Christmas 2009 and our trip to Miami

First a picture of our playroom. It always amazes me how many things we can cram in here. I change the furniture around in here a lot, but this time I changed it so the couch was in front of the french door to help block out some cold air.

We stayed at the W on South Beach. It's a pretty new hotel just having opened last summer. We stayed in the Fabulous Studio.

The plunge tub. It was super deep with two seats inside.

Big walk in shower. The frosted window on the back wall allowed anyone on the other side to see your outline. Kinda funny.

This big bed was super comfortable

The living room

Here's the toilet room. LOL.

The kitchenette with minibar

The view from our balcony on the first night. They played fun music down by the pool that sounded like there was a cool party going on.

The third day we went down to the beach and a lot of people rented these paddle boards.

A fabulous sunrise on the 3rd day

Another view from the balcony

Here's the pool with the cabanas and cozy deck chairs. When we walked down there a man right away took care of where we wanted to sit and set up our towels and brought us menus.

At first we started out by the pool, but all the sunny chairs were taken so after awhile it got kind of chilly so I walked down to the beach and found out we could still get drinks and lunch there too so we packed up and headed out here. What a great decision as it was really nice laying there in the warm sun.

View of the back of the hotel. Our room was situated in the short part of the building.

My Grandma with Mom and Dad's new dog Lucy. Grandma is 81 this year.

The Night Before Christmas

Our nieces Olivia and Emma passing out gifts

Ava opening a gift from Grandpa Denny and Grandma Debbie

Hayden singing in his Backyardigans microphone he got from The Biermans.

Olivia showing Hayden her new DS game.

Hayden singing Christmas carols with Holly and Marie

Hayden loves playing piano

Papa Joel and Uncle Kirk with Ava at the Neally Christmas

Dinner at the kids table with all of Hayden's cousins

Me and Josh's sister Jenny

All the great grandkids put on a Christmas play. It was adorable. Hayden wasn't interested at all until it was over and everyone was clapping. All of a sudden Hayden runs in super excited like he was the star of the show.

Ava opening a Christmas gift from Papa Joel and Mimi Vian

Hayden and Ava trying out their new horse from Santa

As usual we did a lot of traveling for the holidays. But first Josh had a class down in Miami so I tagged a long for a few extra days. We dropped the kids off at Josh's dad's and then drove to St. Louis to the airport. We had a nice time. It rained the first couple days which was only a bummer the 2nd day since we were kind of done with shopping by then. The 3rd day we got to lay by the beach. We had a great dinner at Mr. Chow. It was super fun. We came back on the 20th and then spent until the 26th with my family. That morning we drove to Burlington to spend time with Josh's mom's family and then ended our trip at the Neallys before we had to go back to Muscatine to pick up our dogs. Unfortunately the kids got colds that they spread to us. Then the morning we left Hayden threw up so we waited a little bit to see if he'd do it again. By the 31st we were so ready to get home. He did throw up once a tiny bit in the car and then made it the rest of the way home just fine. When we got home we ate dinner and started putting together toys and getting rid of their boxes. I started not feeling well and I was up all night sick and I was sick the whole next day. Saturday the 2nd I was able to get out of the house to go help pick out our new fridge, but then I didn't feel up to grocery shopping so came back and Josh went out to get a few things we'd need for the week. Sunday night my nose started clicking and it was really painful-- probably because of my deviated septum. All week my cheeks have been hurting as well as my molars and nose. I've been taking ibuprofen around the clock. Thursday it occurred to me that it could be a sinus infection. I'd never had one before so I looked up the symptoms (of course). I think I will make a trip to the Dr. this week. So it hasn't been the greatest since returning home plus it's been so cold and our heat pump isn't keeping up so we've had to switch to emergency heat. The only way we can really resolve this is to get a bigger unit or for the temps to return to average. Apparently the builder of the homes in our neighborhood put in the minimum size units to save money and then we have an added addition so it's even less efficient. We currently have a 3 and we need a 4 or 4.5 for our house. But in better news I love our new fridge. We got a french door LG with ice/water that's energy efficient. It looks nice with the new dishwasher we got each other for Christmas.