Our Christmas holiday!

It's hard to believe that Christmas has already come and gone! We've definitely kept ourselves busy.

After school on Friday the 19th, we got in the van to go up to Papa Dave and Weyla Kate's. Aud hadn't had the nicest of diapers for the couple of days before that (to put it nicely) and Angela said that she'd had some nasty ones all day Friday, so we knew she wasn't feeling that good. We stopped in Wilmington (exit 50 off of 71 north) to get some Dairy Queen (Eric's idea, of course), and she refused any ice cream. Just a few minutes later, as we were back on the highway, she threw up. Nasty. We stopped at the Jeffersonville exit to clean up (thank goodness I'd packed extra pj's and extra blankies!), but there was no leaving behind the odor. Yuck. After getting that out of her system, she felt better (thank goodness) and was fine for the rest of the trip.

On Saturday, we went with Weyla to the Aha! Museum in Lancaster. Billed as a museum, it was really an indoor playground. Very fun - the kids had a ball. Their favorite was a water table with several different activities. They also played with the lip sync equipment, dress up clothes, fishing equipment, pizza kitchen, and catacombs... I can definitely see taking the kids back there again!

After making it back to the house and grabbing some lunch, Conner and Eric went with Uncle Andy (in from California), Papa, and Weyla to pick out a Christmas tree. They actually go cut one down every year and waited until Conner could go with them. He was a big helper - he pulled the tree back in the wagon after Papa cut it down. Sounds like he had fun! Then we helped with the ornaments on it after Papa put the lights on. The kids were very excited to open presents from Uncle Andy that evening - Conner got a tent (yay!) and a nerf gun (which was taken away shortly after we arrived home and he shot at Aud); Audrey got a horse ("orsie"!) and something else that I can't remember right now.

We went to church on Sunday morning, stopped at Frisch's for lunch, then watched the Bengals/Browns game at Papa and Weyla's before heading home. It was a busy weekend!

Eric was supposed to work on Monday and Tuesday, but they cancelled because of the coldness Monday (digging the road up and working with water isn't great when it freezes so quickly!). So he stayed home with me and the kids for the week. We went to the Christmas Eve service at our church with Papa Doug and Weyla Marge then ate at Olive Garden before heading home to wait for Santa.

We were actually able to put Conner off on Christmas morning until 8:00 (quite a miracle, especially since I told him he wasn't allowed to go downstairs without us!). He was very excited to see that Santa had brought him a garbage truck (which luckily Mommy found at Toys R Us on Monday!) and a promise for a new bike. Audrey's favorite was the play kitchen (and lots of food and dishes from the grandparents!). Papa Dave, Weyla Kate, and Weyla Ruth all came down around lunchtime, then Papa Doug and Weyla Marge came over later in the afternoon. We had a nice big family dinner around the dining room table!

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Papa Dave and Weyla Kate (and Weyla Ruth) stayed until Saturday evening - Eric and I spent our afternoons on Friday and Saturday at a couple of car dealerships trying out some new cars (it appears now that the Ford Flex is going to be our choice; we just need to get a deal worked out). Today after church we went to a couple more dealerships (thanks to Uncle Greg for offering to let Aud take a nap at the condo while we went!) - Conner went with us and had a good time running around inside, looking at and climbing in all the cars, and meeting a new little friend. I'm sure it wasn't the most fun for him, but he really did a great job and was a good boy. He was disappointed when we left without a new car, but he got over it (and I had warned him in advance that it might not happen today!). We've become a little obsessive about it in the past few days; even now Eric is sitting with some printouts re-studying the numbers.