It’s the week before Christmas, and it seems the holiday activity has reached a fever pitch. Of course, it’s also a few weeks from the Iowa Caucuses, which means a non-stop rush of campaigning from Presidential candidates across the river in Iowa.

The weather’s been nice enough for a few more bike rides (with some bundling up), and they even managed to re-open the Center Street bridge after 1 year, 2 months, and 7 days (but who’s counting?)

On Thursday, I also pedaled on down to Chick-Fil-A for a rare lunchtime meetup with Vivian and the kids. We had some chicken sandwiches together and let Aaron get one last visit to the play area while he was (almost) still small enough for it.

Then that evening, Vivek Ramaswamy paid another visit to the Omaha area, hosting a town hall in the crowded upper room at Barley’s. I’d seen numerous candidates at this venue before but never in the upstairs dining area (which I didn’t even know existed). Vivek bought pizza for everyone and then took numerous questions from the crowd. I got to ask the first one, which was about spirituality and unity in America (which you can watch here).

My friends Dave and Denise also got to ask a few questions, as did a ten-year-old aspiring author named Cole, who got a book autographed by Vivek afterward.

This was my fourth time seeing Vivek, but every time seems to be quite engaging, and he has a ridiculous amount of energy as he hosts upwards of eight of these events in a day.

On Saturday, our friends the Dougans hosted another Christmas party at their house in Bennington, so we drove up to join them and a handful of our friends in some holiday festivities. Kody had some smoked beef brisket for us, and Jenny made a peppermint trifle for dessert. It was also the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, so I had a glass of iced tea to mark the occasion.

Vivian and I also wore our “Todd and Margo” shirts once again. Vivian and Jen exchanged some balloon-making tips, and we all got to say hello to Jenny and Kody’s new son William for the first time.

On Sunday, I wore one of my dad’s Christmas ties to church, where Vivian performed in the special Christmas choir for everyone.

Then that afternoon, I took the kids down to Sky Zone for an hour or two of bouncing around. They got some pizza for lunch and then got to burn it off on an obstacle course, some basketball hoops, and a number of foam pits to swing over and land inside.

Then later on, Aaron beat Super Punch Out for the first time, and Vivian made some spicy seafood Ramen for dinner.

I got to engage in some more politics Monday night as Nikki Haley, one of the few Presidential candidates I haven’t met in person yet, came to Treynor, Iowa for a townhall. Her event had a heavy amount of media present for some reason, with space for ten networks on the risers alone and multiple people getting video reactions from attendees. Among the guests were Don Bacon’s wife Angie and his campaign manager, which suggested to me that Haley might be getting an endorsement from the Congressman soon.

Haley herself seemed like a fairly solid candidate, touching on domestic issues and various conflicts overseas — the latter of which she was definitely “hawkish” about. She took questions from the crowd afterward, the first from me (again), as I asked what she hoped to do about the military’s record low recruitment levels. I stuck around afterward for a selfie and even got Hannah on Facebook live to say hello. That was particularly fun.