Celebrating their belated birthdays in Des Moines

The day after Christmas we packed up the car and headed to Des Moines for our annual holiday trip with the Iowa family. As she does every year Baba baked birthday cakes for the kids shaped into their age: 8 for Anna, 10 for Jude. Although with Jude there was a little hiccup where Baba baked an 11 – it was easily fixed into an “X” the Roman numeral for 10. Jude didn’t mind, he still got to celebrate his birthday one more time.

All the cousins go bowling

As always there was a lot of fun activities planned for the kids during our stay. They played some card games, went to a museum to do butter sculptures, Jude played Glow Golf on an all boys night (with me, Nathan and Grandpa) and of course we watched some football. It was a bit too cold to play outside much but Jude and I get did a few minutes outside throwing the football most days. We had a big cousins outing to the local bowling alley. This was the parents treat for the kids instead of getting gifts this year – everyone seemed to have a good time.

Grandpa and Jude watching some football on New Year’s Eve

All the kids were excited for New Year’s Eve. We had some kiddie champagne, a countdown, party hats and even a small balloon drop. We did all this around 7:45pm so everyone could get to bed.

Lily and Anna enjoying some kids champagne on New Year’s Eve

Our week was over all too soon. This morning we said our goodbyes and we drove back to Denver. I am heading to China on Tuesday and the kids have another few days off school.

On New Year’s morning celebrating once again