Christmas in Iowa

Over the river and through the woods....to Grandma and Grandpa Erb’s house we go...

We had a relaxing few days before Christmas....catching up with cousin Ella...



...and learning to snowboard from Uncle Nate!


Christmas Eve was filled with Whattoff Family fun!


Great Aunt Kathie managed to corralle all the second cousins for a festive picture.  

Christmas Morning!  Stockings filled with goodies kept the boys occupied until the rest of the family joined us for gift opening, lunch, and an afternoon of game playing. 







Ella and Jacob are two, silly, peas in a pod!

Christmas night took us down the road to Great Grandpa Erb’s house.  Packed with over 65 aunts, uncles and cousins, we had a surprise visit from Santa and fun opening presents.  




Great Grandpa saves his change all year.  Everyone in the family gets a guess at the dollar amount in the jar.  Then it’s all hands on deck to count the coins and award the closest guess!

John and Kenny helped with counting this year!

After Christmas, we had a few days to relax and play.  We celebrated Grandpa’s birthday, played with Ella, cheered on the Cyclones Bowl Game, and camped out in the treehouse with Grandpa!  We couldn’t have packed in more fun if we tried❤️

Christmas Kick-off

We kicked off Christmas with a Colorado celebration before packing up and heading to Iowa.  

Our “Christmas morning” opening presents in front of the tree.

We had a day of fun and play at home before going to church for a magnificent performance of Christmas at the Ranch!

The official Christmas portrait!  Santa Bryan is the best!  

Kenny the Poet

Kenny’s 4th grade class hosted a poetry reading!  Kenny has written 5 poems and read his favorite to the audience of classmates and parents.  

December Skiing!

The snow continued to be amazing and we logged a record number of days for December. We braved the birds at Copper’s T-Rex outdoor grill.

Our first day of the season at Winter Park

We booked the Westin in Snowmass thinking it would be a fun weekend away, but the snow was amazing and we couldn’t get enough runs in!

The Nativity Mystery

The mystery of the missing Nativity characters kept me in stitches throughout this advent season.  The entire bag of characters went missing....fortunately I found a Mary under the sofa in time for Day 3

Joseph surfaced a few days later.  

A week later....I rescued this Wise Man from the garage floor.

And just in time for Christmas, I found the mother load in Kenny’s closet!  

Apparently the characters were part of an ongoing battle with Star Wars Legos!?

1st Annual PJ & Christmas Movie Morning!

While the kids were still in school, these two smart mamas threw a party!  We had an avocado toast bar, fruit, and green chili egg casserole.  The movie was in the background, but we were all too busy talking to watch!😂

Thanksgiving in Colorado

It felt wonderful to stay home for Thanksgiving and have Grandma Bolthouse come to us!  We stayed busy with a tour through the Celestial Seasonings factory in Boulder.  

Kenny was beyond embarrassed by the hair net😂

We walked along Pearl Street in Boulder to enjoy the sunshine and some street performers.  

We were so thankful to have Grandma help us decorate for Christmas!

It was fun to kick off the holiday season with a walking tour of the Holiday Lights at Hudson Gardens.

John and Grandma

The prettiest tree in the park!

Ski Season? Already??

The mountains received an amazing amount of early winter snow, which allowed a few resorts to open early!  Darin and I skied opening day (Friday) at Copper while the kids were at school.  
We  had so much fun we decided to go back on Saturday with the boys.  Powder runs in mid-November?  Yes please!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween was a crazy, fun, whirlwind of a day!  I helped with Kenny and John’s classroom parties, and then stayed to help with Jacob’s pumpkin project activity.  We kept our tradition and had dinner with the Jasoerson family before heading out to trick-or-treat.  

Kenny as a Fortnite character, Jacob as Halo, John as a Storm Trooper

Jacob, ?, and Barrett did a science experiment with their pumpkin.  Making predictions about weight, whether or not it would float, and number of seeds.  Then we got to test each hypothesis (counting all the seeds in a pumpkin with three 2nd grade boys was quite the adventure:-)