Christmas Traditions

Christmas eve we made the snowy trek from Des Moines to Iowa City to my Mom's house. We arrived to the home decorate for Christmas just as it is every year....the stockings were hung...

The tree was decorated.....

The dogs were begging....

Mom was cooking Cornish hens...

While the kids drank wine and egg nog and decorated ginger bread houses!

We had a lovely dinner and attended mass at the Newman Center in Iowa City.

Christmas afternoon was spent in Houghton at Grandma and Grandpa Peitz's. It's been quite a while since most of the family could gather together there for Christmas. Grandma made us a nice dinner with all of the Christmas fixins'. While we opened more gifts and watched movies with cousins we don't see nearly enough!The day after Christmas brought MORE snow! We cleared the paths for the parents, dusted 0ff the cars and headed for our own homes.

Our Own little Christmas tree...future note - if you water a tree three times in 4 weeks it will leave needles ALL over your home! ;)

Happy Hanukkah

Jon and I spent our first Hanukkah as a married family in our new home lighting this lovely Menorah that was a gift from his parents. We each set a small price limit on daily gifts and had a great time finding little treasures for one another!
A few nights were spent with the family at Jon's parents house. We loved watching Drew with his daily gifts! Between his December birthday, Hanukkah, and Christmas I'd imagine Molly and Jud's house is full of new fun things to play with and watch!To celebrate the 7th night of Hanukkah we had a big bash at Bob and Lisa's to not only celebrate the holiday, but Debbie's return from teaching in Argentina! We feasted on brisket, sweets, and even a Star of David shaped cake.

This is How I Buy Baby New Shoes!

Hypothetical new shoes that is.... :) My company has a featured blog with internet marketing strategies, recent news, social media concepts, and advertising advice. Today one of my featured blogs ranked number #2 in Google search results. I know Jon and I understand the nerdy "googlespeak" but for those of you that don't - this is exciting!

Take a peak at what I've been up to here....

http://www.bluetraffic.com/blog

Baby's First Hanukkah

A favorite find on the Chicago shopping trip earlier this month was this adorable "baby's first Hanukkah" onesie. While shopping in Bucktown we walked passed a design your own t-shirt shop. A variation of this was hanging in the window...sure enough, all three of us stop at the same time and in unison "We HAVE to get that!". The store wraps their t-shirts in sandwich style packaging which we didn't even notice until we got home and opened our package to find, chips? It took a minute to grasp the packaging concept before loving the idea....see how cute?

Girls Trip to Chicago

It's been a longstanding tradition to have "girls shopping" weekends in our family. The tradition began when we were very young and my Mom would tote us around Minneapolis, Katie in her little pink glasses and me refusing to try on anything frilly. Later when the MOA or Mall of America was built...we'd burn off those cinnabons with several laps from Abercrombie to Gap to Tuchi Bennuch for lunch. As our shopping taste became a bit more aquired (our husbands will eternally have both my Mom and Dad to thank for our sometimes pricey taste in clothing!) and our locales spanned to Iowa City, North Carolina, and Chicago we found our shopping trips taking place on the infamous Michigan Avenue and the Lincoln Park Boutiques.

This year we booked our stay at the W Hotel. The location was great, right on the water and of course close distance to the shopping. We found some adorable maternity and baby boutiques where I began the expansion of my wardrobe. Katie tracked down most of her Christmas gifts and a few steals and deals. While my mom with ample persuasion from her daughters purchased a few adorable items herself! The trip was relaxing and of course included lots and lots of fun bonding time. We all agreed we have more fun doing this each year!

The trip concluded with the traditional breakfast at the Bongo Room...which is anything but "traditional"! Apple/carmel stuffed french toast amazingness, Red velvet and vanilla ganche pankes topped with the most amazingly sweet frosting/syrup you've ever seen filled our tummies for the ride back to Iowa!

I'm so lucky to have my two best friends as relatives!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

"It was the snowstorm of the century!" Or so the media claimed it to be.... We received almost a foot and a half of snow by the time the whole thing was over. The drifts up to our house reached our windows and in some places were almost as tall as me! Luckily we moved into a neighborhood with very helpful neighbors and didn't have to bust out the entire driveway with shovels once! Someone always found a way to snow blow it before we could get a chance. Here is Jon on the first morning. He opened the garage door to a 6ft drift. You can see he's making a dent...but oop, here comes the neighbor!

Jon actually went into work a bit that day (if he doesn't, people don't get their holiday gifts shipped! So even though I hated the idea of him driving...he saved someone's Christmas or Hanukkah). I on the other hand, had a SNOW DAY! With no eggs or chocolate, the baking was slim - but I did do a lot of cleaning, gift wrapping, and relaxing.

Lola is even beginning to get in the holiday spirit!

Happy Birthday DrewBear!

The Big Man turned 3 this week! His new love seems to be all things Bat Man! Molly and Jud had a get together Saturday for lunch at their home.