Iowa Turkey Day

Cody took off on a work trip for British Columbia the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  I swear his company looks at our vacation calendar when planning his business travel.  While he was in the air on his way home, Meredith called to offer us two tickets to Friday's Nebraska @ Iowa.  I turned down the tickets due to price, figuring the husband would not appreciate my spending that much on them.  I failed to realize that football fan trumps frugality.  Whoops.  Next time, my sister says she'll just call him directly.

We flew into the tiny airport in Cedar Rapids on Wednesday evening.  Meredith and Rob picked us up in the parents' rental (thankfully, because my sister's car is always full to the brim) and gave us a brief tour of the town's corn mills.  Each has their own distinct scent and one day a week you can tell General Mills is making crunch berries cereal.

On Thanksgiving morning, lacking an organized run, Meredith and I took her ten month old "puppy" on a little six mile turkey trot.  Initially, he wanted to greet all the other dogs on the trail but eventually he settled into the run.  He even napped for a little while after we returned.

Meredith and Rob's oven operates a little differently, and took a couple of extra hours to fully cook the bird, much to my father's dismay.  But there were snacks, football games and drinks to keep us happy until dinner was actually ready.  Mother introduced Rob to several new bad habits, such as hot mulled wine and apple cider and tuaca.  He was initially skeptical, but soon joined in with enthusiasm.  Cody, having previously experienced my mother's holiday celebrations, took no convincing.

Rob works at Best Buy and had to go to work at eleven o'clock that night for the insanity.  There seriously had been people camping out for days...don't they have jobs?  The good news was he was done that morning for Friday, so was able to be part of the great hunt that day.  The seven of us (including Ruger), headed off to a local tree farm to pick out their first tree.  After examining nearly every tree at the farm, Meredith finally selected one not quite at the farthest point away from the car possible, but it was a nice attempt.

Meredith, Rob & Ruger posing with their first Christmas tree.

After getting the tree home, we decorated it and made cookies (with some serious supervision from Ruger).  After the cookies were baked, my mother, sister and I did the frosting and the boys did the sprinkles.  Cody and Rob had been enjoying the bad habits my mother had taught them, which made them quite creative in decorating department.  There were cookies with as much sugar as possible and there were "minimalist" cookies (Cody's creation), with just a shake in one corner.  As mother put it, she'd never had such cookie decorating entertainment, even with little kids.  Their creations looked pretty similar, however.

Cody multi-tasking:  decorating with one hand & eating with the other!

The next morning, we all got up and drove out to a park for a "surprise" family portrait session for my mother's gift.  She'd apparently been trying to figure out what was up in the week before and had hit on the idea but still enjoyed her gift.  This family event also included Ruger, who posed nicely for awhile before slipping out of his collar and leading everyone on a merry chase, until Rob finally tackled him (yes, he literally dived on top of him and pinned him).  The dog had a new collar that day.  We opened a few presents in front of the tree that evening, as this was our family's holiday together.

On Sunday, we traveled home and actually made it back at a surprisingly decent hour.  We even managed to get to bed reasonably early, which almost never happens.  Of course, we didn't manage that any other time that week...