The rest of Christmas Day was spent with my family in Iowa. We are lucky that, although Ryan’s parents live in the Chicago suburbs and my parents live in Iowa, it’s only about a 2.5 hour drive between them so we are able to see both families on Christmas.

After arriving in Iowa, we dropped Maddux off at my parent’s house and then checked into our hotel. Ryan is allergic to my parent’s cats, so we always stay in a hotel when we are in town. This time we stayed at a really old hotel that was beautifully rehabbed a few years ago. Gorgeous.

Maddypants stays at my parent’s house and gets spoiled. The kitty kitties have to be kept in a separate part of the house because he chases them and if they are in the same room as each other it turns into an all out war. Claws out, fur flying. Disaster.

Anyway, the day was wonderful. We hung out with the fam. Opened presents. And ate…a lot.

 

Quality time spent together with electronics -

Christmas Dinner -

Dessert. Oh my goodness. This cheesecake was unreal.

And a Tom & Jerry to end the night.

I didn’t take any pictures from the day after Christmas, but we spent the majority of it just hanging out at my parent’s house. At some point that day we took Maddux and my sister’s dog, Tucker, to the dog park. Maddux loved it, of course. It was just a huge field, but there’s a lot more room to run than at the dog parks we’re used to.

On Tuesday, we drove back to Chicago. We had perfect driving weather the whole weekend (snow is pretty on Christmas, but it was nice not having to deal with it while traveling!). And Maddux was shockingly not horrible for the car rides. I don’t think the weekend could’ve been any better. And the best part was that we got to spend a couple of days with both of our families.

I hope you all had an equally wonderful holiday!