A Christmas Road Trip in the Ranger...

I spent two weeks before Christmas checking the extended forcast every day hoping for no snow come December 25th!  Last year on Christmas it took me three hours to get home so Wes and I were very happy when the snow continued to stay away.  We brought Wes's new (to him) Ford Ranger to Cedar Falls for it's first real roadtrip!  Which was a good thing because we had plenty of stuff to bring home!

We enjoyed seeing our friends and Wes's family during the weekend back.  I felt very blessed to have felt so welcomed by Wes's family and included in their Christmas traditions.  The food was fantastic and it seems that my baked goods went over well!  We loved seeing Chris, Merri and Tyler and spent time on Christmas Eve watching movies with them.  Merri and I really wanted to watch a Christmas movie so, despite the boy's complaints we played the "It's Merri's birthday" card and made them watch A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey... I do not think they will ever let us choose a movie again!

We also spent some time on Christmas night with Jeff watching the Packers win... everyone but me was happy!  This was only the second time I had ever met Jeff so it was fun to get to spend some time with him. 

It was a wonderful weekend and we want to thank Kathy and Leigh for always being so welcoming and kind (in other words thanks for feeding us) when we come back!

Christmas at the Zeitz's

It was good to see the whole family together since it only happens once a year when I come home. This week was the first time I got to meet my nephew Tyler. He is a pretty awesome baby.

Christmas this year was full of new and interesting traditions, including fly the nephew, trade the nephew and watching Merri open presents with one hand because of the nephew. Everyone's presents went over pretty well, and Tyler got an extraordinary number of presents.

Christmas Dinner went off the best it has in years with everything being done at about the same time and the food coming out pretty well if I do say so myself. We had angel hair pasta with a cilantro and almond pesto, fettucini alla carbonara, ravioli with italian sausage and ricotta filling and a butter white wine sauce, an Italian herb beer roasted chicken, Italian herb croisant pinwheels, and salad. All in all one of the better dinners we have had and we managed to pull it off with very little bickering, which for our family is a bit of an accomplishment.

This whole week has been full of fun, family and friends. Not much more you can ask for from a week long trip home.