Hello and Happy New Year! I hope you are all well!

I promised a more detailed update of our last few weeks, so here it is…

Napoleon, Detroit, and a trip across Ohio

We holed up in the tiny town of Napoleon, Ohio for a few days. Our AirBnB was in the old Armory that now serves as an event space. The apartment we stayed in was full of funky antiques and fancy furnishings. It was a cold week, so we mostly hung out there, but we did take a daytrip to Detroit. Even though we didn’t do a lot of wandering around, we did thoroughly enjoy our tour of the Motown Museum and a tasty Detroit-style pizza. We left there, excited to pick up lots of groceries in Columbus and make our way to Marietta.

A Whirlwind in Waverly, Marietta, and Parkersburg

We rented a wild old Victorian house in downtown Marietta, OH for a week and filled it with food, fun, and some of our favorite people. The house was built in 1860 and we took to calling it the “crazy house” because of all the nutty little antiques, collections, and knick knacks all over the place. It was a fun location for the festivities.

Last year, we were in Germany for Christmas, so we were pretty excited to spend some festive time with family. Lauren’s family lives about a 30-minute drive from Marietta. Alex’s family drove from Missouri to meet us. We were also lucky to have Nathan’s stepmom, Margaret, my sister, Jana, and our niece India fly in from Utah. The six grandkids didn’t waste any time becoming best buddies. They played outside in Lauren’s yard and had a blast hiking in the woods, riding bikes, and having a ride in the ATV trailer care of Uncle Bo. We had an early Christmas, piling presents upon all our loves. The kids loved playing with their new Lego sets and marble runs.

Lots of chocolate and candy canes were consumed and some tasty homemade hot cocoa. We cooked up a storm, with burrito bowls, BBQ, and pizza keeping the troops full. Lauren made sure that we had the family-favorite gingerbread cookies and we made a Swiss Carrot Cake for Nathan’s birthday celebration. We got to attend church in the Marietta ward for a sneak peak of the Primary children’s Christmas songs. We were graciously hosted by our neice Sarah and her husband Luke for Sunday dinner and shenanigans. We also enjoyed seeing our nephew Nathan and his wife Amelia, since they are living in Athens, Ohio now.

We loved our walk along the Ohio River with the kids on their bikes and we enjoyed playing at the Discovery World children’s museum in Parkersburg and had the place virtually to ourselves for hours. The kids played in the ball factory and had so much fun building their own rockets and cars. We also took a special trip up the Ohio River on the sternwheeler “Valley Gem” with Alex’s family. It was a lunch and activity cruise based on “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and was pretty cute. We even managed to squeeze in a visit to our favorite dentist! The worst part about the week was that we were missing El and Adia and that it all ended much too quickly.

Back to Missouri

We returned to Missouri with Alex’s family and we were there for Christmas. We made some tasty Ramen for Christmas Eve dinner, cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and delicious salmon with veggies for our Christmas dinner. We loved watching the boys open their gifts and try to eat as much candy as they possibly could.

We spent the rest of  that week helping Alex with some home repairs and hanging out with the kids. We took the boys on a really fun bike ride along the Meramec River and lunch one day. We were able to stick around to babysit while Alex and Hanna went out on a date for their anniversary.

Off to Texas

We left Missouri on our anniversary (31!) and made a detour to Kansas City to stop at Q39 for our favorite BBQ. We spent that night in Oklahoma City after a spectacular sunset and then drove on to Dallas the next morning. We stopped for tacos and a walk around Deep Ellum before ending up in Austin. This was our second visit to the city and we enjoyed wandering around town and sitting by the Colorado River. New Year’s Eve was fun at the Saxon Pub with dinner and music. We must be getting old, because we were not interested in staying out until midnight. 🙂

On January 1st, we drove down the very quiet highways to Corpus Christi, which is where you find us now. We learned our lesson in Chicago and looked for somewhere warm to spend a few weeks instead of freezing our you-know-whats off. We do like winter, but having a break is also nice, especially since we have had a pretty steady stream of illness in the last few months and Nathan is still fighting off a pretty good cold as I write this. Taking things at a slower pace and having some sunshine and warm weather will probably help a lot.

We wish you all the very best for this new year! May you have some adventures and find many reasons to celebrate and smile! We love you all!