This year for Christmas we gave the kids a one-month membership to Climb Iowa, an indoor rock-climbing gym about 10 minutes from our house. Yesterday we made our first trip. The kids had a great time. We hope to go about twice a week for the month of January.
As usual, we went to the Reagens’ for New Year’s Eve. We had a lot of food, fun, and spent the night.
This year also introduced a potential new tradition – Cupcake Wars. On New Year’s Eve we were checking out the Reagens’ new TV, watching some HD desert videos. Someone said it would be better if they were dessert videos, and next thing you know we were watching cupcake wars. We watched the first half of an episode, watched the ball drop in New Orleans, and then watched the second half. Everyone enjoyed it, except Nate who could not have cared less.
Then, on New Year’s Day we were going to watch another episode, but it was removed from Netflix. . . . so we decided to have our own real-life episode. The teams were Erin and Ian against Susan, Hope, and Mari. They had 45 minutes to make gourmet cupcakes using some of the ingredients that we had laid out: limes, sparkling raspberry spritzer, and peanut butter. They were not allowed to follow any recipes!
In the end, both teams produced some rockin’ cupcakes, and the judges deferred judgement until next year.
This year for Christmas it was the usual suspects, in an unusual order. On Christmas Eve we went to Mimi & Papa’s in the afternoon. The Connors were in town for the couple of days before Christmas, so we had our Liess Christmas gathering at this time. After lunch, presents, and a show from the kids, we headed to Mass at Holy Trinity, took our usual loop through some streets decked out Christmas lights, then picked up some pizza on the way home.
We spent Christmas morning opening presents and enjoying our chocolate chip pancakes. In the afternoon we had some time to play with our new toys before heading to the Reagens’ for Nate’s birthday.
Yesterday Susan and the kids made some Christmas cookies to share with the neighbors and for general consumption. It was quite a mess, but I believe a good time was had by all.
The Clive Fire Department escorts Santa around town to visit the kids in the neighborhood. The kids all love it.
Last night we went to the Gustafsons’ for dinner and Christmas sweater decorating. Dinner was great, cookies were decorated, and everyone enjoyed the Wii dancing game.
Last night we put up our real Christmas tree. We also have an artificial tree that we put in the front room. The kids love finding and hanging their ornaments from years past.
Rose even got into the action this year. It seems like she will like the Christmas tree, so by Christmas I fully expect most of the ornaments to be out of her reach.
Rose was not too keen on her costume on Beggars Night, but today she wanted to put it on. She kept it on for about 5 minutes. Maybe she figured out people weren’t handing out candy anymore?
This afternoon, with Mar-Mar & Be-Bob in town, we visited Our Pumpkin Paradise. It is the kids’ favorite pumpkin patch in town, with many activities including ‘The Box’. The kids always have fun picking out their pumpkins and playing in the corn.
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This year we spent our New Year’s Eve at the Reagens’, where we are nearly every year! It is always a blast and the kids love to party.
