Mini Vacation

We had a four day mini vacation.  We met Jonathan and Becky in Waterloo at Grandpa and Grandma's

house.  There the boys(all of them) opened up more Christmas presents, ran circles through the house.  They played follow the leader, hide-n-seek, cars and the piano.  It was loud, crazy and fun.

  Opening up some gifts.

 Michael loved playing in the wrapping paper shreds.

 Playing with some new gifts.  James and Michael are playing with a cutting set where you pretend to cut up food, and Benjamin is coloring with is new art set.

 Grandma told us about how the serpent tricked Eve into eating the fruit and how that was the first sin. She then talked about how our sins just pile up and weave together kind of like the serpent. She then explained that Jesus would crush the head of the serpent and destroy all of our sins along with it, then she destroyed the serpent she had made out of our sins(Popsicle sticks).  It was a pretty neat object lesson.

We had an enjoyable visit.  We went to Chuck-e-Cheese and Barb won 125 tickets from spinning a wheel.  Becky also showed us her brute strength by shattering a glass in her hand.  Other than Mel getting sick, everyone seemed to have a good time.  James was very upset that he could not go to Michigan with his cousins or that the cousins could not stay in Iowa together.  I don't blame him for not wanting to come back to North Dakota, when we left Iowa in the morning it was around 30' and we came home to a -31' windchill.  

Above, James is firing his missile at some lego people and below, Michael was our little drummer boy.