A Minnesota Christmas

How do you write a blog post about a Christmas vacation? It's too overwhelming for me, so here it is, mostly in pictures.

We spent the first day of our trip to Minnesota in Minneapolis at the Mall of America. I thought it was totally awesome and could have shopped there for days, literally. We were super tired after arriving that morning at 2 am, so we spent just a few hours and headed to Rochester for Christmas Eve dinner.

Ya, this is us at the aquarium, in the mall. See, it was awesome.

That night after a great dinner at Summer and Paul's the kids all opened one gift. Boston is still obsessed with this truck and wants to even sleep with it. Naomi liked the balls she got too, but neither of our kids were that into opening gifts.

Back to our hotel we went, and then we returned to Summer's in the morning, very early, and had Christmas. It was entertaining, all thanks to Noah and Alex. Ok, mostly Alex. She would say hilarious things like "I've never seen such a dolly as this!" It was great.

John broke our rule, like usual, and got me a gift I had no idea about. Which is funny considering he bought it the day before and had it in a Banana Republic bag hanging on our stroller and I never even considered that he bought something for me. He does this every year, for every occasion. Like the Christmas we had a $50 limit to fill each others stockings and then be put an iPod nano in mine. Or the Valentines right after we had Boston where we agreed no presents because I was in no shape to shop and he bought me a massage at the Grand America. Or last Christmas when we were saving for our adoption and agreed on no gifts and he bought me a nice robe. Sneaky little liar. I should know better by now...

But he did well, and bought me a gorgeous sweater and hat that I wore shamelessly for the next 2 days.

Babies first Christmas. Not you, Landon.

Naomi hung out on various laps all morning, just like this. Totally uninterested in Christmas festivities.

I had grand visions of getting some darling picture of the kids in their Christmas jammies in front of the tree or something, and this is all I got. But they looked cute.

This DVD player, something we bought last Christmas, was our lifesaver this year. Never travel without one. Honestly.

After opening gifts, a delicious scone breakfast, Boston went out sledding for his first time and he loved it. We were a little surprised actually. And yes, he is wearing pink gloves. Stop judging us.

Then Boston learned to do what we always called "the trick" growing up. We used to beg our dad to do this.

The rest of Christmas day involved way too much eating, kids playing with new toys, Naomi snuggling, and Boston getting lots of love and attention from Noah and Alex. It was so fun that they were old enough to play together now. Noah would take Boston (who they call Bosty) into his room and shut the door. Then we would peek in on them and see that Noah was teaching Boston crazy things, like how to jump off the bookshelf onto the lovsac. Awesome!

*** I failed to mention when I first published this post, that we got to talk to Tanner on Christmas day. It was awesome and I love that he doesn't believe us that he even has an accent. He gets home in 7 weeks and I'm counting down the minutes until I can hug my mexican brother.

Our hotel had a nice indoor pool and spa and the kids loved it.

We joked that the staff was probably thrilled to see us go. We had 2 of these portable cribs in our room, and all the linens off the extra bed in them. I think the housekeeping ladies probably hated us. And the room service people, because we would call and place orders at 9:50 when they close at 10. Merry Christmas from us!

This trip solidified Naomi's decision to boycott the bottle and demand real food. She is now a totally obsessed foodie and it's driving us crazy. She crawled faster than ever and climbed over all sorts of obstacles to get to Boston and steal this slice of pizza. That's my girl...

On Sunday we went to church and had some down time at home. I love this picture of Boston and my dad because it sums up perfectly how Boston feels about him. He was in heaven having bumpa at his beck and call 24 hours a day. We had adjoining rooms at the hotel and Boston probably wishes we had adjoining houses. He asked for him for days after we left, I think yesterday was the first day he didn't ask me a million times "Bumpa? Where go? All gone!"

On Monday we left. And it sucked. We got in the car to drive to the airport, and I told John "it's pretty much bull*&^% that I see my sisters this infrequently". I really meant it too, so it's ok that I said a bad word. I mean seriously, 3 times a year, in a GOOD year, is simply ridiculous. Time to do something about that...

This is the only picture we got of the group of us, and where is Noah?? And Summer, we should have let mom take that picture of us after all because I have none of you but this one!

So, this is probably the lamest most boring Christmas post you will read, but I feel a big weight lifted that I'm so close to pushing PUBLISH POST.

The moral of this story is, that we had a great Christmas, Minnesota is awesome and if it weren't so freakin cold and far away we would come more often, I miss my sisters, we have cute kids, I have awesome parents that bought our kids better gifts than we did, and we hope your Christmas was as great as ours.

Happy New Year.