Merry Christmas!

Brady and Jeremiah dancing to the TransSiberian Orchestra song.
Brady wearing his new backpack opening his new cityscape floormat.

Memaw opening her first stocking present: A KC Homes magazine!
Hint, hint.

Mackenzie riding on her new elephant guy that sings and plays music.

Baby's first Christmas!

Mommy and Brady writing a letter to Santa on Christmas Eve. It read: "Dear Santa, Please bring me some choo-choo's and colors. I've been a very good boy all year. Love Brady."

Brady and Daddy tracking Santa on the computer on Christmas Eve.

Brady wearing the stockings and a Santa hat.

Cool guy!

Mackenzie hanging out in her jumper.

Shea trying to nurse on Holly. She's so little she can sit right under Holly!

Still trying!

Cutie!

She likes to chomp.

Playing with Amber.

Photos and stuff

I got Jeremiah a German Shephard puppy for Christmas and we picked her up couple days early! She is about six weeks old. We debated on names but I think we have finally settled with Sheala, but we will call her Shea for short. Jeremiah said he likes Shea, but it reminds him of the Mets which goes against all of his Yankee beliefs so we have to make her real name Sheala. :) Holly and Amber aren't sure what to think of her yet. Holly barked at her once because she was trying to eat and Shea came over to investigate. Lesson learned: when big dogs are eating, baby dog is in her kennel!

Brady said we should name her either Baby Puppy or Best Buddy. He loves her!

Shea was trying to give us kisses, but she has a little bit of kennel cough so we had to keep our faces away and wash our hands really good when we were done playing with her. She has antibiotics so she should be better soon....she just has a little runny nose and cough.

On Thanksgiving I was at Jenn and Mike's and the boys had Brady and I in Logan's room playing with all the toys. They kept throwing toys at me so I finally made them all get on Logan's bed and I bent over and threw tons of things at them really fast between my legs while I yelled, "Rapid fire!!" They all cracked up. A couple weeks ago Jenn watched the kids while I was working and Jeremiah got called in to work. When I got there Ryan said, "Aunt Heather, do you know what I remember from Thanksgiving? RAPID FIRE!" and he started cackling. Just then Mike walked around the corner with wide eyes and said, "So YOU are the one responsible for teaching them that!!!!" I laughed and said, "So do you need a few more minutes with Brady so you can teach him something equally as crazy?" It was funny. Brady likes to play rapid fire with sock balls.

Sheala.

Brady somehow managed to get himself into Sissy's exersaucer today. It was funny. He couldn't figure out how to escape from it.

Shea

Mackenzie has figured out where her nose is and just how to get her finger planted in it!

Mom and Dad got new chairs for their den so they gave us one of their gliders from in there. We put it in Brady's room and he immediately took to it! Jeremiah went in to check on him the other night and found him like this. He is so silly!

Sissy slobber face and mommy. I think she is going to keep those blue eyes!

It's cooooolllllllllddddddd.

Wow. I got to work at 8 a.m. today and it was a nice 61 degrees. The sun was shining and it was warm. At 1 o'clock I went out on my lunch break and it was cloudy and 29 degrees. When I got home from work at 7:45 p.m. it was freezing rain/snowing and 12 degrees. Holy cow. It is cold.

The poor dogs were outside all day. I was working and Jeremiah was supposed to be off. Around noon he got called in. In his hurry to pack up the kids to get them to Jenn's house he forgot to let the dogs in. They were warm and dry when I got home so I am guessing they were snuggled up together under the deck or something. Poor girls. They wanted to go out tonight after they ate so I let them out and they made it about three feet before they turned around and came back. It is like 10 degrees now and the wind chill is below zero. It's no wonder everyone in this town is sick all the time. One day it is spring the next day - or even later that same day - it is the dead of winter!

Well, the kids are in bed already so I think I better head that way myself. I have to be at work at 6:30 a.m., but since I am going to have to scrape my windows in the morning I'm going to have to get up extra early. Also I have to drive over the river which is always fun...Jeremiah and I slid all the way across that bridge when we were driving to the airport for our honeymoon four years ago. That was fun.

Me and the babes

Too busy

So we've been really busy lately, with work mostly so I obviously haven't had a lot of time to get on here and poke around. Here's a quick update before bed:

The kids are doing well. Mackenzie can pull herself from sitting up to standing if she finds something to grab onto. She doesn't really go anywhere on her feet yet. She just gets up and grunts a lot until it's time to sit back down. She got both of her top teeth so now she has two on top, two on bottom. She had another ear infection a couple weeks ago which gave her grief but she is over it now and back to herself...though her nose is starting to run again. For her 9-month check-up she was in the 20th percentile for height and 40th percentile for weight. She's a shorty. So all in all she is doing pretty great. She is eating baby food at lunch and dinner now and loving every spoonful of it!

Brady is getting bigger and bigger every day. And he's becoming more of a little man. The terrible twos pop out a little more often now, but it's usually sparked by him wanting to be a little more independent than he should be. He thinks he knows what is best for him to eat - like cheese balls and Oreos - and stuff like that. He is funny. He hates going to bed now and will not go down without a fight. If we would let him he would stay up all night long and play. He doesn't like taking naps either, but he is a mess if he doesn't have one. We have tried potty training a few times to no avail so we are in another "oh well" phase and have given up the fight for now. We'll give it another few weeks and try again.

Jeremiah's doing well. He got a really good annual review last week which made him happy. I knew he would...he and his partner have done tons of great things for the department this year. It pretty much comes with the territory though. Last year they didn't really have a Narcotics detective program so they started at zero and had nowhere to go but up! He is still loving every minute of it. This week he is in Iowa for training. I told Brady he was going to be there for that and he said, "Mommy, Daddy is going potty training in Iowa." It was hillarious.

I have been doing pretty much nothing but working. Work work work. It is my life right now.

I can't really think of much else. I'll try to get on here more often and update, but I hardly have time to sleep these days and that takes the cake right now!

Oh, one thing I did remember... I got my hair cut this week. It's pretty cute. I have to straighten it though which has taken some getting used to, but it is worth it.