January Happenings

Well, now that we've finally finished posting about Disney, we can move on to January.

 

We got to go visit the Thomas family in Rochester for New Year again and, as always, we absolutely loved it.  Somehow we always leave their home feeling uplifted and inspired.  They are truly amazing people.

And they have an amazing sledding hill in their back yard!  We missed having their son Josh to sled with us as he's on his mission, but we still had lots of fun.

Camilla loved climbing on Todd's back and going down on of the three sledding runs that way.

The older kids loved going by themselves and would cruise down the hill as fast as the sled would carry them.

And of course, there's the traditional keg of 1919 root beer!  This is some of the greatest root beer in the world and is draft only, so you can only buy it in kegs or by the growler full from somewhere that has it on tap.  It's for the serious root beer lover only!  Note that Steve is out on the icy deck in just his socks and neither he nor Todd are wearing coats.  Yeah, we're from Wisconsin.

There are two things Todd loves in this life - Minnie Mouse and Zebra snuggies.

And following are some random pictures to show how our January went.

This is what Alia does with some spare time on the weekend.

Alia also used January to start learning her way around all of her cooking gear that she got for Christmas.  Here she is using her owl measuring cups and her owl apron.  I think she's making brownies - an Alia staple.

And here's what you could find at anytime walking into Lawson's room:

With the kids at school, Camilla has lots of free time.  She is an amazing little "reader" and loves to sit up by this book shelf and just stare at the books for hours.  It's one of her favorite pass times.

Camilla's preschool also had a pirate day which gave us the chance to dress her up in a cute pirate costume! Here she is before school!

Here she is later playing with her pirate coins.

We have been trying hard to make it up to MN to go to the temple monthly and one of the side benefits are frequent trips to the Mall of America.  We all love the incredible creations at the lego store.  These larger than life lego scenes are really works of art and engineering and we love enjoying them while we're in the MoA.  We also love going to the little theme park they have in the mall and taking in one or two rides each time we go.  We are continually reminded of how much Lawson hates drops!

One of the benefits of the ceramic smoker D bought Todd last year is that incredible heat retention.  That means you can smoke ribs and pork all year round!  Even in the winter!  And that's what Todd does.

Can you smell the hickory?

Happy winter sunrise!

We were also blessed to have a fantastic visit by our friends the Boyers!  They left Iowa City when we did but they went south to St. Louis and we went north.  But, we're still closer to them now than we're going to be this summer when they move to Idaho so we wanted to visit each other while it was still relatively easy (and by that I mean a 7.5 hour drive).  We headed down to visit them in March.

Anyway, here are D and Holly - the first time D has actually been around Holly when she has been pregnant - yay for the baby belly!

We took them for some of our favorite appetizers at Buzzard Billy's, then we went out to ice cream at our favorite little ice cream shop.

then showed them around our house.

And the kids loved playing together!  Lawson and Claire always talk about how they're going to get married.  They love hanging out together.  The adults also loved hanging out together and we got to play tons of board games and catch up!

Camilla has a special place in her heart for Holly and always calls her, "My Holly."  She loved spending time with her and was so sad to see her go!

 

And lasty, at the end of January my Mom turned 70.  Doesn't she make 70 look awesome?!!

I love you Mom - you're amazing!!!