Happy New Year!

Can you believe it's already the end of the year. Good grief. It flew by. Tonight we don't have really big plans, just hanging around the house to stay out of the way of all of the drunks! Brian came up from Topeka so he'll be hanging out with me, Jeremiah, Brady, Robin, Shirley and Gerald. We're going to play darts and ping pong and cards and put together a mystery puzzle. I was pretty excited about the mystery puzzle until about 20 minutes ago. That's when I found out that there is no picture of the puzzle, you just have to figure it out. Yipes. That should be interesting. I guess you put it together then you read a mystery and you have to figure it out. It will probably be fun, but we'll have to wait until Brady goes to bed or we might lose some pieces.

Speaking of Brady he had a big old time tonight. Brian, Jeremiah and Gerald were going to go to Cabelas and when they tried to leave Brady kept saying "Don't go. Don't go." So they decided to load him up and take him along. Then while they were out he decided to start saying "Brian." They're best buds now. It's really cute.

We've been working hard over the past few days on Mackenzie's room. It looks great. Shirley, Gerald and Robin painted. Since I couldn't be in there with the smell I did other things like take down all the Christmas decorations. When it was done I helped put up the chair rail. We painted the top half of the room a light purple and the bottom half a dark purple and then put up a white chair rail. The crib is white and so is the changing table. The crib was a bargain and a half! I got it probably two years ago when we found it in the stockroom on clearance for $25. It was originally $300! I knew we would need it one day! (And if we didn't I figured we could sell it for $50 in a garage sale!)

Well, the food's coming out so I'm headed to the kitchen. Happy New Year!

19 month photos

Since everyone is in town we decided to get some pictures done. Plus, Brady is 19 months old now so we figured it would be a good time to update some of him by himself. Soon enough he'll have a little buddy to be in all his pictures with him!

Heather, Jeremiah, Grandpa Rustin, Grandma Robin, Greatgrandma Shirley, Greatgrandpa Gerald and Brady

Grandma Robin and Papa Rustin with Brady

Greatgrandma Shirley and Papa Gerald with Brady

Brady thinks it's fun to put his hands in his pockets. He looks like such a big boy.

Sporting his Cardinal's warm-up suit! Jeremiah would have preferred Yankees, but he grew out of all his Yankees stuff. I'm sure if we get out to the east coast this summer like we want we'll come home with a whole suitcase of Yankees gear for both kiddos. (Of course I'll sneak some Mets stuff in there too!)

It's Brady's "I'm up to no good" face!

The growing family! Brady has to sit on Jeremiah's lap because there's no room for him on mine!

The gang's all here...almost

The whole gang is coming to town for Christmas. Shirley and Gerald arrived this morning and Robin and Rustin take off in about 45 minutes from Philly. They'll get in around 10 p.m. Brady has already taken to Great-grandma and Great-grandpa...calling Gerald "paw paw" like he does my dad. He spent the afternoon sitting by each of them reading books. He's napping now so he can stay up late and go with me to the airport to get Robin and Rustin.

Jeremiah and I will both be working off and on while everyone is here. Jeremiah was lucky to get this weekend off and he's off Christmas Eve and Christmas so he'll have a really fun time with everyone. I have to work all weekend and then from 5 a.m. to noon on Christmas Eve. Jeremiah's off New Year's Eve too so we're going to have a fun get together. I'm sure I will have to work, but we close at 9 p.m. so I'll be home for the ball dropping.

We're all going to get pictures done tomorrow and I'm sure we'll spend enough money between all of us to be able to afford a CD of all the pictures, so when we get home I'll have to put them on here! Well, we're getting ready for dinner, but I figured while I had a minute I'd update the blog and put some new cute pictures on. Enjoy!

Baths, babies and comfortable kitty

Brady and I were looking for Jake the other afternoon after nap time. We finally found him curled up in Brady's Elmo chair! He barely fit hit big butt in there, but he seemed quite comfy.

Brady loves to pretend with hit toys now. He spent the other night wiping and diapering Mr. Monkey. It was really cute! He's getting ready to help with his baby sister!

He has trouble figuring out how to open the diaper!

Brady loves bubbles!

This was before his haircut...he had enough hair to make a nice little mowhawk!

Cold Weather Fun

Brady and I played with his tin can and baby food jar lid toy I made for Ryan when he was a baby and I was living at Jenn's house. It's just a bunch of baby food jar lids with different scrapbook papers inside to make patterns and shapes!
We cut a slit in the top of a formula can for the lids to fit in!

We got our first ice storm of the season overnight. When I looked out the back around 10 p.m. the tree limbs were hanging down around the roof. This morning they were almost touching the deck! We lost a big branch from one of the backyard trees and a semi-big one in the front yard.
Luckily we didn't lose any power and the limbs in the front didn't hit our cars. It's been raining all day and a little bit warmer so the streets weren't too bad. We decided to stay in anyway and have a pajama day. We'll get out tomorrow.

The ice sure makes the trees look pretty, but it's really not the best thing for them!

Brady had some cinnamon toast crunch and a cinnamon roll for breakfast. He got the cinnamon all over his cheeks! Look at all those teeth! He loves to sit on the bar stools at the kitchen counter now to eat breakfast. We have to be close by though because it would not be good if he tried to get down from there by himself! He likes to wiggle around a lot too...especially when we have the radio on so we're always close by.

Brady climbed in the box we got from Shirley and Gerald. He was trying to return himself to sender!!

I got home from work the other night and was sitting next to Amber when Brady decided he would climb up in the chair and use her for a pillow. He stayed there for about 20 minutes. I'm not sure how Amber felt about it, but she did good.

Brady doesn't like to wear his own gloves, but he had a lot of fun wearing Jeremiah's gloves and boots and parading around the kitchen!

Snow Day

Brady's first fun time in the snow!

Not quite sure what to think...

Ok, this is kind of fun...

Let's do it again!!!!!!!

Wow, I can't believe I haven't I haven't updated the site in more than a month. It has been pretty crazy around here. Of course it's the busiest season of the year at work so I've been working like a maniac. My boss has each of the assistant store managers scheduled almost 60 hours per week...over 6 days. I have had to work every Saturday and every Sunday since Nov. 1. This week I started having some cyatic nerve pain in my back since Mackenzie thinks it is fun to sit on it so I talked to my doctor about cutting my hours back at work. She wrote me a note to cut me down to a maximum of 40 hours per week. My boss still has me scheduled for 6 days, but they are shorter days. Today I got to leave at 2 and come home and take a nap before picking Brady up from daycare.

Speaking of Brady, he is doing great. He's growing like a weed and talking, talking, talking. He has had a cold that he just can't shake...he's had it since Halloween. In November he got an ear infection from all the crud backing up into his ears. He took some antibiotics for a week and now that's all better. The doctor said since this is his second ear infection in less than 6 months if he gets one more he will have to get tubes put in. Hopefully he will not get anymore of them.

Jeremiah's been working a lot too, but he just found out today that next year he is likely going to be off on Friday's and Saturday's. We are really excited about that because it means that mom and dad won't have to babysit the kids all the time. I'm sure they're happy about it too! I'll still need them to watch the kids on Wednesday nights, but that's only for a couple hours!

Well, Mackenzie is growing and so am I! I'm getting a little bigger every day, but I'm still no where near the size I was with Brady. People at work seem to think I'm gigantic. I keep telling them I still have 11 weeks to go...they don't believe me.

Well, I hope you enjoy the pictures and video of Brady's first fun in the snow. Last year he was too small to play in it. This year he was so tired because it was nap time by the time we got out there, but he had fun. At first he didn't know what to think. We have a little hill in the front yard between our yard and the neighbors. I sat down on the sled with him and tried to go down, but my big butt put us too far down and the sled wouldn't budge! It was pretty funny. There just wasn't enough snow for us both.

I'll update more when I get a chance. I have to get to bed now since I have to be at work early and have to take Brady over to mom and dad's before I head into the store. Happy holidays!!