Happy 9th Birthday, Drew!!

NINE years old?!  How did that happen?  It feels like just yesterday I was carrying him around on my hip.  I am so proud of Drew.  He always tries his best in school and whatever sport he is playing at the time.  He is the best big brother Kayley and Ryan could ask for - always looking out for them.  His teacher told us that he is always kind to everyone else in the class.  That is every bit as important to us as getting good grades so Andy and I were happy to hear that.  

My brother, Matt, drove over from Omaha to help Drew celebrate his birthday.  He arrived Friday afternoon.  Andy and I left work early so we could get Drew's cake and get home so he could start opening presents.  Drew was pretty excited with all of his presents.  Ryan had a little trouble being patient while waiting for cake.  Drew was looking through his stack of football cards and Ryan really wanted cake.  I caught him on the island with his fingers in the frosting.

Drew wanted to go Fun City instead of having a party so that is what we did.  We left on Sunday morning and drove over to Iowa.  Matt came with and spent a few hours playing with the kids before he drove the rest of the way back to Omaha.  We played lots of arcade games, movie theater thrill rides, laser tag, go karts, bowling, swimming, ballocity, etc.  It was a fun-filled 24 hours!

Sox spent Sunday night with my friend while we were at Fun City.  This friend lets Sox sleep on the bed and get on their couch whenever she wants.  Sox came home and decided she should get right up on our couch too.  :-)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I can't believe the holidays are already over.  As always, they went by fast, but we had a lot of fun with both sides of the family.

My family was here for Christmas.  The kids were excited to have them here on Christmas morning!  Matt left the Sunday after Christmas and Mom and Dad left on Monday.  Monday was also the day of our ice storm.  We lost power at 10:15am and didn't get it back until the middle of the night.  The kids thought it was a lot of fun.  I had a ton of laundry to do so I didn't think it was nearly as fun.  And it got cold in the house!  To make the day even more exciting, we managed to lock ourselves out of the house during the power outage.  A few hours and $85 later, we were back in the house.

We took Kayley to see Star Wars when my family
was here.  During our power outage, we went to
Home Depot and she saw these three and thought
Matt would like to see a picture of her with them!

We left for Omaha Tuesday morning to spend New Year's with Andy's family.  The kids were so excited to see their cousins!  We had a great time and lots of late nights. Ryan was even up late every night.  It will be fun getting him back on a normal bedtime routine.

Grandpa and all the grandkids

Mitch and the kids singing Christmas
songs to us before opening presents

Bowling!

Starting our countdown

Still counting down

Happy New Year!

We drove home yesterday and today has been our only day of rest this break.  Back to work and school we go!

Getting Ready for Christmas

I can't believe we are only a few days away from Christmas.  This month FLEW by!  It was another busy month to say the least!  Girls trip to Chicago, Santa visit, Christmas shopping, Christmas parties, basketball tournaments, holiday baking...

Our annual trip to visit Santa was a success.  We got really lucky and only had to wait about 20 minutes.  We have waited over an hour in past years.  Ryan was a little unsure about sitting on Santa's lap and walked pretty slowly up to Santa, but with Drew and Kayley up there with him, he was happy.

My last official day at work was Friday.  Andy's last day was Thursday, but he has had to work every day of vacation so far.  :-(  All three kids had their Christmas parties at school on Friday.  I helped at Kayley's party this year and her class had a lot of fun playing games and eating their treats.  Ryan's party was at the end of the day so we all went to that.  Here are a few videos of our little singer.  

Mom and Dad flew in from Phoenix Saturday evening.  On Sunday, we went to Drew's basketball game.  We had a light basketball weekend with only one game on Saturday and one game on Sunday.  :-)

I guess I managed to get a picture with the ball at the bottom of Drew's dribble: 

Here are Drew's faithful cheerleaders.  Not surprisingly, they do much better when there is only one game a day compared to the all day tournaments!

Yesterday, Mom, Kayley and I baked ALL DAY.  It was exhausting!  Kayley was such a trooper and stuck with us most of the day.  She only took a few short breaks.  Drew also helped with decorating the sugar cookies!

Thanksgiving

I'm a little late on a Thanksgiving post, but I haven't had a lot of time to sit down to do the blog.  I feel like we are going 100 miles per hour all the time!

My parents and brother came for Thanksgiving again this year.  Thanks to my Mom, we had a great Thanksgiving meal on Thursday.  Ryan didn't appreciate it though.  "What IS that?  I don't want that.  I want a ham and cheese sandwich, Mama (his new term for me)."  Ah, the joys of little kids at Thanksgiving.  Well, maybe not all kids, but definitely our kids when they are little!  

We spent time on Saturday going through toys to decide what we could donate.  Ryan rediscovered his talking Elmo and it has been joy (and a little annoying) ever since!

We watched the Iowa-Nebraska game Friday afternoon and went out for dinner to celebrate after their big win!!  Ryan was pretty excited.

My parents left Sunday morning.  After they left, I was picking up the family room and it hit me that I hadn't put a Christmas card together yet.  UGH.  We didn't have any family pictures taken so I frantically went through all of my pictures from the year and there was nothing that was good enough for a Christmas card.  So, I quickly got some clothes together and put the kids in front of the fireplace for a quick, cute picture.  If only it worked out exactly as I had planned.  Ryan was in no mood to take a Christmas card picture.  He was much more interested in being funny and making Andy and Matt laugh while I attempted to get the picture.  After many, many takes and a promise of 3 cookies, he finally sat still long enough for about two usable pictures.  And I really want to get family pictures taken?

After the boys got to change back into their "real" clothes, they posed for one more picture with Matt before he left.

I went to Chicago for a shopping trip with two of my friends this weekend.  It is so nice to be in the city during the Christmas season.  The lights are beautiful.  We had fun shopping and had a great dinner last night.  A great girls weekend!

Snow!

It feels more like Christmas than Thanksgiving with all of the snow we got on Saturday.  The kids are in heaven and have been playing outside quite a bit the past two days.  Surprisingly, Kayley has been out there more than Drew.  Ryan was SO excited to go out.  He was downright giddy as I was helping him get his boots on.  He lasted about 12 minutes.  His hand got wet and that was the end of the fun for him!

It feels like football just ended, but we are already 3 weeks into Drew's basketball season.  He made the 3rd grade travel team for our school district so he has been busy with practices and games during the month of November.  His team played in their first tournament this weekend.  The tournament was about 35 minutes from our house and was Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  It was a long weekend, but we had fun.  In 3rd grade, they play on a regulation height hoop so the games are usually low scoring, but they are still entertaining to watch.

These are a few pictures from the first game last weekend and then a video of Drew shooting a free throw during the tournament this weekend.

Drew is #4.  He is in the white jersey on the left
side of the picture guarding #45.  Yeah, I would
like to see #45's birth certificate.  Seems to be
a lot bigger than a 3rd grader!

Drew with a steal

Last Football Game

Drew's last two football games were this past weekend.  His team ended the season with a record of 8-1.  They had a great team and great coaches.  Even though I was a little concerned at the beginning of the season about my 8 year old playing tackle football, it was a lot of fun.  Drew "grew up" in so many ways during the season.  He was a totally different player by the end of the season.

Here is a picture from Saturday's game in the rain.  This was the only game they lost this year.  It was cold and rained steadily throughout the game.  I was miserable at times, but felt even worse for the boys.  This picture doesn't really show the weather.

Here is a picture and some videos from the final game on Sunday evening.  The boys were so excited to get to play under the lights at the high school.  My parents were in town for the weekend so it was nice that they got to see such a good game.

Drew is at outside linebacker (#22)

These two videos show Drew playing outside linebacker and making the tackle.  He is #22.

This one is of Drew at running back.  He got tackled at the 1 yard line.  Darn it!

This was the final play of the game.  Drew got an interception!

Happy Halloween!!

Where did this month go?!  The kids have been looking forward to trick or treating all month.  I bought Halloween candy too early - they practiced trick or treating with it.  

Ryan's Halloween party at daycare was Friday afternoon.  He was his usual ornery self during the parade.  He had no interest in singing the Halloween songs.  He was pretty happy during the snack portion though.  :-)  Another plus is that he actually wore his costume.  Drew was Thomas the Train when he was 3 also, but refused to wear his costume at the daycare party.

Ryan had a rough start to trick or treating.  It started when we were leaving the bedroom after getting him dressed.  Apparently, I shut the light off before he was ready and that set him off.  Then we got the kids lined up for a picture and Kayley's broom slipped out of her hand and hit him on the head so we were back to crying.  Rough few minutes for poor Thomas the Train.  

Witch, Sad Thomas the Train and
Iowa football player

Three year old tantrums can come out of nowhere, but they also end quickly.  Candy at the first house seemed to cure all of his problems.  It was cold and rainy so Ryan didn't last as long as Drew and Kayley, but he stayed out a lot longer than I thought he would.