest of their presents and we opened ours. Mom gave us a shredder. It has special slots for shredding cd's and credit cards. We've never had one, so it will get put to good use.
We left for Sara's house around noon. We have started a tradition. When we were little we would always eat at each other's houses on Saturday. Most of the time our mom's would make wiener roll ups for us, so we are now carrying that on. When we get together for Christmas we have Chase help us. Hopefully next Anthony will be able to participate too. We eat wiener roll ups, french fries and carrots. Then we open gifts and play games. Sara bought Chase and Anthony this fun game by Cranium called "Hubbabaloo." There are 12 rubber mats that have different shapes and pictures on them. There is a recorded voice that tells you what to do. Like, "Find an animal." Then it tells you to put your knee on a food. So you follow the directions, and then it will stop and ask who is standing on a musical instrument. If you are, then you win that round. We had fun playing it with Chase. Later Anthony was trying to do it too! Eric got to watch the start of the Chiefs game and then we had to head off to Aunt Pat's for the family Christmas dinner.
We arrived just in time for dinner. We ate and then it was time for fun and games. Aunt Pat bought this fun game that had horns with numbers. She then had different songs we could play. The horns were numbered 1-8. Chase even played. We played Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, and Silent Night. At first we weren't very good, but we got better after a couple of times. Afterwards, we did our white elephant gift exchange. Eric ended up with Best Buy gift card and I got a candle and some room fragrance.
We left there around 7pm and headed to Aunt Cheryl's where my brother and his family were. I forgot to mention that my brother boycotted our extended. Family Christmas and blew us off Saturday morning. Chase was so excited to see his cousin Madilyn and then they didn't come to my mom's. At least they got to play for a few hours Saturday night.
Sunday morning we went to visit my grandma and grandpa Gruenwald. They aren't doing well. They should be in assisted living, my grandma can hardly walk and she has a lot of pain. She says to me, "Well this will probably be the last Christmas I am alive." Talk about putting a major downer on the visit!
Afterwards we went to my dad's. We opened presents and then went out to eat. The boys were very well behaved and we had a good visit. We got on road around 2:45pm and pulled into the garage at 7:45pm. We made good time and only had one stop.
The boys didn't fall asleep until 2 hours before we got there. I was hoping to bring Anthony in the house and put him back to bed, but that was not to be. He woke up and was ready to go again. Chase was all excited, because he knew he was going to be getting more presents all weekend. He immediately wanted to open presents when we got there. My mom said they could both open one, because we were doing our family Christmas in the morning. Chase got a Floam kit. He is fascinated with Floam, and played with it for the next hour. Anthony got this cute toddler drag strip toy. I made the mistake of using my foot to launch the cars, so he had to keep trying to do that too. It was very cute. We finally all went to bed by 1am. The good part of that was Anthony slept until 8:30am. I was very happy to get 7 hours of sleep.
My brother, Madilyn and Hanna were suppose to be at my mom's by 9:30am. So we all hurried to get showered and dressed. Then we started making breakfast. Chase was so excited to see his cousins. At 10:30am, Justin still wasn't there. So I called his house and there was no answer. So I told him Uncle Justin must be on his way. Well, by 11:30am we finally figured out he must not be coming. So we let the kids open the rest of their presents and we opened ours. Mom gave us a shredder. It has special slots for shredding cd's and credit cards. We've never had one, so it will get put to good use.
We left for Sara's house around noon. We have started a tradition. When we were little we would always eat at each other's houses on Saturday. Most of the time our mom's would make wiener roll ups for us, so we are now carrying that on. When we get together for Christmas we have Chase help us. Hopefully next Anthony will be able to participate too. We eat wiener roll ups, french fries and carrots. Then we open gifts and play games. Sara bought Chase and Anthony this fun game by Cranium called "Hubbabaloo." There are 12 rubber mats that have different shapes and pictures on them. There is a recorded voice that tells you what to do. Like, "Find an animal." Then it tells you to put your knee on a food. So you follow the directions, and then it will stop and ask who is standing on a musical instrument. If you are, then you win that round. We had fun playing it with Chase. Later Anthony was trying to do it too! Eric got to watch the start of the Chiefs game and then we had to head off to Aunt Pat's for the family Christmas dinner.
We arrived just in time for dinner. We ate and then it was time for fun and games. Aunt Pat bought this fun game that had horns with numbers. She then had different songs we could play. The horns were numbered 1-8. Chase even played. We played Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, and Silent Night. At first we weren't very good, but we got better after a couple of times. Afterwards, we did our white elephant gift exchange. Eric ended up with Best Buy gift card and I got a candle and some room fragrance.
We left there around 7pm and headed to Aunt Cheryl's where my brother and his family were. I forgot to mention that my brother boycotted our extended. Family Christmas and blew us off Saturday morning. Chase was so excited to see his cousin Madilyn and then they didn't come to my mom's. At least they got to play for a few hours Saturday night.
Sunday morning we went to visit my grandma and grandpa Gruenwald. They aren't doing well. They should be in assisted living, my grandma can hardly walk and she has a lot of pain. She says to me, "Well this will probably be the last Christmas I am alive." Talk about putting a major downer on the visit!
Afterwards we went to my dad's. We opened presents and then went out to eat. The boys were very well behaved and we had a good visit. We got on road around 2:45pm and pulled into the garage at 7:45pm. We made good time and only had one stop.
posted by Rachel | 7:55 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home