A Family Christmas

Everyone is either eating of looking at Grandpa

Christmas Dinner - Daughter-In-Law w/Grandaughter



Christmas Afternoon w/Daughter and her girls

Son #1, Daughter, Son #4, Son #3

After a perilous drive back from Chicago on Saturday which included Son #3 missing his original flight out of Raleigh (although that later became a mute point as that flight was cancelled), we were finally able to retrieve Son #3 from the complete chaos of O'Hare around noon. The drive out of Chicago and until Iowa City was just a great deal of rain. When I say that once we got to Iowa City that the weather went to the dogs that would truly be a gross understatement. It was about a 35 mph trip all the way from Iowa City to Des Moines. We saw lots of cars that had slid off into the ditch and the medium. However, the real tale of just how bad the weather was when about Grinnell there were two snow plows that had slid into the medium. We finally got back here to Des Moines about 8:30 p.m., so roughly an 8 1/2 hour trip.

The next couple of days were comprised of running around and finishing last minute shopping, a huge wrapping party, last minute grocery shopping (what an absolute zoo the Hy-Vee on Grand was on Christmas Eve).

All of it turned out to be worth it though, having four of the six kids here for Christmas with their families was wonderful even if it was a little hectic and noisy . . . .