WI Xmas: Part II

 Part two of our trip took us to Grandma L's house on the west side. We got there late, but Max couldn't go to bed until he got to see Uncle Ryan and Aunt Emily's new puppy and of course Barb. Unfortunately, I didn't take photos of the meeting because I too was very excited to see the new puppy. She was so cute and full of a lot of hair. Barb, of course, was crazy like she always is. It kind of reminded me of our dogs.  Here is a picture of Max and all of them on New Year's Eve.

In the morning we opened presents.

Grandma L got Max a chef's coat with his name on it. It's pretty neat and I am sure he will get plenty of use out of it. 

That night we went to the Badger basketball game. This would be Max's second basketball game but the first one that he really remembers. He got snacks and he was a happy boy watching the game. 

In keeping with traditions, the next day Grandma L took Max to Dave & Buster's for some video game playing while Andy and I went to lunch and the post office to ship back three boxes of gifts. The next morning we moved on to Wisconsin Christmas Part III.

WI Xmas: Part I

 In keeping with traditions, we spent the first part of our Wisconsin Christmas in Sun Prairie at my parents house. We opened presents in the morning followed by a Christmas breakfast. Grandma Marge came over and we hung out all day chatting.

Notice Max is almost as tall as Grandma Marge!

It snowed that night and Max was excited to watch out the window, but only for a bit because it was pretty late. The next day it was exciting for him to get out in the snow.

We kept with traditions and headed to Cascade to go tubing. Due to COVID they required us to schedule a two-hour time slot and they only allowed a certain number of people to purchase tickets in each time slot. This kept the attendance down and we never had a line. This allowed us to go down the hill many times in that two hours. So many times that I was ready to leave after 1.5 hours and Max was pretty exhausted too. I guess that's one good thing with COVID, it keeps people away and reduces crowds. 

We got to see Tayler, or Tee-tee as Max would call her. 

Max took his grandparents to see Spiderman at the movie theater while Andy and I spent some time playing pull-tabs at the local bar. This is another annual tradition for us to do while we are in town. Another tradition brought us to the local bowling alley for some fun and cheese curds. I will have to say that I did bowl a turkey and that was pretty exciting and allowed me to beat Andy in the first game. 

It started snowing pretty hard while we were bowling so once we got home Max was pretty excited to get outside and play in it. As many know, I am not a fan of the snow or cold but I got outside and had a snowball fight all for Max. 

We played a hand of Uno because this is what we normally do when we get together. Grandpa J won Uno for the night, which never happens. 

We took our family photos in front of the fireplace before we packed up and headed to the westside of Madison for more family fun time. 

Merry Christmas

 Max has been learning about traditions at school so he definitely wanted to make sure we keep with the family Christmas traditions this year. We just kept hearing about our traditions this holiday season. We started our Christmas Eve with a movie tradition by seeing Sing 2 at the theater. 

We continued the tradition by popping a bottle of champagne and having king crab legs and steak for dinner.

Following dinner, our tradition leads us to watch a Christmas movie and track Santa on the radar. We talked about what country he was in and where he was headed next. 

Christmas morning was a lot of fun and filled with excitement as Max woke to find that he got what he asked for from Santa: a Playstation 5 and virtual reality headset. Now, these are very hard to get and I believe Santa had to work very hard to get one. I guess Max was a very good boy this year. 

We had our Christmas breakfast and then Max busted into his PS5 virtual reality. He was so excited to play and it was fun to watch. I have definitely put a time limit on him playing virtual reality otherwise he would play it all day long.

That night we headed to the airport for a late flight into Madison to see family and friends for Christmas. 

Cookie our Elf

 Our Elf, Cookie, came and made his appearance in a new spot every morning. He was here to watch over Max and make sure he behaves himself. While he was here, Max found him in interesting spots every morning. It was fun and Max had a lot of giggles. Here are some of Cookie's shenanigans this year.

Cookie will be heading back to the North Pole with Santa on Christmas morning. Until next year Cookie!

Weekend Update

 Last Thursday Max officially started his winter break. His class did all kinds of fun holiday things last week to celebrate the upcoming holidays.  

Max was in dire need of a haircut and he decided he wants his hair to look like Troy Bolton in High School Musical. So, he is currently working on growing out his hair to achieve that look.

Max started flag football practice because it officially starts at the beginning of the new year. It was fun to watch him play sports again. He did a really good job and gave it his all.

We baked and decorated sugar cookies. Max put a pound of frosting on most of the cookies, but we had fun decorating. Max doesn't even like frosting so I am guessing most of these cookies won't get eaten unless Andy decides to plow through them. 

On Sunday night we went on a bike ride through the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights and to potentially get ideas for next year.

It was a low-key relaxing weekend and that's just what we needed right before the crazy busy holiday!