Winterfest Part 2!

Here are the pictures I promised were keepers...

The tubing crew!

Uncle Eric and Aunt Hannah with Ollie! We love this boy so much!!

Ollie shouted..."I like your beard mom!!!" It was hilarious!!

Ollie sunk into his tube but he loved every minute of it...and he looked so cute wearing Eric's goggles!

Mom and Heidi with "their beards".



Winterfest!!

So...when you're feeling like this and you have the winter blues...what do you do?! You have....Winterfest!!

For the last few years my family has wondered how the heck we were going to get through the dreadful Iowa winters. Last winter we decided we were going to have game night once a week...just one more thing to look forward to every week to help us get through. That's when we discovered the love for many of our games mentioned here. This year my sister wanted to do Winterfest (something she had conjured up to help get through the winter, and all of us were 100% in on the idea!) It included a whole weekend of sleepovers, tubing at Sleepy Hollow, snacks and endless amounts of good food, game playing, movie watching, nap taking, and most importantly...some much needed time with your loved ones to "escape" from the real snow-ridden world for a weekend. It was absolutely fabulous. We plan on making it a tradition!

Here are some pictures from our weekend of Winterfest this year:

Cute Sully boy!! He's doing such a good job learning to sit. Look at that drool!! :)

Sully is in love with all of Ollie's Toy Story toys. It's adorable.

Grandpa's famous breakfast!

The cook himself!!

Not sure what Ollie was doing, but you as you can see, PJs were the dress of choice for the weekend.

Big brother making Sully smile!!

We had an appetizer night where everyone made an appetizer in lieu of dinner. Here are some yummy ham, cream cheese, and pickle rolls!

These are from Costco and are awesome! They're called firecrackers or something like that....

A different version of the typical taco dip...Heidi made this and I fell in love with it! Yum!

Beer bread and dip...best.stuff.ever.

My mom's new buffalo chicken dip recipe she made...it was fabulous! I especially loved eating it with the celery option!

Collachies (I think that's how you spell it...) They are an awesome breakfast treat!

I will share all the recipes from this post on another date...be looking for it because this is good stuff folks!

We also had some fun pics from tubing but they are on my sister's camera...I will have to share them with you when I get them because they are definitely keepers!


A few things we didn't get to do this year that we thought would be fun next year would be to do some baking and some kind of craft. It will be fun to see how the tradition evolves over the years. Can anyone tell my family loves a good tradition?! :)

P.S. Any fun ideas you have that you think might be fun to add to our new tradition? Anyone do something similar?!

Stuffed.

Christmas has always been a magical time for our family...filled with lots of food, presents, celebrating, laughing, game playing, excitement, family and tradition. But what do you do when people grow up, move away, start their own families, and things start to change? You start new traditions of course!

You see...as we've all gotten older, my immediate family has recently started a newer tradition. Here's a preview:

You see....it starts to get expensive....really expensive actually when you try to buy for everyone in your family (anyone else share this problem?). Most of the time you get them something kind of crappy, because in order to stick to your budget and still get everyone a gift, they're unfortunately not gonna get much. Uh hem.....here's a candy bar, brother....Merry Christmas!

Sooo, we decided to each draw one name, stick to a budget we all agreed to, and stuff stockings! Literally stuff...take a peek at mine this year!

Brimming with goodies!!

All most of us got matching stockings from Pottery Barn. One of these is not like the others!

 Eric wanted to be different. :)

After a few years of experience, we all decided it was more fun for the girls to shop for the girls and guys to shop for the guys. We give each other ideas/lists, and sometimes people just even ask for money. But be careful if you choose this route...you might end up having to go on a scavenger hunt for your money or you may get it all in the form of quarters! (We have to make it interesting somehow!)

And usually we all get one or two things that don't fit in the stockings so we wrap the presents and stick a clever note in the stocking for the person to go and find their other gift(s). You can get really clever with this too...like make the person find their gift under their tree by measuring with the tape measure you just gave them in their stocking along with the note giving the measurements. Ummm, yes, this was the boys.

 We also take this evening to complete our tradition of sugar cookie making.....

lots....

and lots...

of sugar cookie making!!

We have to  make sure to have enough for all the different family celebrations we have! And trust me....we definitely have some cookie monsters.

Last but not least, we've decided it is so much easier to get Chinese takeout than to have to make dinner for the whole family (not to mention the messy cleanup afterward!) Sorry--no pictures of my beef lo mein, but it was scrumptious! Tsing Tsao is the only way to go.

(delicious. efficient. cheap). YES.

Oh yeah, it's probably wise not to leave the stocking you're working on stuffing in a little boy's room....otherwise you might come back to this....

Here's a closer look....

Oops! Guess Ollie realized these presents weren't for him...

Needless to say, the evening is always fun and stuffed full with cookies, stockings, food, and fun!

P.S. What traditions does your family have?!