A Green Christmas

It was a green Christmas, but I predict a long and snowy winter. I also predict that tomorrow will be the first day of 2020. Playing it safe.

Emily's 6th grade holiday choir recital was at the beginning of December and both sets of grandparents came to watch. If you look closely you can see that Emily even dressed up in her best UNI hoodie:

Rose goes to youth group where they do whatever is going on here:

We decorated for Christmas:

My paternal grandpa, Burdette Nodland, passed away on December 15th. He lived to be 96 years old and led a life full of good memories. It was great to see so many people at the visitation, some of them I hadn't seen in a long time. The funeral service was followed by a military honors ceremony at the graveside.

Here are a few of the photos from his life that I thought were interesting. In this first photo, my grandpa is on the right, standing next to his older brother Archie:

I'm not sure who the guy with the overcoat is (maybe Archie?), but my grandpa is the stylish guy on the right:

Below is a photo from when he served in the Navy aboard the USS Catron in WWII where he was a gunner and a baker. He's the guy standing on the right:

Archie on the left and my grandpa on the right:

This picture of my grandparents was taken in the late 50s. My dad is in the middle:

Rose took our picture after we came home from the funeral. Aren't we spiffy:

The Sunday before Christmas we were at the Conrad's with Sue and the Behans. Then for the Nodland Christmas this year my siblings and their families made the trek up to Iowa so that we could all be together for the first time in 4 years. It was a blast to see everyone and it was our first time meeting Ashlen. Willow and Ashlen are both super cute kids. Since the house where my parents are staying right now is so small, we spent most of our time at their church:

We celebrated Abby's and Willow's birthdays, too, since both birthdays are right after Christmas:

Finally, our own family Christmas at home:

Lily does not care about your merry Christmas.

Excited to see what 2020 holds for us!

We've Wandered Many a Weary Foot...

Aaaaand now January is almost over. That'll happen every now and again. December went by so fast that I never finished writing about it, but it was a busy month and we went lots of places and did lots of stuff. There, that should cover it.

A photographer took pictures at our Christmas Eve service, but never posted anything (so what was the point of that??), but someone did post an iPhone pic of us as we finished practice beforehand:

We spent some of our Saturday and Sunday afternoons sledding. There's one particular slope that works best and we can get some serious speed going down it. We've tried a few different types of sleds and we keep coming back to the classics: the solid molded plastic bright orange sleds that we bought in January 2002 when we were sledding at the Saylorville Dam. Nothing beats 'em. The crap sleds at Target are worthless (too flimsy and bendable and too sloooooow) and unfortunately they don't seem to carry the longer solid sleds at Wally World, either. Luckily, the two that we bought 13 years ago are still rockin' despite their mileage. Those things refuse to even crack.

Emily's eyes froze shut again.

Emily had to have a tooth pulled because it was crowding her other teeth. She did not dig the experience, although getting to stay home from school for a day seemed to make it sorta better.

Rose turned a decade old this month! Her birthday was 3 days long; a celebration on the 17th with her friends over to our house for cake and ice cream, then we all went to the theater and watched Big Hero 6 (good movie!) and then we all had pizza afterwards. On the 18th, the Conrads and Sue came over to help celebrate and we had yet another cake with ice cream and we grilled out in an unseasonably warm day for January: 44º! Then this coming weekend my folks will come over to celebrate Rose's birthday and we will have... yup, more ice cream and cake.

Buying stuff off of craigslist is always an interesting experience. A little over a year ago we set up a workout room in the basement complete with treadmill, weight bench/bar/plates, leg station, squats station, pull-up bar, exercise bike and a set of dumbbells. To give us some motivation to keep using it regularly, we decided to set up a TV and DVD player down there, so I found a decent TV on craigslist. I went to pick it up and wow... not sure if all those people actually live in one house or if it was just an ICP party, but man, that was crazy. Not sure why people dig ICP so much, but whatever makes your world go round. Got a good TV outta the deal!