Correction

Remember how I said Iowa was cold a couple weeks ago? I had no idea!

In case you can't see, it says it is -21.8 degrees, and sensor for this is even attached to the house where it is probably a bit warmer.

Rude Awakening

No, we were not awakened at 4:15 this morning by our children. They seem to have passed that stage except when sick or one of them has the rare scary dream. This morning, Max and I awoke to the loud purr, blare, roar of a snow blower. Our next door neighbor--who's retired and mows his lawn at least three times a week in the summer (and I'm not exaggerating at all)--was up at 4:15 snow-blowing his driveway. Yes, there was a big storm last night, but honestly, he's retired and is home all day! Max went out at about 6:45 to shovel before school and our next door neighbor was out again touching up his 4 am job. Max found out that his wife and son got stuck and had to stay in a hotel somewhere trying to come home last night because of road closures and so "the voice of reason" was not there to tell him he can't blast the snow blower at 4 in the morning. The worst part--we can't really complain because he has recently started to snow blow our sidewalk while he's meticulously cleaning his own.

Waterpark Fun

For Max's last week of vacation, we drove up to Wisconsin Dells and stayed at the Kalahari Resort. The Dells is this kind of weird little city that has a bunch of indoor and outdoor play places, live magic shows, a Ripley's Believe It or Not, and themed restaurants. The place we stayed had a great indoor water park with wave pool, lazy river, a bunch of water slides, arcades, a go-cart track, and more.  The boys were so excited for it because we let them see photos and video on the hotel website before we went. 

We had a blast. The boys loved the water slides. Wyatt was braver than I thought he would be. I think its because he has an older brother to follow around, but he would climb up this huge tower that had water spouting all around to get to the longer kid water slides. He also loved the scariest roller-coaster-like water slide that he rode on with one of us. Jonah loved everything about everything. He got a real kick out of the wave pool and liked jumping into and over the waves.

We also introduced the boys into the arcade--they played ski-ball, whack-a-mole, and stomp the spider. The whole "tickets we win can buy me candy" idea really had them excited. All in all, it was a great little vacation that we'd recommend to anyone. 

Christmas in Review

Max has been out of school since December 19 and so we have been playing and working a lot for the past three weeks. I realized I haven't recorded anything about our first Christmas as our own little family.

We had lots of time to play. One morning, Jonah and Wyatt--well mostly Jonah but Wyatt usually goes along with what his older brother wants to do--wanted me to make them dorsal fins. Jonah says "dorsal fin" with a slight English accent because it comes from a book-made- into-a-video narrated by a very proper speaking Englishman. So here they are being great, white, man-eating sharks.
And here is the shark sledding down the hill on the side of our house with his daddy. Wyatt liked the sledding until he fell off and got a big face-full of snow. It was a pretty bad fall though--cut up his cheek a little--so it was understandable. 
It is amazing how much more Jonah likes the snow this year than last year. He stays out for a long time and even asks to go out in the backyard by himself. He would never have done that a year ago.

The rainbow light-sabers came from Grandma Stirling and were opened on Christmas Eve. Earlier in the evening, we went to a friend's house with a bunch of other families for food and a children's nativity (forgot our camera though). There were probably 12-15 kids in the nativity and about 6 or more young ones not participating. It was kind of like being at home for me with all the kids except that these ones were all 6 and under. 

Christmas morning! Jonah is at the point where he is really excited and asks lots of questions about Santa. When they ran out Christmas morning, the first things they went to were these trampolines from Grandma and Grandpa Nelson. We let them jump for a little and then asked, "So do you want to see what Santa brought you?" Santa brought the bouncy blue balls and they seemed to think the two bouncy things went great together.

Jonah is ALL about pirates right now and this is his new fancy cutlass (by the way it is not a sword and he will correct anyone on that point). It has a button that makes the sword say things like, "Ye scallywag," "ahoy," and "arghh." 

The Christmas aftermath.

On New Year's Eve we opened those poppers that have crowns, toys, and jokes inside and wore the crowns for all of dinner. The boys went to bed at regular time and we watched a movie. Pretty exciting, huh!

And here we are dressed up as pirates. After church the first Sunday of the year, all Jonah could talk about was making pirate costumes. The pirates he uses as models are those from the VeggieTales movie, "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything." He is Robert the Terrible. I had to remake the symbol for his hat, put this same symbol on a pirate flag, and a very small symbol on the handle of his sword. In this picture, Wyatt has already taken off his costume, but he was Alexander earlier in the day. I am the king as you can tell from the star on my scarf. Jonah tells all of us our lines since he has really good memorization skills. 

All in all, we had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. We missed being with family and friends in Utah, but we had a great time together.