Christmas and More

I have to say that the last few weeks have been somewhat of a crazy blur of traveling, eating too much, opening too many gifts, and trying to be creative with our Elf on the Shelf.  We went up to Duluth on Christmas Eve and enjoyed spending the day with Angela and Reed, my parents, Pat and his family, and my Grandma Ann.  It was so great watching the kids have fun together and seeing how excited they got when it came time to open gifts.  To top things off, my mom prepared a delicious prime rib dinner.  We were all exhausted by the time we got to the hotel that night.  We went back out to my parents' Christmas morning before we headed home.  The girls were extremely excited to see that Santa had stopped by our house while we were gone.  They were, however, a little concerned that their Elf (named Davey) was nowhere to be found.  After about a week, the girls finally stopped asking "where's Davey?" We didn't do much for New Years other than share a bottle of champagne at home after the girls went to bed.  Since then, we have just been trying to survive the cold of the arctic tundra known as Minnesota.  Schools have been closed the last two days due to dangerous wind chills.  Lance was supposed to fly to St. Louis yesterday, but his flight (along with many others) were cancelled because of the cold as well.  Thankfully, we might actually see 30-degree weather by this weekend.  That is about 50 degrees warmer than today!  Luckily, we have some celebrations to look forward to that will hopefully help us get through the "cooped up" feeling we are all starting to get.  Lance's birthday is Monday, the girls' birthday is a few weeks after that, and Lance's parents will be visiting for a week at the end of the month.  We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and stay warm.