First of all my apologies on not writing in so long. 2009 got a bit out of hand at the end and we seemed to lose track of time. Every year I say to myself let’s get everything taken care of way before the last week before Christmas and every year both work and the stuff we have to get done before we leave is crazy in the last week. To make matters worse this year there was the worst blizzard ever predictions the days leading up to our departure. We got extremely lucky as we left on Christmas Eve morning and saw nothing but rain all the way to Alden, so it made for smooth sailing the way home. To backtrack slightly, getting out of the house with a baby and dog seems to increase in difficulty each time, but the trips are definitely more um entertaining. Cooper seems to get the hang of it by the end and the trip back generally works out well as Emma has 3 hrs to snooze before we hit Pancheros in Des Moines where she too gets a meal, with only an hour or so left in the car. Anyway, the trip back went well, I am rambling.
Once we arrived in Alden, everything was cancelled due to the worst blizzard ever predictions. Of course because everything was cancelled the weather seemed to be okay, but we were content to grab pizza and just chill and my parents house on Christmas eve. It wasn’t quite the same without the usual theatrics that seem to occur at our church’s Christmas eve service (something that we and only we find humorous always seems to occur) but we made due and had a great time. Emma clearly didn’t get the fact that she got a bazillion new toys, but she did enjoy trying to eat some of the paper and also watching her cousins, Julia and Jacoby run around. Magically all the women of the family and the kids got new pj’s to open presents in, but the men apparently aren’t important enough to get new PJ’s so we didn’t look so fashionable. This is how things work in the Huebner family, with the one for me one for you attitude taken by the females with sometimes the one for you aspect being taken out. It clearly is extremely hard to be a man in our family but we manage (sniff, sniff). And I would never go by the one for me one for you mantra, I would never get Joe something for Christmas and then get myself one because I was so proud of it and wanted one too. . . Anyway, I digress, Christmas eve was a good time. We also discovered that Jacoby really, really likes Emma as shown by the many hugs and calls her Mema. I think it’s the first female he has met in our family (his sister included) who doesn’t tell him what to do and make him take endless pictures. Little does he know that that will likely change in the next year or so . . well not the endless pictures, we all have to endure the endless “we will take this new random pose even though we have already taken 500 pictures today and they all look the same” picture sessions, its what Huebner/Johnson men are forced to do. Moral of this long paragraph – its really rough being a man in my fam, we should get an award or a chocolate or something.
Christmas day led to a few more presents but mostly a day of just lounging around for us. Lela woke up barely able to talk, which if you know Lela, was very alarming to her, as Emma had passed on her cold that never goes away. By the time Mom’s side of the fam came over that night she could mostly talk, which is very important, as let’s just say that side of the family is not known as a bunch of silent Germans. In order to recover the next day, I logically found my high school baseball jersey and took a nap in that. Sleeping just seems to work better when you are garbed in high school attire, try it sometime, seriously. Anyway, we just had some QT with the fam, watched The Hangover (very enjoyable in a we won’t be able to watch this kind of stuff until Emma goes to bed someday sort of way) and came back to KC. Oh and on a Cooper related note, he enjoyed running endlessly on the farm through snow and ice. He often jumped like a kangaroo through the crunchy snow which never stopped being funny and also got to play with his cousin Pepper – by play with I mean chase Pepper around while Pepper was annoyed with him.
When we finally arrived back in KC we figured out why it was supposed to be the worst snow storm ever. . . it dropped all the snow in KC! I had to get out of the car, run Cooper into the back yard so he could romp endlessly and then shovel a path so Lela and Emma could get in. I then spent what seemed like forever shoveling the driveway so I could even drive the car in. What a welcome back! I wondered if we had accidentally headed north on I 35 and I hadn’t noticed or something. We didn’t do a lot heading into New Years, which was nice. Emma is still battling this cold so we are trying to get her and us sleep. We didn’t do much on New Years as it was so cold and everyone was under the weather (no pun intended) but we did talk a lot about how blessed we were in ’09. Emma has brought so much fun to our lives, and even though she can be a lot of new work, that work never seems to matter, its more fun. I know its cliche’ but I don’t think we mind the extra things we now have to do because they are so outweighed by every gummy smile, every time she does something new and every morning when one of us goes in to wake her up. Remind me of that next time I am changing and spraying and washing her clothes for the 2nd time every day. . . 2009 also brought us a lot of other fun memories with friends and family, it brought me a new job and it brought Lela getting promoted. Hopefully 2010 is even better yet! Greedy I am.
Yes its cold, but the extra set of ears help!
I still love this pic and the stereotype it supports!
What up G funk!
Enma is getting very close to standing on her own, she can support herself but is a bit wobbly.
Sporting the AHS stretched out neck baseball jersey, don't worry about it.
In the aforementioned pj's
Good times, happy new year
Here are a few of the pics we currently have. There are some others that were taken by the other cameras that might be better quality, but I figured I would post these for now.
