Friday Night Fun

After work Friday I stopped by to get some much needed Nate time.

I got to have my type of fun with Nate...



And Nate got to have his type of fun with me!

The Sam Show

I stayed in Iowa after Christmas so I could see Jacque, Jason, Samantha and Joe. It was too fun and way too short!

Mom and Sam.

Sweet Sam and me.

Samantha Jaye and her sidekick, Jac.

Sam loves her daddy, Jason.

Sam and Joe.

Jacque, Sam and me.

Dear Santa...

Dear Santa,
I have been a good boy and only asked for one thing from you. Eggs! That was until my Uncle Steve walked into the room with these silver rings coming out of his nostrils and lip. This look works for a lot of people, but Uncle Steve looks like a mad bull. Please make it stop, Santa.
Love,
Nathan

Ice Sledding!

On Christmas Day we put Nate on a saucer sled in my parent's yard and sent him sliding down a hill of ice that went directly into a ice-frozen pond.

As you can tell, the word scared isn't in Nate's vocabulary.




Of course his uncle and mom were at the bottom to save the day!

Some Stellar Christmas Presents

We all received so many wonderful gifts this Christmas.
Here are a few that stood out...

Steve's Santa slippers made of maxi-pads!

Now these are works of art.

Whose bedroom do you think this has been in since 1980?

Steve will be making a special guest appearance on "Miami Ink" next month.

Dad's Pocahontas Nutcracker. That girl is everywhere...

Nate's eggs. Actually, when asked what he wanted for Christmas, Nate replied, "Eggs!" everytime. Well he got his wish.

Teamwork!

Nate and Uncle Steve also found time to build a tower/fort type thing with the 100+ presents. As you can tell, this is Steve's idea of a good time.



Amazingly only a few presents were partically torn/unwrapped during this process.


"Where's Uncle Steve?"


"Surprise!"

Between the Fondues.

Between our two Christmas Eve fondues Nate and Steve kept us entertained playing Christmas caroles on the antique ukulele.

Steve has apparently passed along his love of The Dixie Chicks and all country music (ha!) to his son.

Fondue with the Books.

Every Christmas Eve we fondue before we open presents. This year was hard core as we fondued for both lunch and dinner.

Fonduing is ideal for 2-year old children that like raw meat and boiling oil.




Fonduing is also ideal for 33-year old men that like to double fist beer and wine around raw meat and boiling oil.


As you can see, there was no shortage of side dishes.

A Part of our Tour De Iowa.

On Sunday we drove from Storm Lake to Algona and back to visit Steve's grandpa. There are a number of picture-worthy sights in this 1-1/2 hour jaunt from north west to north central Iowa.

Pocahontas is beautifully displayed in front of some morton buildings in Pocahontas, Iowa.
While "The Princess City" is how many know Pocahontas, it is known differently in our family. It is known for the "Poci Dances" that both my husband and sister-in-law, Ann, attended in high school. We're pretty sure they danced at least once together to Bel Biv Devoe.


The Grotto of Redemption is in West Bend, Iowa. The Grotto really is amazing.






And then there's the Mallard duck at sunset. I mean how many places can you quack to someone and get a response? I believe only in Mallard, Iowa.

Christmas Seiler Style

After enjoying a peaceful five plus hour low-visibility fog-filled trip, we arrived in Storm Lake Friday night for three nights of Christmas with the Seilers!

As you can see the Seilers are very high-fashion and appreciate good shoulder pads (if it was 1987).


Andy, more than any Seiler, enjoys fine wine and 85% LL Bean wool sweaters from his grandpa. He also enjoys knitting as shown by the gray scarf next to him in the chair.


Luke and Ty amazingly had no interest in anything except opening their presents and anyone else's presents they could get their hands on! Smart boys.


Someday maybe Steve and I will have a family half as refined as Andy, Jamie, Luke, Ty and Baby S. Just look at them. They are the All-American family...


Julie's boyfriend, Josh, enjoying his favorite Christmas present. Mini-beers from Steve!

College Garb

This week I received a photo Christmas card via email from my college sorority. First of all, when I was the alumnae relations chair for my sorority, I think I did... absolutely nothing. So the fact that I received a card from my sorority a decade after graduating is noteworthy in itself.

But the thing I noticed was how formfitting their clothes were. Not in a sleazy way by any means, but also not in the XL Abercrombie flannel shirt, sorority sweatshirt and pull-over kind of way.

In college 95% of the photos of me portrayed me in the three clothing items mentioned above (plus my favorite accessory, the perm.)

The XL flannels didn't make my eight moves, but my XL sorority sweatshirts and pull-over have. In fact I wear the sweatshirts that go to my knees on a regular basis. And tonight my neighbor was wearing her Mizzou sorority pull-over (that also went to her knees) when she brought over Christmas cookies.

Granted our threads are becoming just that after a decade. And we may not have looked as cute out and about as the college girls of this decade, but boy were we comfortable!

AWAKE

If you or anyone you know is the tiniest bit squeamish when it comes to surgical procedures, FOR THE LOVE do not go to the movie "Awake".

The movie is about a patient who suffers "anesthetic awareness" and finds himself awake and aware, but paralyzed, during heart surgery.

I chose this movie only because it was starting 10-minutes from the time we were looking at the paper. I've learned going forward I should explain the premise of a movie before sitting down in the theater.

If our marriage wasn't strong, watching this movie together Sunday night may have very well put our relationship over the edge. And not in a good way.

Let's just say my husband was staring at me (glaring is actually a more appropriate term) during the majority of the movie before he made the decision to spend the rest of the movie in the hallway of the theater.

Last night when having dinner with our friends Mark and Barb, we did learn that Steve had a surgical procedure once and felt it. So in retrospect, had I known this important piece of information, I would have chosen the movie that started in 20-minutes.

Ugly Sweaters To The Max!

Our friend Alex invited us to an Ugly Christmas Sweater Pub Crawl on Friday night. While we took the lame route of wearing regular sweaters and fleece (that someday will no doubt be ugly), we joined them at the fine south Waldo establishment called Corner Cocktails.


AZ and Steve. Steve likes his friends with a little flair!

Angie and Joe joined us in regular sweaters.

Manny, Alex, Jennifer and Scott showcasing their stellar ugly garb!

After Corner Cocktails we walked through a scary alley to this place. The signs says it all!

DC Photos

Enjoy a few (small for some reason) photos from our DC excursion!


Can you see Laura waving at me?

Steve and his Star Wars buddies.

The Supreme Court and me.

The first of two photos taken from someone without the last name Seiler. We're here with the National Christmas Tree and the White House in the background.

The Capitol and us.

Grizzly vs. Steve

This part was Steve's favorite of all the Smithsonian Museums. I'm choosing not to share the bat eating the mouse picture. Like I said, it was Steve's fav...

The Washington Memorial coming out of Steve's head!

Obviously this is the Lincoln Memorial. After walking across the city and back five times, we felt every step up to the Memorial.

A quick pick from the Lincoln Memorial. This was one of two photos that another person without the last name Seiler took.