Christmas in Michigan!

Air travel has its ups and down, but when we flew to Michigan, it was definitely a down day. We got to sit in the Sioux Falls airport for 5+ hrs while they kept pushing our flight time back and back. In the end, we got to Chicago, but since we would have been on separate flights or very late into Grand Rapids, our champion, Jed, drove down to Chicago to pick us up. Andy and I were very grateful not to have to fly on another plane that day, and it was very depressing to realize that we could have driven faster to Holland than it took us to 'fly'.

Anyway, we did make it, and we got to spend a lot of time with our Huisman family. I feel blessed that we got to have almost a full week of everyone being home. One of my favorite things is trying to get photo opps with all the grandchildren. There's just something fun about 6 squirming children in 1 photo...

Look, they are all reading a story with Grandpa and Grandma!

Christmas jammies photo :)

Carsten had a lot of fun with his cousins, and I think he especially enjoyed playing with Linnea and Eliana, who as the oder cousins, did a lot of interesting things. Linnea got to decorate a cardboard house, and Carsten absolutely loved going in and out of doors and windows :). Here's a few photos:

Coloring the house

Peekaboo!

Playing with Linnea.

We also got some snow in Holland, which was fun because we all got to bundle our children up and let them play in the snow. For Carsten, this was his first time really playing in the snow, and I think he probably would have enjoyed it more if he could have figured out how to walk around (between the deep snow and bulky winter clothing he mostly just sat in the snow). Carsten did enjoy being pulled around in the sled :).

W. Michigan snow!

Loves the sled :).

Jeff, the twins, and Eliana :).

 We went inside and Lisa did some music playzone with the kids. Carsten loved doing this so much we actually signed him up for a kindermusik class here. Thanks for introducing us to the concept Lisa!

Music playzone.

I think one of Carsten's highlights were the tubs on wheels at Jeff and Amanda's house. He LOVED being pushed in it. At one point, we had three children going at once in three different tubs. It was fun to watch :).

loving the tub with wheels :)

 We went to the Grandville mall and rode the carousel, which Carsten thought was pretty fun :).

Grandville carousel

Carsten helped us pack by filling one of the suitcases - with himself! He thought it was pretty fun to dismantle my carefully placed piles (note the items strewn about on the floor).

Carsten discovered the guitar right before we left and requested that Grandpa play him 'the cat came back' quite a few times. I think Grandpa is lucky he didn't discover the guitar earlier... :)

Grandpa playing for Carsten.

 Mom and Dad Huisman drove us down to O'Hare to catch our flight, and Carsten once again enjoyed the children's museum at O'Hare. I'd have to say that O'Hare is one of my favorite airports at the moment because of this amazing play area. It really lets the kids run around and explore, which is very necessary with air travel.

We had a fantastic Christmas visiting family and friends. We miss you all!