Holidays with the Huebners

 

We just wrapped up “Christmas break” Wednesday, it was weird to go back after 12 or so days of doing random things.  We started off with a trek to Iowa.  And by trek I mean, are we ever going to be effing done with this drive trek.  We hadn’t gone to Fort Madison for probably 5 years, so this year because it worked out timingwise we decided to incorporate it into our travels, with the problem being that it adds about 5 hrs to our trek to Alden.  Oh and that’s with a car packed to the brim, because you know, we have to have an outfit for each child for any scenario that could come up as they don’t leave the house for 3 days.  We also were going a route that we hadn’t ever gone before, which inevitably makes it seem even longer.  Thankfully McDonalds sells apple slices, which is one of their greater contributions to mankind, so we stopped a couple of times and McD’s, listened to the same songs about 1 billion times and arrived for dinner.  By the time we arrived in Alden at 11:30 I think everybody was ready to be out of the car and be done with the voyage.

 

While there we spent most of the time inside as it was rather cold.  We also reconfirmed that for whatever reason to this point Emma doesn’t like sledding.  We didn’t have enough snow last year to ever try it but the winter before when we took Emma outside to sled she hated it.  we thought it might be because it was generally really cold, but Emma never seems to mind that.  She continues to be a wealth of weird nuances that make no sense.  Some call that womanhood. . . J  What Emma does love is all forms of crafts, she spends a couple hours a day when we are at Grandpa and Grandmas either frosting cookies, painting things or any number of activities that Grandma puts together.  Her and her cousins also love the basement.  It’s this place that is there’s where they can go to get away from all the trappings of the old people. . .and gives us a nice break from parenting.  Emma has been quite a handful the last couple months so while I was excited to see her experience Christmas, I was dreading what presents and sweets and all that was going to lead to.  Emma took it on like a champ though, she was a good listener, didn’t have any major meltdowns and was generally sweet. 

 

Kinsley did pretty well also, that’s a long time for someone who doesn’t even get to face front to be in a car.  She’s still in a bit of mommy mode so at times she gets to a bit clingy with Lela, then if Lela isn’t there she reverts to me, but she’s easing up a bit.  She still doesn’t believe in naps, so that can make afternoons touch and go but we are working on it.  She’s took her first steps 2 weeks before Christmas and now is stringing 10+ steps together and is pretty proud of herself for it. She’ll move to her new room in daycare, so that’ll be a nice change.  Mornings are pretty nuts in the Huebner house and packing up breast milk, fruit for breakfast and other items gets to be a bit painful, so her moving to the next room and not having to bring all those items every day will be a welcome change.

 

While we were on break we also worked on the various projects that had been getting put off.  Unfortunately now that we are doing that with 2 people who don’t like to nap at the same time (if at all) productivity was limited, but it was nice to have some time with the girls.  We did send them to daycare on new years eve in hopes of getting a fair amount done, which we did.  However, it was snowing a nice wet snow, so Emma and I went outside to build a snowman right away when she got home.  Unfortunately this coincided with the start of the Indiana/Iowa game, but I sucked it up to build a snowman which was a great experience to get to do with Emma.  I hadn’t really done a snowman since I was a kid, so our snowman was short, fell apart a few times and may have had a pickled jalapeno as a nose for a period of time, but he made it.  I am glad Emma isn’t yet of the age where she cares that the house down the street has a snowman with an actual carrot nose, is twice as tall, has a hat, and really is the Channing Tatum of the snowman world, whereas ours is Jonah Hill in such a scenario.  Then again in thie Glee driven world maybe our snowman is actually cooler because he cares about the environment and is funny.  That’s a blatant 21 jump street reference if you didn’t catch that. 

 

Anyway, here are some pics from our adventures.  I don't think I got all of our pics but i got tired of uploading!

 

 

lela went all out with the hungry caterpillar spread!