A White Christmas....

We celebrated Noah's first Christmas with our extended family in Iowa. We've spent a lot of holidays in Iowa but haven't seen snow like this in quite a while. Josh took these pictures from the kitchen windows at my aunt's house. The temperature on Christmas Eve when we went to church was 5 degrees. Just 5. It was unbelievably cold.

Luckily, Noah had a cute fuzzy bear suit to wear as we braved the cold to worship with the rest of our family.

After church we had some quick photo ops by the tree with Nanny and Poppy.

Then Noah did a quick change into his Christmas pjs and the cuddled with one of his favorite cousins, Ben. Ben is currently searching for a job and we're keeping our fingers crossed that he'll get one near us. Of course if he gets one in a cool city that we need to visit that would be cool too.

Then the taste testing began. My uncle had purchased several different types of beer and we spent a great deal of time tasting them and voting on which one was the best. I'm not a huge beer drinker so I couldn't hang quite as long as some of the other members of my family.

Christmas morning is a totally separate post, but the rest of Noah's time in Iowa involved fun activities like.....

...taking a bath in Aunt Peg's sink while the entire family watched.

....playing with Great Grandpa Lester.

.....hanging out with Uncle Tim, also known as the Baby Whisperer.

....and saying good-bye to mom and dad before we went sledding.

Josh had never been sledding before and our trip did not disappoint. My cousin Abby took us sledding on a great hill in Gateway Park near Iowa State. We quickly realized how out of shape we were as we huffed and puffed our way back up the hill after our first trip down. We both had some good wipe outs but no serious injuries occurred.