Christmas Sioux City Style

We spent Christmas Eve in Des Moines and ended up driving late that night to Sioux City for Christmas Day. We arrived at my parents house at about 3 am Xmas morning. It was a better choice to drive at night than in the AM because Gwen slept straight through it. If it would have been in the morning, I think it would have been a lot harder to get going for all of us.



Santa found Gwen in Iowa! We were wondering how he would know where to put her gifts, but he knew...he knows everything about little boys and girls! That morning we opened Santa's gifts for Gwen.



Grandpa, look at this toy...it pops up when you push the buttons!




Grandma I love how this Polar Bear rocks back and forth, it's what I do!



The rest of the day was filled with laughs, hugs, good food, tearing presents open and something that no one really knew about Gwen...crying! Yes, she was having a bit of Mommy separation anxiety the whole time we were back in Iowa. We think it was because I had stopped breast feeding and she was not getting her mommy one on one time every day in the same way as before. She is much better now, but during Christmas, I don't think everyone was ready for it! They kept saying, "we don't see this on your blog!" HA! Really though, she is not a baby who cries much! Anyways, she was fine if you were. The people who picked her up and let her cry it out for a bit were the ones she seemed to be OK with after a bit. Towards the end of the 4 days in Sioux City she was really good with my parents which was a nice break for us! Jason and I even got to go on a date! We went to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Very good movie, long, but good.

There were 101 pics from the 4 days in SC. I put them all in this slideshow.



Here are a few of my favorites if you don't have time for the slide show!






Uncle Tom and my cousin Riley taught me how to make the "Indian chant" noise with my mouth. They would do it and then I would make noise and either my mom or one of them would use their hand or finger to make my noises sound like the Indian Chant. I LOVED IT!




Gwen's Xmas shirt said, "Who needs Santa when I have Grandma" SO TRUE about BOTH grandmas!








We ended up having to ship 2 big boxes back full of toys, clothes and fun gifts Gwen got which Aunt JJ helped ship back to us with some free shipping, hooray!

Also, my mom got us some "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments for our tree. They were from the Snowbabies Collection. These are something I collect. (google snowbabies if you don't know what they are) Actually, I really only "collect" cameras, clocks, wire art and snowbabies. I am pretty easy going when it comes to any of those items. Any other type of "collections" are not really for me. Anyways, my mom always buys me a Snowbabie for big occasions. Graduation, grad school, birth of Gwen, etc. Each one usually means something pretty significant and now we have some for Gwen! YAY!