We arrived Thursday evening and enjoyed a birthday dinner with Matt and Anna Zokoe (Anna and I share a birthday) before they took off for Florida. Friday was my actual birthday and we spent the day finishing our Christmas shopping, seeing the new Sherlock Holmes movie, eating a family dinner made by my mom, and catching up with friends over drinks. Everyone wanted to feel Squirt's kicks so there was lots of what looked like CPR going on around the house.
Saturday was one of my favorites! We got up early and headed out to the Great Lakes Crossings outlet mall in Auburn Hills and then to Detroit to watch the Detroit Red Wings play the LA Kings. The Wings dominated the Kings right from the start scoring a goal ~90 seconds into the game and then again 15 seconds later. LA had to pull their goalie (named Jonathan Quick) not even 10 minutes into game, which prompted Amber to say, "Boy, that was Quick" (pun fully intended).
We got back to Grand Rapids late Saturday night and were up early again on Sunday to run a 5K with my family. Everyone participated in the event (except Mel) and had a great time! Sunday evening/night was spent with Mel's mom's side. We had pizza, a visit from Santa, went on a hay ride to see Christmas lights and sang Happy Birthday to baby Jesus, before doing the gift exchange at Aunt Linda's house. It was really nice seeing the cousins and Aunts and Uncles with their growing families, Mel and I each got to hold the newest addition, Mia Koenes (only 3 weeks old).
We crashed at the Arver (Mel's Mom and Steve's) house and on Monday morning we had a big breakfast and exchanged gifts with Kim and Steve before the ladies went off to do some shopping. Squirt even got some nice gifts from Grandma and Grandpa A. I went with my sister to our grandma's house where we helped her setup for the Christmas party that night. We had some great food and played some pretty fun Bingo (I won $5!) and did a consumable/food gift exchange. Grandma was really happy with her new sunglasses and the load of kielbasa she got.
Tuesday we slept in and then headed out to the Hendriksen (Mel's Dad and Marybeth's) house. Jamie and her two daughters met us out there also and we all hung out for the day. Sadly, the lake they live on hasn't frozen over yet so there was no playing on the ice. We received some more gifts for little Squirt, one gift was a book called Good Night iPad, it's like the book, Good Night Moon but much more high-tech. The girls and Melissa made "cookies" with play dough and later that night we played some cards and shared great conversation.
Wednesday started with Monkey bread courtesy of MB. After breakfast we spent the rest of the morning packing and then met all the parents at Red Robin for lunch just before our flight. With as much as I ate, I'm surprised the scanner guy at the airport couldn't see my food! Despite our best efforts our suitcase was 2 lbs. over the 50 lb. limit, but the airline lady "let it slide" and didn't charge us. Our connecting flight out of Minneapolis was delayed a bit due to weather, but we still got out.
We were pretty surprised when we landed in Denver in the middle of a blizzard! Looking back, I'm surprised that the flight even left Minneapolis. Denver got about 14 inches over night, so we'll be celebrating a white Christmas here!
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Nice summery post hun. I like the added slide show since we had a lot of pictures for one post.
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