Our pre-Christmas

Our first celebration of Christmas was with my parents at our house the Tuesday before Christmas. Since we were going to be in Rochester for the actual day of Christmas they came over for dinner and to exchange presents. There aren't a lot of pictures as it was pretty hectic with all the gifts being opened. Ian insisted that every present come out of its package as soon as it was unwrapped and for those of you with kids you know how impossible half of the stuff is to get open. Everything has 10 layers of hard plastic, then twist ties or zip strips holding things in. But we made it through and had a lot of fun. Ian's favorite toys were of course all the cars....he just needs a few more Christmases and birthdays and he'll be close to his friend Benny!!! He does show interest in other things like pirates, robots (he loves Wall-E), Mr. Potato-Heads, bugs, etc. but cars are by far the favorite still.
Alexis had fun ripping the paper off of things and was fascinated with all the new stuff being opened. She absolutely loved the big Minnie doll that Grandpa got her. She loves stuffed animals and gives them big hugs.
We also had fun watching all the Christmas shows that are on TV. I don't think we ever actually saw an entire show but bits and pieces here and there are pretty much all you need I guess. Ian loves to see snowmen and reindeer!
So, here are some pictures:

Grandma, Alexis and Minnie:

Grandma helping the kids open gifts:

Brian and my dad:

Alexis liked the hat...just not on her head:

She loved Minnie!!:

My dad was dog-sitting for my sister's dog Sidney so she was hanging out with us too:

I love our Little People manger scene:

More Christmas to come....

Yeah! Pictures!!

It's Saturday and we made it through our first week of work! Yeah!! Unfortunately for Brian he still had to go into work today...some JROTC drill meet all day or something. I thought it was fairly amusing...he did not. But it gave me a whole day at home to actually get many much needed things done around here. One of which was finally uploading some pictures, so here they are:

Brian in front of the very, very cool sign my friend AdriANNE painted for his return home. My mom hung it on our garage when we were at Ft. Riley so it was waiting for him along with a lit up sign that said "Our Hero B" (she didn't have enough letters to spell out Brian...haha!!):
Alexis eating her second 1st Birthday cake that we had when Grandma and Grandpa Murray were in town for Thanksgiving:
Brian preparing the Thanksgiving feast....check out the apron!!Everyone enjoying the Thanksgiving feast:

My mom and I putting away leftovers:
Grandpa Murray reading to the kids:

Mommy and Ian enjoying the Children's Wonderland displays at the Rec Center:

Alexis enjoyed the displays too from the comfort of the stroller:

Ian eating some ice cream at Friendly's where Grandma and Grandpa Murray took us for dinner one night:The day after Thanksgiving we started decorating for Christmas. Brian was in the process of putting the lights on the tree when we went upstairs to get a couple more boxes of decorations. We came downstairs to find Ian laying under the tree just staring up at the lights
Alexis thought these reindeer antlers were funny because everytime she moved her head they jingled:

That's all for now!

Just some catching up...

There will be no pictures in this post since I have not uploaded any in a while. We got some good ones at Thanksgiving and a few since then so as usual they'll be delayed but eventually I will find some time to get them on here.
Thanksgiving was wonderful....Brian was home with us this year so what could be better? His parents drove down from Rochester the Tuesday before and stayed with us until Saturday. They were obviously glad to see Brian since it had been R&R when they saw him last and they had so much fun with Ian and Alexis. On Thanksgiving day my mom came over as well to eat dinner with us since the rest of my family was spread all over the place this year.
With the exception of a few things, Brian cooked the whole Thanksgiving dinner. He was so excited to do it and found all these recipes for different kinds of dressing, a squash soup, mashed potatoes, etc. It was wonderful!!! I contributed by opening the cans of cranberry sauce and making some spoon bread (the recipe lives on!!!).
On Monday, however, our time of sleeping in and hanging around the house all day and watching lots of TV ended....boo!! Brian and I both started work and it's been a whirlwind ever since. Because we both started new jobs at the same time we are trying to get our schedules figured out with getting the kids to school and picking the kids up and squeezing in dinner and playtime and bathtime and all the usual stuff that was relatively easy before. But it's also really nice to be back to work (for me at least....hehe). It's much more challenging work than I've done previously so I am learning so much and the people I work with are great so far. Brian's been doing mostly "inprocessing" stuff since he started...everything is just so different with ROTC. But he's home and he's not going to Iraq again so yeah for that!! We even got to go out to lunch together today since we work only about 5 minutes from each other.
Alright, that's my catching up....pictures will come soon I promise.

Brian is home!

Since it's taken me a while to get a blog up (I've been a little busy) you probably all already know that Brian is home. Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!! He got home on Thursday, the 6th...into Ft. Riley, Kansas and we got back home to Toledo last Sunday.
On our trip out to Kansas the kids and I stopped and spent the night in St. Louis with our friends the Prengers. Kathryn is about 18 months old now so her and Ian had fun playing together. The weather was nice while we were there so the kids got to play on the swing set and in Kathryn's cool house and we took a walk down to the nearby pond to see some ducks. They also had fun coloring at Kathryn's little table and playing with all the fun toys in the living room. Our friends Tara and Ryan also stopped by for dinner so it was great to see them too!!
(Sarah, I got some of these pics from your website but they show up small here for some reason....oh well...they were so cute!)

We arrived at Ft. Riley on the 5th and got settled in to our hotel in Junction City. Brian didn't get in until 1900 on the 6th so we spent the day going to the park and visiting with our friends the Cooks. Ian had sooooooo much fun playing with all of Ben's cars and trains!!! He still talks about it and asks all the time if we can go to Ben's house...it makes me sad that we live so far away from all of our friends.

When the time finally came to go get Brian we drove to a building in the middle of nowhere on post and waited. Ian was having fun running around the bleachers when we first got there but once the soldiers finally started to march in I tried to make him sit still with Alexis and me...that didn't go over too well. He just wanted to run right out into the formation and he kept yelling "Daddy!" Oh boy. Luckily, once they all marched in only a short speech was given and we were finally able to run over and greet Brian. Ian was so excited and Alexis was kind of just looking around like "what is going on here?" It was well past the kids bedtime at this point but Ian was so excited he didn't know what to do. When we got back to the hotel he was jumping all over Brian and everything was "Daddy! Daddy!"

On Friday and Saturday, Brian had to go in and do some more redeployment stuff so the kids and I got to see the Cooks again which was good because Ian asked every time we got in the car if we were going to Ben's house...hehe. There was also a little drama every time Brian got out of the car to go anywhere...it was a little hard to explain to Ian that Daddy would be right back but I think after a while he started to realize that Brian really was going to get back in the car with us again.

Early on Sunday Brian went in to sign out on leave and then we packed the car up and drove straight through back to Toledo. It was a long day but we were so happy to finally be back in our own house again. Neither of us starts work until Dec. 1st so we have been enjoying our time together until then. We have been doing a lot of shopping too! We got a new fridge and range for our kitchen and a new LCD TV for the living room. Brian brought the Rockband set for XBox back from Iraq with him and we have been having a blast playing that as well as playing with our Wii. Ian likes the drums for Rockband:

The kids have adjusted pretty well to having Daddy back...especially Ian. For the first few days home he pretty much wanted nothing to do with Mommy. Everything was "Daddy this and Daddy that" but he's seeming to get used to the idea that Brian is here to stay now so it's ok if Brian leaves the house or can't play with him every second. He loves that Daddy reads him books every night before bed though: Alexis is still very much a Mommy's girl. She has no problem with other people holding her or changing her or feeding her or putting her to bed but if she is crying she always wants Mommy. She thinks Daddy is very funny though...he is always doing crazy things to make her laugh so she is definitly having fun with Brian too:

"Ween!!"

We had a great time during the Halloween season this year (or "Ween" as Ian calls it). Ian was soooo excited by everything! He loves to point out all the pumpkins on people's porches and he's very into all the ghosts and spiders and bats....and candy of course! His favorite are the pumpkins though. He wants to carry the big ones on our porch around but they are too heavy for him so luckily Grandma and Grandpa Murray sent a Halloween package and in it was a cool fake pumpkin that's lightweight. This pumpkin was originally placed in our downstairs bathroom next to a scarecrow but since it's able to be carried around, Ian takes it on adventures. It usually just ends up on the couch in the living room or in the middle of the dining room floor but here are a couple of the more interesting places I've found it:

One of the outdoor shopping centers in the area had a trick-or-treat night last weekend where all the stores gave out candy so that got our huge pile of candy started. And then our neighborhood had it's trick-or-treat night on Friday. Since Ian is so in to pumpkins it seemed only fitting that that's what he dress up as. And my mom wanted to make Alexis a costume so she got some cute patterns and we decided that a candy corn would go perfectly with a pumpkin. So here are the kids in their costumes:


On Friday, my mom took the kids around the neighborhood while I manned the candy at our house. Alexis had fun riding around in the wagon and Ian was the one who got out to go up to the house and get candy. The only problem was that at each house he thought it was necessary to eat the candy as soon as he got it. My mom had to convince him each time that it went in the bag and we'd sort it all out and eat some when we got back home. He apparently did pretty well with saying "trick-or-treat" though. At first my mom would ask him, "What are you supposed to say?" when he got up to the house and his response was, "Please." Hmm...well at least he has manners. But then he got the hang of at least saying, "Treat!" Close enough. I'm just surprised that they both spent over 3 hours in the costumes without wanting to get out of them.

I also had some fun trying to squeeze the kids into their costumes from last year. They were just so cute so I had to try. Alexis was just slightly too big for the peapod...she was only 5 days old when she wore it last year! But it was hilarious to see her in it again and she seemed to think it was funny too, surprisingly.

Ian's fit a little better since it was slightly big on him last year and the fit of it made it easy to get in to. So, he actually went to daycare on Friday as Donald Duck. I didn't want to send him in his pumpkin outfit in case it got really messy so this worked out perfectly. I'm glad we at least got one more use out of it.
And finally, here is Alexis in a cute shirt that Ian wore last year. It's nice that holiday shirts like this can be re-used for a boy or a girl.

Well, that was our Halloween. We can't wait til next year!

The Birthday Girl!

Yesterday was Alexis' 1st birthday!! We are going to have a little party when Daddy gets back in a few weeks but yesterday we celebrated with lunch at Red Wells and a cake back at home. My parents and Ian were there to celebrate with us. My mom insisted Alexis get dressed up so she's wearing her cute little black velvet skirt. And she did pretty well with the cake...didn't make too much of a mess on her face but she did end up with quite a bit of it on her skirt. Ian was just thrilled to be getting "happy cake" as he calls it. They always celebrate at his daycare when it's someone's birthday so he is quite aware that birthdays mean yummy treats. :o)
It's hard to believe Alexis is one already...but it's very exciting that it means Brian will be coming home soon! We are looking forward to many more birthdays with Daddy being home.