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.