Snow Day

One of Christian's gifts from us was a snow day. We dropped Megan off with my sister and picked up my niece Brittany and headed up the mountain. It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies, we had so much fun. Ryan didn't like the sleds but the rest of us had a blast.Our little snowmanRyan was out as soon as he hit his seat!

Christian's Birthday & New Year's Eve

I think because I didn't get any pictures of Christian at Christmas I went way over board for his birthday so be prepared for overload. Christian's Birthday was a lot of fun this year, he woke up to balloons in the hallway of course (thanks Kenna) then we headed down to Disneyland to get his annual pass which was a total mistake. Note to self never go to Disneyland the Monday after Christmas!! It was so crowded so we just got his pass and left. Then he had lunch with his Mom and got to play at Dave and Busters. We then went to the park and we finished the night with Pizza, his favorite dinner, and he got to open presents. Christian never asked for a birthday party and wasn't expecting anything so we decided to throw him a surprise party. We chose to do it on New Year's Eve and we had so much fun. I introduced the game Grunt Piggy Grunt, which was a game we played at all our family parties growing up and it ended up being a huge hit, Dan even loved the game. Christian said he had the best birthday ever and loved all his gifts, it was a fun couple of days.Christian fell over from opening his new gunCan you tell he was a little excited?SurprisePlaying Grunt Piggy Grunt Happy New Year's
Megan didn't enjoy her first New Year's Party But these two sure enjoyed staying up late

Family Parties

We had two big family parties around Christmas time. The first was with Dan's Great Uncle and his family and the second was with My Mom's Brother and Sister and their families. Both parties were a lot of fun with gift exchanges, great food and fun games. The kids loved being with all the kids and we loved being together at Christmas time.

Dan's Family Party

All the girls

All the boys

All of us together

Thank you Nana so much for the cute outfits I totally loved them!

My family partyRyan gave Megan a green M&M during one of the games, she loved it but I was not very happy and of course she made a complete mess.

Christmas

Christmas was a little different for me this year for a couple of different reasons. The first being that I am a stay at home Mom so I got to really enjoy the holidays with the kids. We made gingerbread houses, decorated cookies and got to attend a lot of parties. It made the holidays more relaxed for me and I was able to focus more on what is really important instead of the constantly feeling rushed. Another reason it was different was that we decided that we wouldn't spend a lot on Christmas since we had gone back east for two weeks that was our gift to each other. So we bought one gift for each of the kids and that was it. It was hard for me because I love giving gifts at Christmas and not being able to buy the kids everything I wanted and not getting Dan anything was tough so I will not be doing that again. Also Christian was with his Mother for Christmas day so it was hard not getting to see him and really enjoy the day. We opened up our gifts with him on Christmas Eve so Christmas day was just not the same. We did have a nice Christmas just it wasn't the same as usual.

My sister Anna brought over her laptop that has a camera and we were able to talk to my Brother in Texas online. It was really fun to see my Brother's family on Christmas. Even though we didn't get each other any gifts we still had plenty from our family.Megan loved her first Christmas and absolutely loves her new set of blocks. It was so fun for me to open girly toys, I wasn't expecting to feel any different but I did. Not that I don't enjoy watching the boys open their Lego's and cars or anything but getting to open up gifts with purses and dolls and cute pink dogs was a lot more fun for me.Ryan's two favorite gifts from Christmas was a shark shirt Aunt Jessica made and an ESPN Baseball set from Grampy and Grammy Burke. He wants to wear the shirt everyday and he loves going in the garage to play baseball. So if you see him in his shark shirt in the next few post I promise I wash it in between wears but he seriously wants to wear it every day.

By the end of the night Ryan was so tired he just crashed watching Andrew play video games. It was a wonderful day.

Wow

It has been a long while I know but I haven't had the motivation to sit down and document everything that has been going on in our lives, but with a little peer and family pressure I decided it was time to get going again. I have so much to tell about like Christmas, Christian's Birthday, a snow day, Christian's new school and our new house but I wanted to just post a little about what I am so thankful about this week. The biggest thing is my amazing husband. With the crazy weather that has been going on he has had to work alot. He has only had 1 day off in the last 19 and he has worked about 220 hours. I am so thankful for a hardworking husband, we are trying to get completely out of debt so he has been willing to work all the overtime Verizon has offered and most days he does it with out complaint. Unfortunately, he has had to miss somethings and the kids are really tired of me saying that Dad is still at work but overall we are making it work for as long as the overtime is offered. I am also so thankful that I can say that I only have 1 child in diapers now. Ryan has done so well potty training the last couple of weeks. He has only had three accidents which has been so nice and so rewarding to see him figure it out and be proud of himself. The last thing is Megan sleeping through the night. It was getting really hard on me waking up every night sometimes twice a night all by myself. Dan was helping but once he started working so much I was doing it on my own and it was really starting to wear on me. So we tried feeding her more and letting her sleep on her stomach and we are going on day 5 of a full night sleep. The first couple of days she had only had one nap during the day so I thought that was the reason but the last two days she went back to her two naps and still she sleep through the night. I had forgotten how nice it is to have a full 8 hours of sleep. I am so thankful for my family and all the wonderful things going on!

Since Ryan is no longer in diapers I thought this picture was fitting for this post!