Snowboarding

Despite the flat topography of our back yard, the grading away from the house provides just enough of a slope to allow the kids to try out snowboarding on their sleds. And the path from the house to Jason's backyard is a perfect track for their endeavors. I think real snowboarding might be in our future soon.

Christmas

Well, almost a month after the fact, I'm finally writing about Christmas. We had a great holiday except for traveling down to Iowa which was snowy, slippery, stressful and much longer than it's supposed to be. This is the third bad Christmas travel to Iowa in five years, so we just aren't having good luck with that (other than we've safely arrived every time). Christmas Eve was at Ken and Cheri's and after church (where Abby wasn't the best behaved, but the boys were exceptionally good), we enjoy appetizers and plenty of presents at Grammy and Papa's. We decided to spend the night over there and that was a fun change. Everyone slept pretty well and it was a nice, relaxing way to spend our Christmas Eve and morning.

Then it was the drive to Iowa which I've already mentioned, and Christmas dinner and festivities at Grandpa Duane and Grandma Verna's. This is the first holiday where Abby has been okay with being away from me for a period of time and doesn't throw a fit when someone other than our immediate family tries to talk to her or hold her. How far we've come in the last year. We opened more gifts and had dinner with Grandpa Don and Grandma Sue the next day and with Grandma Sue's side of the family the day after that. It was a whirlwind of Christmas activities, and fortunately it was nice enough for some playing outside in the snow too (although there wasn't too much snow, just enough for riding around on the sled behind the four-wheeler which Matthew loved, but Sam wouldn't try).

Here are a few pictures from our family Christmas at home.

Observations on laundry

Today I did a lot of laundry and I noticed some peculiarities in our laundry which I've had on my radar for awhile. The first peculiarity is that when I'm done doing laundry (and I'm very thorough), Sam has maybe one (or no) pairs of underwear and socks in the clean laundry. The other thing is that Matthew has an inordinate amount of underwear and socks in the clean laundry. I have a few ideas on what is going on. My first idea is that Sam is not changing his underwear at all or very little between launderings (which generally happens every four days or so). The second idea is that Matthew is changing his underwear and socks more frequently than what would generally be considered normal. Another idea is that Sam is changing his underwear, but hiding it somewhere where I'm not finding it on laundry day. Hmmm. Usually his laundry is in plain sight (strewn across his floor), but perhaps he's hiding some of it for some silly reason. Another idea is that Sam is wearing Matthew's underwear which would account for both unusual laundry observations. As of now, I'm not exactly clear on what's going on, although I have a strong inkling it's idea #1 and I need to be a bit more aware of Sam's changing habits.