Merry Christmas

We spent a large portion of Christmas Day driving to Iowa. The roads were bad! But it was worth the trip to spend a few days with family.

Anders was spoiled with a John Deere recliner,

basketball,

a combine and Hawkeyes jersey. What more could a boy want?

Throw in a hotel pool

and some doting older cousins and you have a perfect Christmas!

Anders is wearing Jeff's Harvard sweater from Aunt Jan.

2014!!

We rang in the New Year with the cousins eating fondue and playing games.

Anders partied a little to hard and woke up sick on New Years Day but the cousins were there to cheer him up!

This Girl

Makes us laugh!

Green Acres

We finally had a nice enough weekend to play outside so we took Anders tubing for the first time.

 

What Just Happened!?

Anders got a big boy bed for Christmas. While we were setting it up I said, "now that you have a big boy bed you don't need a nukie any more." He said, "okay." and never asked for it again. In the past two weeks we got rid of diapers, crib and nukie. What happened to my baby?

Potty Party

We celebrated potty training success with a potty party at Dave and Busters.

Potty Trained!

Last week it was so cold the governor cancelled school. Since we were stuck inside I decided it was the perfect week to potty train. I had taken everyone's advice and waited until he was ready. And then I waited until after the holidays. Finally I procrastinated long enough. I used the spend most of the day on the potty and give him lots to drink approach. We played games, watched shows and read books.

It went pretty well for the most part. One week in his only accident for me was the very first time he went. When he said "Mommy I'm spilling" as the pee was running out of his undies.

There were some tears.

We got a little slap happy.

We celebrated success with some prizes.

We may have even had a meal on the pot.

He did all his activities in his undies.

Still working on the details

By Wednesday we braved the real world in undies.  Good work Buddy!

First Movie

Anders went to his first movie, Frozen, while we were in Iowa for Christmas. He is no where near ready to sit through a movie but it was at a cheap theater so we gave it a try. He did really well although his favorite part of the movie is when the curtain opened :)

Home Alone

Hannah and Anders being silly.

Grandma Dorla made this ornament out of Anders hand print.

This year Grandma Angie moved to the nursing home. She wasn't doing well and we were all worried it would only get worse. We were wrong. She is doing soooo much better. Anders likes to visit and ask people "Did you get old" or "is your name Old Lady?"

Anders and I had to brave a trip to Mall of America a few days before Christmas. I was dreading it but we had tons of fun!

Elise's Birthday

Elise turned three in December too. She had an Ariel party. When I think back to three year old Elise I hope I remember her in princess dresses singing the Ariel song. It makes me smile.

Baby Reuben definitely doesn't make it into enough pictures! Apparently neither does Ken.

Everett's Birthday

Everett turned four in December. Since it was his golden birthday he had a big party. We started at Good Times Park and ended up at a water park hotel.

December

I was too busy enjoying all the fun that is December to blog. So January will be full of Christmas posts.

We went to see Santa. I think it is strange that Anders has never been scared of Santa. See 2012 and

2011.

Anders really got into Santa this year. He even got a message from Santa reminding him that he needed to listen to Mom and Dad in order to make it on the nice list. We got the message from Portable North Pole and he watched it almost every day. I will definitely do this again next year.

Showing Rudolph some love.