More Christmas memories....

I have been wanting to blog more about our Christmas trip but we have been recovering from our trip home!  We certainly had an horrible interesting ride home.  We planned on leaving on December 31, however Hunter got sick with a stomach bug on the 30th.  Snow came in that night as well...so we decided we would delay a day and give the roads a chance to be cleared and for Hunter to recover.  Fast forward to the morning we are set to leave...before we even got out of bed Nicholas came in and told us he had just gotten sick.  GREAT!  Roads are clear but now Nicholas is sick.  We decided to push on and hit the road..had to get back for school and work.  Thankfully, Nicholas was able to sleep in the car and only got "sick" once.  Four hours into our 12 hour drive, Gary told me his stomach was hurting and he had the chills.  Oh boy!  Still have a long way to go and now I am the driver!  Fast forward again (oh how I wish I could have really hit fast forward on that day and just got home), we are now about 1 hour from home and Brianna starts getting "sick".  We stopped to take care of her and she told me she hadn't been feeling good but she was just trying to make it home.  I already had a feeling that she didn't feel good after she slept for hours and didn't want to eat but I was in denial.  I just knew we would make it home without any more victims.  Um...well we just got back on the road and someone yells from the back "Claire is getting sick".  I could not believe my ears.  This was not happening..but alas it was.  We did finally make it home but every time Caleb made a sound we were asking him if he was okay.  I guess by this point I was pretty paranoid about who was going to be next!  January 1, 2011 is a day we all want to forget at our house.  Everyone has recovered now and guess what?  Caleb never got it!  However, my parents and my sister and her husband weren't so lucky.

OK, I did not intend for this post to be about our trip home.  Sorry about that :)  I wanted to share some more about our Christmas fun in Nebraska.  Here's the rest of the story...

Every Christmas my mom comes up with some crazy idea for the grand kids to do for their presents.  One year, she and my dad spent days carefully opening walnuts and taking out the nuts.  They then folded money and placed it in the nuts and glued them back shut.  What a fun surprise that was for the kids!  Well, this year did not disappoint either.  My mom came up with games from the new show Minute to Win it for the kids to play.  The kids had a blast and so did everyone watching!  By the way, they only had 1 minute to complete each game!

The first game they played was cookie face. They had to get the cookie from their forehead to their mouth without using any hands.

Claire and Stacey

 Zach, Hunter and Nicholas

 Erikka, Mia, and Stacey

 Maggie and Nicholas go head to head

 Nicholas won the round!

 Maggie is close

The next game was separation anxiety.  They had to separate 50 m&ms into 5 cups by color picking them up 1 at a time and using only 1 hand.  

The littlest players got some help

Katrina, Sierra and Maggie

The next game was egg roll.  They had to make an egg roll into the square using only a pizza box.  Amazingly, only 1 egg broke during this game!

The next game was stack attack.  They had to stack 36 cups in 1 minute.  The smaller kids just did 15 cups!

The next game was junk in the trunk.  They had to get all of the ping pong balls out of the tissue box that was strapped to their back.  This game brought the most laughter!

The last game was elephant march.  They had to knock over 2 liter bottles with the baseball that is in nylons attached to their head.  This game was hard!

Well, thanks for sticking it out with my long post!  I wanted to blog these memories while they are still fresh. Hope you enjoyed a look into our Christmas!