Christmas in Urbandale IA-'08

We celebrated Christmas on Leland's side of the family at his sisters house in Urbandale Iowa. It certainly was a full and crazy household, but we all had fun! The only downside of the entire trip was that we had to take Nathan to the doctor the day after Christmas and he ended up with a double ear infection. Poor little guy:( So after we got the medicine, things started to get a little better, but Nathan wanted no one but his mommy. I guess it is true what they say, when you are sick you want your mommy! It was a little draining on mommy because all he wanted was me and no one could hold him at all, not even Leland at times!

Parker certainly had a blast with his cousins playing outside in the snow. They have a hill in the backyard which was perfect for sledding! It was a bit of a challenge getting all the winter gear on ( snow pants, winter coat, boots, hat and gloves) but it was all worth it to see the big huge smile on Parker's face while going down on the sled and then walking back up the hill just to do it all over again. Last, but not least, the last picture is of Nathan frosting a Christmas cookie. It's like he knew what he was doing and took his time in frosting his cookie.

All in all we had a good time in IA, but it was good to get home too. WE arrived at our home early Monday morning about about 2:30am and we all crashed!

The top picture is of Parker and Nathan with his cousins Tyler, Kayla and Zachary. They had 2 cousins that were not able to make it, otherwise all the cousins would have been together. It was hard to get Nathan to sit still since he wanted nothing but mom to hold him all the time, but we managed to get one good picture.

The next picture is of Leland along with his sister Eileen, his brothers, Frank, Glen, and Matt and his parents Paul and Janet. The next picture was just darn cute not to post. We told Nathan to put the bow on top of his head and he listened and I just happened to have the camera ready and captured the perfect moment:)

The next picture is of our family. We had just gotten back from going to church and still had our good clothes on, so we took advantage of getting a picture of all of us, since we don't do that very often.

Christmas '08 in Protivin

Well, now that the holidays are over for another year, can I just say, phhewww. I'm glad actually that the holidays are over. We started out our Christmas trip with a LONG trip to IA. We left the night of Dec. 23rd and it took us about 14 hours total to get to Leland's sister's house in Urbandale. We knew that we may run into some typical Iowa weather, but we didn't brace ourselves for not only some freezing rain, but sleet and snow too! Needless to say the boys were getting restless from being in the car for so long, and finally at around 10:30am we got to Urbandale( that is after leaving our home in Corinth at 8pm). After staying there for a couple hours we were off to Protivin to my parents house. We got to my parents house at about 5pm on Christmas Eve and we went over to my aunt and uncles house to celebrate not only Christmas, but my grandmother's 88th birthday. We had 3 different kinds of soup, kolaches, rolls, all kinds of snack foods, and desserts! Man I was sure stuffed! Then came the fun part................opening presents! The first picture is of Parker opening up his big truck he got from great uncle Tom and great Aunt Becky and his cousins Eric and Patrick. From the look on his face you can tell he loved it!

The next picture is of the boys with their great grandma Evelyn. She enjoys seeing her great grandsons, and Parker and Nathan will be the only great grandsons she will see in her lifetime probably. My aunt and uncle have a piano in their basement and Nathan loved pressing the keys. Grandpa and grandma Lentz joined in with him to play a tune.

The cold weather and snow is something we are sure not used to while living in Texas, so Parker took advantage of it! This picture is at Leland's sisters house ( who has a hill in her backyard) gliding down the hill! The last picture is of the boys with Santa. We took the boys to Golden Triangle Mall in Denton to see him before we left for IA. Parker went right up to him and told him what he wanted for Christmas ( which was a dump truck, firetruck and ambulance). Nathan was a little uncertain about sitting on his lap, but he did. I was standing by the camera trying to get him to smile, but I just couldn't make it happen. After a couple minutes he kept looking back at Santa wondering who this person was holding him and then he kept looking at me thinking, " Mom when can I get off this guys lap?" It didn't long after that until Nathan began crying and wanted his mommy.