Home Again

We had a great visit with family over Thanksgiving. We hadn't been home to hubby's parents since Easter, so the girls were more than excited to go. Hubby's older brother and his wife also flew in for Thanksgiving, and his sister and her family live in town. All that was missing was hubby's younger brother and wife who are in California right now.

First off, let me say I ate way. too. much. Good food will do that to you--I bet I gained about 5 lbs in the last 4 days. But I will say I went the whole long weekend without a trip to Starbucks/Caribou Coffee/other coffee place! Like hubby said, I didn't need any extra calories.

Hubby's sister has two kids, so the girls get to see their cousins when they are at Grandma's house. Cousin #1 is only 2 months older than Leah, so they were best buddies all weekend. Cousin #2 is just over a year, and the girls had fun making her smile and watching her eat and she loved watching all the big kids play. Emma was the ring leader of it all.

The adults had some fun, too. Hubby and I won the inagural playing of "Seinfeld Scene It!" For all you Seinfeld fans out there it is pretty fun, but some of the clips/questions were lame. They would show a 2-3 minute clip and then ask a very obvious question. The questions where you had to fill in the blank or come up with a qoute were a little more challenging. We also played "Battle of the Sexes" and I can't remember who won. ;)

During our trip Emma's two bottom teeth became very loose. They had been lose for awhile, but she never wanted to pull on them or try to get them out. One night before bed one of them was hanging on by a thread--she could lay that tooth out flat with her tongue. I told her she might lose it during the night, and sure enough she said when she woke up it was under her pillow. A few hours later she pulled the second bottom tooth out. She decided she didn't want to keep her teeth for show-and-tell, so she put them under her pillow for the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy somehow found her at Grandma & Grandpa's house, so Emma is now $2 richer. Its about time she lost those teeth, they came in when she was 4 months old!

All the weather reports last week said that the weather would hold for traveling on both Wendesday/Thursday and Sunday to get back. They claimed it was a 30% chance of snow. Wrong again. The drive wasn't bad for the first two hours, but by the time we were headed south on I-35 through southern MN/northern IA, the interstate was pure ice. There was no traction and you could just feel the vehicle being pulled and sliding all over. Hubby said, "You need to watch out for people coming through the median" and pretty much 5 minutes after he said that, there was a car headed straight for our lanes. Thanks to hubby's stellar driving skills (both his assessment and mine) we were able to get out of harm's way, but the car in front of us wasn't so lucky. We actually pulled off the interstate about 40 miles down the road from there to weigh our options. By that time travel was not recommended anywhere--you think? And we did not see a single sanding truck in our lane the entire trip. We thought about getting off the interstate at my parents house and spending the night there, but we kept going. Thankfully we did run out of the icy stuff, but the roads were still bad. Then we got hung up for 20 min while they were clearing an accident. We finally made it home after being in the van for 6 hours. Not a fun trip!! Thankfully Grandma had given us our Christmas present early--a dual DVD player for the van. Each girl was set up with their own screen, movie and headphones. Certainly helped them pass the time.

As for the puking, that thankfully happened after we got home. I think Emma was just having some indigestion/tummy issues and once she got things out she felt much better. We did come away from the trip with a nice cold, so that is a bonus. ;)