Merry Christmas!!

We hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas.

We are at my parents now. We spent the 21st and 22nd shopping, relaxing and getting ready for the holiday. Kris and Ryan played outside in the snow and built a inappropriate snowwoman. Fortunately, it rained that night and now is a mound of snow with some carrots on the ground.

We spent the 23rd at the Knoll's, where everyone was there except one cousin. Needless to say, my Grandmother needs a bigger house!! We had a great time there playing games and spending time together. At one point, we had all of the cousins in one room! On Christmas Eve, we went to Aunt Dawn's for the Zebrowski side. It was mayhem there with 13 kids under 10. We had a great time. At both places, everyone got some great gifts and were so happy to see everyone else in the family.

Also, my family got let in on our secret that we've been hiding for 21 weeks now. We are expecting again!!! The baby is due on May 3rd. We have had our first ultrasound, but the baby didn't want to cooperate to let us know what sex it is. So we'll have to wait to find out, but we're all thinking girl. Fortunately, the baby looks healthy and is growing at the right pace. So now the world knows! I added the link to the baby website and you can see the ultrasound pictures there.

Today, we got 'suprised' by all the presents left by Santa last night. We opened for almost 2 hours! Too much. Ryan is loving all the new trucks he's got. And Kris and I are excited to get home to start using some of our new stuff. We are so grateful for all the gifts, but are just so happy to be able to spend some time with our families. We have dinner tonight here and then we are celebrating my dad's birthday tomorrow with all the Stones.

On the 27th, we are leaving for our visit to PA until the 1st. So it will all start again!

Getting Ready to Go

We are getting ready to begin our holiday traveling. Kris has been in Toronto, so Ryan and I have been working our way through all the food in the fridge, doing laundry and packing. We are leaving on Thursday to start our trip at the Zebrowski's before we head to the Harper/Beatty's on the 27th. I'm looking forward to the trip, but as always am a little anxious about it. Before we leave though, we have friends of ours from library class coming over for Mexican/clean out our fridge night. I'm cooking - they're taking. I hate for food to go to waste, so someone will be going home with our open jar of applesauce and our orange juice, in addition to any food leftovers. I haven't had to cook all week since I made lots of leftovers last week and then Kris left. Ryan hasn't particulary liked the food, so his dinner has mainly been fresh veggies and veggie dip. He'll eat some chicken if I promise him a chocolate after dinner. Oh well.

Today, I have done 4 loads of laundry, with 2 more to go. I've premade the chicken and veggies for dinner tomorrow. I've packed Ryan. Now, I'm going to bake some cookies and wrap some gifts and hopefully finish the book I've been reading because I don't want to take it with me (I have two other ones here to read also). Tomorrow will be a whirlwind day of cooking, packing and uploading music to the MP3 player. Wish us luck!!! We can't wait to see everyone!

Fun, Fun, Fun

Ryan has been having a lot of fun lately. For the last two days, we've been running from place to place. I can't even remember all the things we've done. Today we had some beautiful weather (70 degrees) - and this is after a school closed snow day last week - so we went outside. We've also played with our friends at various places, picked up our Christmas cards, and shopped for a new office chair (Merry Christmas to us!).

Last Friday, Kris's department had their own work party at Gameworks. We had a lot of fun - even Ryan. He loved the driving and snowmobiling games. They even had a magician come in as well as a face painter and a person to draw your picture. So here is a picture of Ryan with a christmas tree on his face (it's 10pm by then and this is the first picture he isn't crying in!).

Saturday, we started a second round of soccer. No Mason or Shawn Kayley this time. Now we have Max and Gracie with us. So here are some new pictures from the first week. I love the first picture because it looks like everyone is under arrest - but they are really banging the wall to keep the soccer demons away!

Today, we had a breakfast with Santa. I don't think you could really call it breakfast when you get two donut holes per child and nothing for the parents. But since you can bring your own camera, they give you a little book and it only cost $5 I don't think I should complain. Ryan was very frightened by everyone. This is a great picture since he wouldn't sit on Santa's lap and had to be dragged up there to begin with. He was perfectly happy eating his donuts in a chair very far from Santa and all the other people dressed up for them. Maybe next year.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas......

We managed to get our Christmas pictures taken last weekend. We had been warned that JCPenney's was awful, but so far last year was the worst. We waited about 30 minutes after our appointment time to get them done. After they ask you to come back after 30 minutes so they can do some enhancements and delete the bad ones, when we came back after 1.5 hours, they hadn't done any enhancements. But since we don't usually buy those, I didn't care too much. We also randomly asked someone to take our picture at the mall in front of the tree, but they didn't come out all that well. So we took some more in front of the fireplace at home. That one will go on our Christmas card.

We also attended Kris's Toyota Christmas party. Amazingly we knew very few people there. But we are all for an evening out when babysitting is paid for! Ryan got to go to the Toyota daycare and enjoyed himself until he had a bad poop (too much acid in the pizza). We should have warned them that he is a good eater and if they keep giving him pizza he will keep eating it! Because Ryan was up so late, he's been sleeping in since then. It's nice not getting up at 7:30, but I'm sure we'll get back to that before too long. So far it's moved back from 10am to 8:30.

Lately, Ryan and I have been trying to finish our Christmas shopping, we only have my dad left to do. Yesterday, we made 10 dozen cookies for my mom's group Christmas cookie exchange. We made just chocolate chip because everyone likes mine. That took us 3 hours! But they are so good.

Today, we had to go to Target to get boots because - guess what - it snowed!! Yes, we have less than an inch of snow and they closed all the schools!! I couldn't believe it. I took Ryan outside before we left and after we got home so he could play a little. He thought it was pretty cool. He liked watching me throw snowballs and eat the snow, but couldn't figure out why the snow kept sticking to his mittens! Here are some pictures of him.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We sure did. We travelled to PA to spend Thanksgiving with Kris's family. We drove out on Wednesday and made it there for dinner spending time with Kris's dad and his new exchange student Ibo (he's from Turkey). We spent the night determining where everyone would sleep and getting the room ready for Ryan to sleep in (he moved to a toddler bed in another room so we had to de-glass it). Thursday, we went to Kris's mom's house for turkey dinner and got to visit with his grandmother. We had a nice time seeing everyone. I took some pictures of Ryan outside of Grammie's house that were too cute not to share.

Friday, Kelli picked me up at 10 minutes to 3 (am) to go shopping. We made it to four stores in four hours and made it home while Ryan was eating breakfast. Kris took Ryan and they went shopping with his mom for the whole day!! So I got a nice relaxing day at the farm.

Saturday, we spent around the farm playing with Katelyn. Ryan and Kris played outside, while I wrapped gifts. Later that night we went to a open mike night at a neighboring town for dinner. Ryan had a blast and loved the music. He was very upset with our choice of seats (at the back) and made sure to move to the front as soon as he could.

Sunday, after church, we had Harper Thanksgiving at Aunt Lucy's house. She managed to fit 28 people into her kitchen/living room. A little busy, but a lot of fun. Ryan didn't know to over eat so he ended up eating cereal for dinner later that night. We got to see Clara while there and I took some pictures of the three kids.

We drove home on Monday while his family was freezing waiting for deer to arrive. We haven't heard yet if anyone got one. Kris had a training session for something he volunteered for at work that night and then he left for California at 6 am Tuesday morning. So Ryan and I are at home now. My mom came down to pick up presents and visit with us again. And we've been doing preliminary kitchen table shopping.

Thanks to everyone who hosted us over our weekend. We were so glad to see everyone and look forward to seeing everyone again at the upcoming holidays.

Christmas Decorating While Watching Crappy Football

We decided that we should put up all the Christmas decorations this weekend to take advantage of the mild weather and the last football games that keep us inside! We got a lot done - all the decorations with exception of my nativity scene are up, all the lights and the tree is up and decorated. Everything looks pretty good - even if sparse. We just don't have enough high areas to keep a lot of decorations, so we are trying to trust Ryan to keep away from things. We'll see. We did manage to decorate the tree almost completely in Baby's First Year and Newly Married decorations. I can't believe how many we had.

As for football, all 4 teams that we root for managed to lose this weekend. So we are an unhappy bunch here. Except Ryan, for some reason, he has been in a great mood for the last two days. He must be feeling better. Here is a cute picture of Ryan and Kris cuddling on the couch watching the end of the Pittsburgh game.

This week, we sat at home most of the week. My mom came down for a few days and we did some shopping. We went to library class and played at my friend Sarah's with Max. But besides that we bummed around here. I did let Ryan play with shaving cream for fun, he had a great time even if it only kept him busy for 15 minutes.

Big bed at last

Ryan slept in his big boy bed last night for the first time. It wasn't the easiest transition that we've made with him, but he did finally fall asleep in the bed around 10. Yesterday, we disassembled the crib so there was no confusion - instead he kept pointing at the blank spot in his room. He had to put him back on the pillow 4 times before he first left the room. I had to go in twice because he got out of bed. We put a safety handle on the door so he can't escape (yes, we're mean parents). The second time I went up was because - I think - he fell out of the bed while trying to climb out, so he was crying. He did toss and turn all night but we never had to go back in. He woke up at 8:30 - about normal - and sat in bed calling for Daddy. Naptime was a struggle today because he fought Kris, so he was cranky tonight. But he is sleeping in his bed now - on top of the covers. But sleeping!

We also rearranged Ryan's room a little today and put up pictures and shelves. Exciting to see the rooms finally come together. I want to buy a bookshelf for his room, but that will wait until next month. We also still have to put the border up, but that hasn't made it to highest priority yet. Maybe after Christmas.... While we were putting stuff up - this picture is what Ryan was doing (destroying styrofoam).