Family Visits

We have officially survived the holiday season and all of the inevitable travel that comes with it.  This year, we managed to visit both parent's houses, and both of my grandparent's holiday gatherings within five days.  Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with our skills.  :)

We traveled to see Ben's mom the evening of the 23rd and enjoyed spending time with Jacque, Connie, Mike, Jenni, Levi, Skyler and Kyden.  We missed Rob, Sara and Aidan but hope to see them this coming weekend, as they will be visiting after the 1st of the year!  

On Christmas day, we ventured up the road to Ben's dad's house and as usual, we ended up playing Wii and taking apart things to try and get them to fit into a car.  Good food was eaten and soon enough, it was time to make the trip back to Des Moines.

We arrived in Des Moines on Friday evening and got to spend a little time playing with our new Christmas gifts before going to bed.  We woke up bright and early, packed up the car and then traveled to LeMars to see my family.  I got to go with my mom, sister and future sisters-in-law to pick out bridesmaids dresses for Jess's upcoming wedding.  We were successful and glad to have one more thing accomplished.  We had a gathering of my dad's side of the family that evening and I managed to kill all of my cousin's in Wii Boxing...yeah I rock.  The next day, we spent time with my parents and also had family from my mom's side at the house.  It was fun to see my cousin's and all of their children.  We are going to have to start getting kid's toys again to keep them entertained.  

We also found out that our friends Matt and Morgan are expecting their first child later in 2009.  We are so excited for them and can't wait to be an aunt and uncle!  We wish them the best of luck and look forward to spending lots of time with the new little one to spoil him or her!  This has also sparked my desire to have children immediately but we are trying to be responsible and wait until one of us is done with school.  Ben definitely is putting the blame on Matt and Morgan for this one and to them I say Thanks!  :)

Sunday we finally made it home and spent a week working before having another busy weekend, with our friends Nick and Bethany getting married.  I can't wait to celebrate with them and welcome them to the "club" where we all get together for dinner, watch a movie and then call it a night, all before 9!  Welcome to old married life.  We love it!  :)

That's life's update so far.  Stay tuned for more!

Christmas Season

So one look at the parking lot at the malls will tell you that Christmas is near.  For me, this means no more leisurely strolls through the mall on the weekend to window shop or just enjoy warmth inside, despite the freezing cold outside.  This mad rush chaos is also the reason that I do my Christmas shopping prior to Thanksgiving, and anything after this date, I use the world wide web!  I believe that Amazon.com has some of the best and amazing deals online, including free shipping and buy 4, get one free kind of deals!  I got 4 books for less than $25!  B&N would have cost well over $40 for these same books!  Getting a deal on any sort of shopping excursion makes me feel excited and proud of my accomplishment.  No sense in paying more for the same item.  I do like shopping local but around here, "local" is difficult to ascertain.  Many stores seem to be local but in fact are chains, simply unknown little chain stores in Iowa.  

My main reason for this post is simply to boast about being finished with shopping.  And for those of you who say, but what about all of those "After T-day Sales"?  Many of these sales are the same as offered the day BEFORE Thanksgiving, and often their online sales save you more than fighting the millions of people who want the same items you do.  Personally, I don't care to argue and fight the crowd.  I like people, but don't care to be packed in like sardines for a sale I can get elsewhere and another time and not feel rushed into.