Christmas Road Trip and Misc. Pictures

One day last week, we headed to Des Moines to Christmas shop.  We had a couple of things to return to two stores that we don't have in our area and still needed to get some gifts.  The first day we went to several places around Ankeny and Ames and got all of our gifts bought.  We spent the night in Ankeny and went to one of our favorite restaurants, Texas Roadhouse.  We don't have any restaurants in our town so when we go out-of-town we really appreciate being able to have a nice meal out.  We had lunch at Hickory Park in Ames.  It's a huge restaurant that serves a lot of hickory smoked meats.

Since we had such good luck the first day, that left the next day for just looking around for fun.  Bill had not been to Jordan Creek Town Center in Des Moines.  It's a very nice two level mall.  I happened to see this and got a quick picture.  Santa was having his picture taken with a little baby.  He acted like he had been reading a book to the baby and had fallen asleep.  Really cute picture.  You can barely see the baby - it was so tiny.

The Jordan Creek Mall is always decorated very nice.  The tree was there in Santa's area.  The above double sided fireplace is in the food court area.  I could've sat there for a while.  All in all, it was an enjoyable couple of days away.  We got a lot done but had fun too, and it really helped get me in the Christmas spirit.

I kept Diane's girls on Sat. and they helped decorate our tree!

Our church is always decorated so pretty for Christmas with several trees up front.