Christmas in February - Part 1

I would be remiss if I didn't include a post about our wonderful Christmas trip to the Midwest. We put about 2400 miles on the van, but it was worth it for the kids to see snow, visit with lots of relatives and have a great time. It did start off a little hectic as we ended up leaving a day early due to an ugly weather forecast. It was a good decision as the weather did get bad after we arrived, but it sure made for a lot of crazy running around before we left.

My favorite part of the drive to Iowa was the kids' reaction to seeing real snow. We've had ice storms around here over the last couple years with a little bit of snow, but they wanted to see more than an inch. As we cut across the NW corner of Missouri, we started to see a little patchy snow in the ditches. The kids begged Sean to stop even though most of it was on the other side of the highway. Eventually, Sean spotted a small pile of snow right by an exit, so we pulled over. What a fun stop to stretch legs...Lots of giggling and snow balls.Once we hit Iowa, the ground was white and it stayed that way for the rest of the trip. In fact, we recently heard that Des Moines has had at least 4 inches of snow on the ground for over 60 days in a row. Needless to say, that's a record my family would rather not have the privilege of enjoying. When we stopped for lunch at a Subway in a very small town, the kids ran out to have a snowball fight in front of the store. I'm sure everyone inside was wondering about those crazy people, but we had fun.

Our first stop for visiting was with Sean's family. On the first full day in Iowa, the kids enjoyed lots of snowy fun. They built snow forts and snowpeople, threw snowballs, went sledding and just tromped through the snow. I think I spent most of the day stripping wet snow gear off the kids and drying it by the fire only to have one of them put it back on 20 minutes later. Since we had just driven 1000 miles to play in snow, they weren't going to miss a minute of it. We also did some furious Christmas baking on Christmas Eve as Sean's parents' electricity went out on the previous day. On Christmas Eve, we enjoyed seeing his extended family at their annual party. We haven't been to the party since Alex was 7 months old, so I think we were due to attend. On Christmas Day, we enjoyed a wonderful dinner made by Sean's stepmom including no less than 6 pies! The kids received huge stockings from Santa and played with dart guns. Alex was a little disappointed he couldn't go out much that day because it rained until late afternoon. Then the rain turned to beautiful snow. Sean and I took a walk in the woods so we could hear the silence of the woods in winter. How refreshing.
That nice piece of quiet was quickly overshadowed by the biggest event of our vacation. Sean slipped on his parents' hill and managed to break his right wrist. Sean's dad patiently drove us to the ER on Christmas night for Xrays and a splint. Amazingly, we were out of the ER in under 1 1/2 hours. I thought it would be very busy, but it was just the opposite thankfully. When we returned to Austin, Sean had a cast put on for about 4 weeks. Last week, the doctor said it was healed and he allowed Sean to move to a removable splint. He has been gaining range of motion daily and has cherished lots of small things like using his right hand to mouse, taking a shower without holding one hand in the air, and leaning on his right arm when he reads. That was his first broken bone and let's hope it's the last!