Foto Friday!

Wisconsin Days 6 & 7

Monday Mom & Jeff flew home, so we spent the afternoon with my Dad's side of the family. We went out to the farm and went snowmobiling! Then we went back to Uncle Dave's house for some warm dinner, and a chance to catch up with everyone!
Tuesday we hung around the house went up to Grandad's Bluf to see the view of La Crosse. We also went to the Cheese head store, then did a little wine tasting. We got home and had a great Prime Rib dinner!

Wednesday we headed to Texas.

Wisonsin Days 3 - 5

The day after Christmas we went to Suicide Hill to go sledding! Mom, Jeff, Bill, Steph, Evan and I made the short drive to the hill. Russ was coming down with a cold so he decided to stay warm and get some sleep! We were borrowing my Aunts car for the week which does not have 4-wheel drive so we had to push it in to the parking lot since the area had not been plowed. We got the car in and headed down to the hill. We all had a blast!

After our sledding we headed back to the cars. It was much harder getting my aunt's car out. We pushed and pushed and couldn't get it over the snow bank. A nice guy in a truck was driving by and offered to help pull the car out! I don't know what we would have done without him!Next we were off to visit the Amish. They have stores in their homes where you can buy stuff they have made. We bought a rug, I will have to post a picture later. We went to 3 houses and got a good feel for how they live. 3 houses was more than enough! We stopped at Hideaway a bar in Chaseburg for Fried Portabello Mushrooms, Fried Cheese Curds, and homemade potato chips! YUM!!(Dead Deer hanging outside)

(it was freezing cold and they were outside plowing!)

Friday night we also went down by the river and looked at the Christmas lights.

Saturday morning we woke up early and headed up to Minneapolis. Once we got there we went to the Mall of America! Russ was not too impressed; he thought it was just a little bigger than Valley Fair in San Jose, but it had a theme park in the middle. So if you took out the theme park it would be about the same. I don't think so but whatever! :)After the Mall we checked into our hotel and went to an indoor water park - Water Park of America. We hit the water park from 4pm - 10pm and all had a blast! It wasn't as big as we expected but we had fun!

Sunday we headed back to La Crosse. Once we were back my Aunt Bev took us for a little drive so Russ could see La Crosse. We stopped at the Worlds Largest Six Pack, The Mississippi River, the house my dad grew up in, and the University.

Wisconsin Days 1 & 2 (Christmas Eve & Christmas)

Since we didn't get to my Grandma's house until 4am on Christmas Eve we slept in until about noon. We woke up and Jeff was making calls to find our luggage. All 8 bags showed up about 2pm! We were so happy it all made it and we didn't loose anything!
The family started showing up around 3 and from then on it was a crazy house! Not everyone stayed for dinner since they had to go see their other families; however there were 11 of us there for dinner. For dinner we had crab legs, and a little too much to drink! :)
After dinner everyone left and we opened out stockings from Mom & Jeff and then we opened our presents from Jeff's mom. We got a little silly!
On Christmas Day the entire family came over! We all opened our yearly calendar and hung around talking and relaxing. We had about 20 people for dinner so it was a little chaotic.

(Brothers & Sisters)

(Cousins)

(Grammie with the In-Laws)

Foto Friday!

I promise updates are coming soon!!

23 Hours of Travel!

At 4am on December 23rd we started our trip to Wisconsin. Gil picked us up an we headed to SFO. Our flight from SFO to Dallas was on time. Both Russ and I were surprised since we have not had good luck with American being on time. We joked that maybe we would make it to Wisconsin without any problems! (We spoke too soon!)

We get to Dallas, grab a snack and head to our gate. At that time everything looked like we were going to take off on time! Then we get a call from Mom. They were suppose to leave the San Jose airport at 7am flying direct to Chicago. Its 10am and they still have not left! She tells us that they are suppose to be leaving at 11am, we thought okay no big deal they had a long layover in Chicago they will still make it!

12:30 Dallas time and we find out our flight has been delayed! We are now leaving at 2:30 which is not good since we have a flight from Chicago to La Crosse at 4:25. We are all crossing our fingers that our flight to La Crosse is going to be delayed and we will be able to make it.

I think we finally left Dallas at 3pm. We got lucky there was good wind and instead of a 2 and half hour flight it was only an hour and 45 minutes! We called Mom as soon as we landed in Chicago. They just landed also and are running to the gate to make the flight to La Crosse. We tell her to try and hold the plane that we are on our way as soon as we get to the gate. It took a long time to taxi so by the time we got to the gate they had already given our seats away and closed the doors. We missed the flight by about 10 minutes.

Now is the fun part, Chicago is a mad house, flights getting delayed and canceled left and right. We get in line to get a new flight, and Russ gets on the phone to see if he can get something faster. They put us on the next flight to La Crosse, 8pm. Okay no problem we can do that. As soon as they were finalizing it, the flight was canceled. The next best thing was to put us on the 9am flight the next morning. We weren't very happy about it, but that was the only choice.(Russ and Steph in our spot where we thought we were going to have to sleep)

We found a place where we could lay down and sleep, but then I noticed there was a 9pm flight to Rochester MN (about an hour from my Grandma's). So we hurry and call and get on that flight! Whohooo we aren't going to have to sleep in the airport after all! 8:45 rolls around and instead of boarding it says the plane is now leaving at 9:30. Lets just say every half hour the same thing happened we were suppose to be boarding but instead the flight would be pushed back another half hour.

At midnight we finally get on the plane, but then we sit and get de-iced for another 45 minutes. The plane finally took off around 1am. We got into Rochester at 2:15, grabbed a cab and started our drive to La Crosse. The roads were dry and the drive should have only taken us an hour. The cab driver drove VERY slow and we didn't get to Grandma's house until 4:03am.

All I have to say is we are never traveling back to the East Coast in the Winter again!!!

Foto Friday!

Crazy cat!! She was laying in front of the fire last night! :)