Way too long

Holy crap--I knew it had been a long time since my last post, but I didn't realize it had been this long.
Holidays, work, shopping, etc. It is all a blur.
Ben is doing great. This week he has dropped his 4am feeding, which means that he now is sleeping straight through from 8 or so at night until we get up at 6am. We actually have to wake him up in the morning to get him ready for day care. It is so funny to watch him stretch and rub his eyes as he wakes up. Then when he sees us standing there, he gets a big smile on his face before he realizes that he is awake and hungry, when he starts to frown and then grunt and whine a bit as we put him on the changing table to get him dressed for the day. He doesn't launch into a full-blown cry until after he is changed and we pick him up off the changing table.
We didn't make it up to Spirit Lake this year for the Kollasch family Christmas due to the crappy weather. It seems like we are getting a snow or ice storm once a week around here. So we met my parents in the Amanas last weekend for dinner to celebrate my mom's and Colleen's birthdays.
Colleen turned thirty on Monday, so there was much rejoicing :)
We went out to dinner at Atlas with friends last Saturday and then spent some time in the Atlas lounge downstairs before moving on to Mickey's for a while. It was finals week, so downtown was pretty dead. On Monday, Colleen's sister Erin surprised her by flying home early. I organized it so that when we got home from work, Erin was there waiting and Colleen freaked out. It was lots of fun. We went out for dinner with Erin and Colleen's parents and then some people came over for cake and ice cream afterwards. I got an awesome lemon-raspberry swirl cake from a local bakery that Colleen loves. Yum-o. And then we opened the little bottles of champagne that I brought back from Spain this summer. The little bottles are called "Benjamin" in Spanish, so it was fitting.
So this week, we are enjoying having Colleen's sisters spend some time at our house (Megan flew in yesterday). The sisters volunteered to hang with Ben today, so we'll see how they handle him. Now that he is sleeping at night, he is awake for most of the day.
We are heading to Clinton on Friday for Christmas, and then we'll spend next weekend inColfax with my family.
We hope everyone has a great Christmas and a fantastic New Year.