the weseloh weekly: christmas vacation part 1

To summarize our Christmas vacation: the stomach flu, lots of driving, stomach flu, great time with the fam, some more stomach flu, and lots of driving. To get the full story, read on.

I woke up the day we were supposed to leave for Minnesota with a stomach bug, and we soon discovered Ethan had woken up with the same bug. So had my sister over at Team Schmaltz headquarters. After waiting a few hours to see how bad this bug was we took off on our 10 hour drive to Minneapolis, heading through post-blizzard roads in Iowa that had seen a blizzard the day before. We probably saw over 70 cars and 5 semis in the ditch on our way north. So, going slow and steady, and thankfully without any more stomach episodes, we made it up north.

We woke up Saturday feeling much better and so decided to still go to our family Christmas gathering on my mom's side. Per usual, we had a great time and had a blast getting to see everyone.

Isn't she totally glam in her coat?

For most of the day these were the three amigos - Alyssa and Grace hanging out with Ethan. He was running them all over the house and had such a blast with his older cousins.

This year our family decided to have an adult gift card exchange and to make it fun we had a gift card envelope decorating contest. Here are the distinguished judges before their secret judging - Jack, Josh, Alyssa and Grace. And yes, they are holding one of the envelope submissions. :)

If Ethan looks loopy here it's because he seriously was. He had gone to bed at 10pm the night before, woke up at 6am and absolutely refused to nap. By the time we got around to opening presents he had been up for like 14 hours or something.

Lainie holding sweet Eloise.

And Eloise got to help open some of her presents too.

Finally time to unveil the judges' results. One of our envelopes that Ethan helped to create - "Slides" (an ethan weseloh original) won.... Most Humorous. Hip hip... Hooray?

All in all a great night!

The next morning we got back in the car and drove 3 hours north to my dad's house. Just in time for Pete to come down with the stomach bug (count is up to 4 people sick now). Down for the count for a day or so, he was back on his feet and ready for Christmas.

Getting ready to head out to the Christmas Eve service at church.