Christmas and New Years!

Andy, Carsten, and I have had a whirlwind Christmas/New Years vacation which is still on going. We got to spend a week and a half in Michigan, which was filled with seeing family and friends. The Huisman family household has changed dramatically with the sudden influx of grandchildren; having 2 5 months olds and 1 3 month old makes things a bit crazy! We are wondering what next Christmas will be like when these three are all mobile! Our whole family made it to Frederik Meijer Gardens, where we got to see many Christmas trees. They had a Switzerland tree, so we got our picture taken by it :). I've posted a picture of the Huisman grandchildren: Linnea, Eliana, Zachary, Vivienne, and Carsten.

We left Michigan on Thursday and had a great drive through Chicago. I can't tell you how excited we are not to be driving through Chicago on a regular basis on anymore :). We stopped very briefly in Madison so Carsten could get his 4 month vaccinations, and then we continued on to Iowa in order to beat the weather that was rolling in on Friday morning. I will have to say that we do not enjoy our long drives over the holidays, which is mostly due to weather. We seem to have horrible weather somewhere along the way. This time we had 'blizzard fog' in Minnesota and watched the temperature drop 20+ degrees over a couple of hours, which always makes for an interesting drive. The one fortunate thing is that Carsten is a relatively good traveler and he typically does an excellent job of sleeping during the trip. We're feeling a little bad for him the last two days because he caught a cold on Wednesday, got shots on Thursday, and I think he's starting to get a top tooth coming in. The poor guy was very cranky today, which is unusual and it makes us thankful that he's pretty happy most of the time. Needless to say, I'm glad that I managed to keep a couple of teethers and the baby tylenol out of our Switzerland boxes.

It's been a busy year, with both of us getting our doctorates, Carsten arriving, and preparing for Switzerland. We've loved 2010, and are looking forward to 2011 when we do things like: move to Switzerland, travel Europe, feed Carsten his first solid food, and seeing Carsten walk!

Happy New Year everyone!