Closing Up Our TIme In Missouri With Christmas At Grandma's

This was the "Christmas Room".  My grandma decorated the
walls with lights, set up the tree, and put all the presents
in here.

Christmas time! What are the first two colors that come to mind? Red and Green. What’s the first song that comes to mind? Twelve Days of Christmas. What’s the first food that comes to mind? Spritz cookies!


Yes, Christmas brings lots of unique joys that only come once a year. This Christmas has been unique for us in that it’s the first one spent with our family in Missouri in the last three years. My grandma, Juli, and grandpa, Tom, let us park our 42’ “house” in their driveway for the couple weeks we were there. It was definitely a fast-paced two weeks!



Here's Hanna and Adam playing a fierce game of tennis,
while Jackie and Cole watch from behind.

 Some friends of ours from Arkansas happened to be staying about 10 minutes from us at their uncle’s house for Christmas, so we were able to get together with them a couple times, which was great! We brought our cousin, Cole, to their house and had a huge Wii tennis tournament one afternoon; ending with my friend, Adam, beating us all relentlessly. He somehow was still able to win, even while his brother, Brian, was throwing stuff at him! Adam also shared some of his “delicious” authentic Mexican candy with us, which tasted like chili powder and had the consistency of half dried glue. Their sister, Jackie, decided to skip out on the Wii tournament, and instead sat watching from the back. So, I guess we’ll never know who the real champion is since not everyone competed! Sorry, Adam…



Here's Cole taking Naomi, Tytus, Ella, Josephine, and Gabriel
for a joy ride around the driveway.  With him behind the
wheel, it's not "EZ-GO" at all! 

 We had a blast at my grandma and grandpa’s visiting, sitting out by the bonfire, and doing Christmas activities. Oh, and driving the golf cart! This little golf cart has probably had 500 miles put on it by us and our cousins Cole and Ella. Cole and I have done some of the coolest stunts probably ever attempted on a golf cart! (ha ha) For some reason, though, I always end up as the driver while Cole does some crazy stunt; which, to tell ya the truth, is just fine with me!

On Christmas Eve Grami said everyone could open all the presents from her and grandpa Tom, and then on Christmas morning we opened all the ones from Mom and Dad. I always stand by the side with a garbage bag and practically grab the wrapping paper as the kids tear it off. Between fourteen people all exchanging presents (my aunt and uncle were there, too), there was a lot of wrapping paper! Soon, my job changed from “garbage man” to “present opener”. The rest of the day was spent slowly opening different presents and having fun talking and joking and then eating Christmas dinner that evening.



Naomi and Grami loved playing problem solving games
on the computer together.

 We did a lot of work in the camper while we were there, too. Our camper hadn't left the southern Missouri area for about eight months. There was a lot of reorganizing, packing up, sorting, and cleaning to do! It was great to get it all done, though, and we knew our time in Missouri was coming to a close.

We had an incredible time staying at my grandma and grandpa’s twice that year, working at Camp Eagle Rock, going to two church camps and putting on one ourselves, spending some much needed time in Wisconsin, and getting to spend time with lots of friends and family from Missouri that we hadn’t gotten to see much for about two years; among lots of other fun things that are too many for me to mention. We even, surprisingly, made new friends while we were there that I keep in contact with now.



Grami with all her Smith grandkids the morning we left.

 It was really sad saying “good bye” to my grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, and cousins (who are more like a brother and sister rather than cousins). I can’t wait to see you all again! We’ll be back soon…

Now, on the road to Texas and our friend, Mike Lee’s, ranch. Keep up to date, I have a feeling there could be some more exciting adventures coming soon!

Thanksgiving In Wisconsin and the New Sport of Baby Curling

This is a life-size model of the biggest muskie ever caught
on a rod and reel.  The trees kind of give you an idea of it's
size...

This Winter has been different from the last two we’ve had traveling full-time, because we actually had a regular Winter season! The past two years, when the cold started coming we took off running from it and stayed somewhere down south where we wouldn’t have to worry about any snow, ice, or freezing temperatures. Not this time. This time we went right to the heart of America’s Winter weather; Wisconsin. Mom and Dad wisely decided to leave our under-insulated camper behind in Missouri during our planned 10 day stay.

It was a beautiful drive up there, and we took our time which made it all the more enjoyable. We stopped by an orchard in Iowa and got some fresh apples, apple cider, apple juice sticks, and decorative gourds. I saw more John Deere tractors on our drive through Iowa than I’ve seen in my whole life put together! I started to think maybe there was some kind of unspoken agreement in Iowa to only use Deere tractors. (ha ha)

This is Aunt Sheri and Josephine sitting next to all the snow
that fell in Eau Claire near the end of December.

Our first stop, once we reached Wisconsin, was my Uncle Mark and Aunt Sheri’s house in Eau Claire. We had fun eating dinner with them and talking for several hours, before Mom and Dad took the younger kids to a hotel down the road. Hanna and I stayed at their house and visited with them and our cousin, Eric, for a while. The next morning Mom and Dad came back and Uncle Mark showed us the remodeling he was doing in the basement.

We got back on the road, and a few hours later, arrived at our final destination: Hayward. My Aunt Barb and Uncle Steve were making another one of their multi-yearly trips to Ireland, and we were going to stay in their house for the week and a half they’d be gone. Most of my mom’s side of the family lives in or around Hayward, and it’d been six years since we went up there, so we knew that we had a lot of visiting ahead of us! Something nice about Hayward is that the town is small enough that from my aunt and uncle’s house, Hanna and I could ride bikes to almost any of our relative’s houses and all the stores in town within about 15 minutes at the most.

Aunt Sheri came up for a couple days and took us to see where her and my grandma grew up, where their old grocery store was, and where my great great great grandparents lived when they came over from Norway. We also got to see how much the towns that they grew up in have changed. It was a lot of fun and we learned a ton about our family history.

We went ice skating at the rink in Hayward a couple times.
Dad invented a new sport while we were there: baby curling!

After my aunt and uncle got back from Ireland, Mom and Dad decided to go ahead and rent a cabin for a month near Hayward somewhere. Shortly after, they found a pretty two story cabin with a huge loft on the banks of Round Lake. It was on the same peninsula that some of my relatives used to live on when they were my age. Not long after getting settled in the cabin, Winter hit full force! A blizzard lasted for about a day and a half, and the lake froze over by the end of the week. Dad and I went out every couple hours to shovel off the driveway so we could get out in our 2WD van If we needed to.

It was great having a woodstove in the cabin. With it we stayed nice and toasty even when the temperatures started dipping down into the negatives at night. Aunt Sheri came up again, this time with my Aunt Jean. It was so cold that we just stayed at the cabin and visited. She brought skis and snowshoes with her, so we went out on the frozen lake for a few hours and learned how! That day I got to do three things I’ve never done before: walk on a frozen lake, ski, and snowshoe. It was a blast, and when she left that evening she let us keep the skis and snowshoes with us ‘til we left Wisconsin.

This is Gabriel, Josephine, and Naomi standing on the bank
of Lake Superior.  It was amazing getting to see it for real
finally!  The lake is so massive that it actually creates it's
own weather and has some of the same effects on the
atmosphere and environment that an ocean does. 

Since we had plenty of room in the cabin, I had my cousins, Brennin and Darby, over to spend the night a couple times. Hanna, Naomi, and I had a lot of fun with them playing games and having big snow ball fights. For Thanksgiving we went to my Uncle Kelly and Aunt Wendy’s house. It was a fun afternoon and we had so much food left over that we went to their house again the next night for dinner to finish it off.
It was hunting season while we were there, so I went with Uncle Kelly and Brennin one afternoon hunting. I didn’t get a hunting license because it would’ve been up around $150 for one, if I remember right. After hiking around for a while, we sat down in a brush pile. I was staring intently at the trail coming towards us, ‘cause this was somewhere that deer crossed frequently, when all of a sudden I heard Uncle Kelly start laughing under his breath. I looked over, and slumped between us was Brennin; sleeping! I couldn’t help but start laughing, too, because he’d been known to do this before and I finally got to see it for myself. (ha ha)

This hill's a lot steeper than it looks!

While we were there Hanna and I went to the youth group every Wednesday at the Wesleyan church in Hayward. It was an awesome church, and we also got to see our cousin Chloe there almost every time which was great, too. The pastor and his family were really nice, and we ended up becoming good friends with their two sons, Wes and Luke, and their daughter Hannah. Wes and Luke let Hanna and I play music for the youth group a few times also, which was a lot of fun! We went sledding with them one afternoon on the big hill outside of town. Hanna had the best sledding wreck I’ve ever seen! She went down the biggest part of the hill and hit a hump at the bottom, flew about six feet through the air, nose planted the sled, and flew about another eight feet before finally stopping face down in the snow. We measured these distances after, so I’m not exaggerating! The local Christian book store was also so nice as to let us host a church youth group game night in their lounge area the next week. It was a lot of fun, and we played music for a while as well as a mean game of Ticket To Ride.

We all know how to have fun, that's for sure!

One Saturday afternoon, Mom hosted an impromptu family reunion at the Hayward VFW center. It was great getting to see some family that we hadn’t seen yet, playing a long game of Spoons with the “spoon-master”, Aunt Karen. Some of the family hadn’t even seen each other for a while, so it worked out good for everybody.

During our entire stay in Wisconsin we saw my Grandma Alberta almost every day. We had her out to the cabin for dinner, and went over to her apartment a lot to visit and watch movies.  Our stay in Wisconsin wouldn't have been complete without her reading the There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly book!  She even has the other less famous version: There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Salmon.



Here's Dad and Naomi skiing on the frozen Round Lake.
There were about two inches of snow on top of the ice as well.



It was sad to say goodbye to everyone after almost eight weeks total of being there. On the way back we stopped by Aunt Sheri and Uncle Mark’s again to return their skis and snowshoes, and say bye to them and my cousin Eric. The rest of the drive went by really quick, and the next day we got to the camper back in Missouri. It was an awesome trip, and I’m really glad we went when we did. I respect everyone up there for handling the cold so well, but I don’t think it’s for me! I’m thinking Missouri is as for north as I ever want to live. I’ll definitely be back to Wisconsin to visit, though; hopefully soon!

(Note To WI Family: If you weren’t mentioned in this post, it’s because I just don’t have enough room! There’s a lot more I could tell about, but because of length I had to keep it no longer than this. Sorry!)