Happy Birthday Ryan H.

Please indulge me with another slide show...
With Ryan's birthday being 2 days after Christmas I have a feeling we'll be doing these back to back slide shows annually.
We are so happy to have this fun and healthy 6 year old boy in our lives. If Ryan keeps growing the way he is, he will not only be taller than his mom(not too hard) but his dad as well-something he thinks is really cool.
Ryan loves to play and be silly and have a good time. I've loved watching him grow and learn. He can be very determined sometimes. He actually spent an entire afternoon teaching himself how to jump rope. Lemme tellya He's pretty darn good at it. And I am so thankfully for those moments when we share a good hardy laugh together.
We had a fun birthday party at our house with some buddies. I think the hit of the afternoon events was not the cake(thank you Emma for so thoughtfully making that for Ryan's special day) or even the presents but watching Gramaw and daboyz get down to The Blacked Eye Peas during the dance off. I never knew my mother-in-law had such moves.
That night we went as a family(about 20 of us total) to Medieval Times. I highly recommend this fabulous jousting tournament. Of course I've done it now, My son turns 6 and he gets knighted by the King, how am I ever to top that? Chick File is just not gonna cut it next year...

A Bounteous Christmas-in Toys, Food and Love

1st and Goal

Why write about Christmas, A birthday or even Grandparents when I can write about COLLEGE FOOTBALL....It's Bowl Week Baby!!!

I'll admit I'm kind of on jersey overload right now. Over the past 2 days I've probably watched (now this is a rough estimate mind you) about 15 hours worth of Bowl Games. And yet, I am genuinely sad that there are no games on today. I mean there's always the NFL wild card if I need a fix but college ball is where it's at for me (not as many egos and ridiculous touchdown dances, plus I just really can't stand that they don't stop the clock on the 1st down). Now just so ya know, in all this football watching I have in fact managed to not entirely neglect my family, my running or my house. I've washed the dishes, played multiple board games with my son, read stories to my daughter, jogged around the neighborhood and done 3 loads of laundry. It really is kind of amazing the things you can accomplish during half time ...

And To You Your Wassail Too

To all of our blog readers out there...

We are so grateful to have to you in our lives. To have family and friends to share in our joys and occasional pains like say oh loss of a finger...We count our blessings this year and they are many because of you. We hope all of you are surrounded by loved ones this holiday season and are filled with the spirit of Christmas. I don't think anyone could say it better than Clement C Moore and so I will send my greeting in his famous words

"Happy Christmas to All and to All a Good Night".

5 feet tall is very respectable in Oz

The other day my son Ryan was feeling quite put out because we would not let him have a soda with dinner like Ryan my husband. We told him he could have milk or water but not soda-it's for grown ups. He turned to me and said "You get to have soda". I said that's b/c I'm a grown up. He then looked me straight in the eye, cocked his chin and in his perfect 5 year old tone said

"Oh yeah, then why are you so small??!!" I wanted to be angry with his attitude but what can you do when they say something so unexpected and yet so true... We just laughed our heads off. He still didn't get the soda but eventually got over it.

Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving!! It is one of my absolute favorite holidays. In fact every year I say to myself "Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday!" But then Christmas comes and I get caught up in all the twinkly lights and red berried wreaths... So really I just love this whole season. It does just make me grateful to have family and friends to share in all this cheer. We celebrated at Molly's with 30 people. I think we counted 13 kids(hooray for the trampoline) and 15 adults. It couldn't have been more perfect. Except we did really miss not having Michael and his fam with us(we're counting on you guys next year!). We grew up with a huge buffet style Thanksgiving dinner and so these big, but casual affairs feel like home. Even down to the paper plates! For some reason though I'm not the best picture taker on Thanksgiving. Birthdays, Halloween, I'm on it. But not Thanksgiving. So here are a few pics snapped by my sister's Mother-in-law Barbara. Also, I think this year will be forever remembered in our family as the Thanksgiving Ryan H. spent in his jammies. I dunno why we never got around to making him get dressed. It seemed whenever there was a break in the action we couldn't find his jeans or something...

Bobcat of the Month.

here he is with a well deserved Bobcat of the Month bowl of ice cream

Every month the teachers at Brockett Elementary choose one child from their classroom to be the Student of the Month. They get a catered lunch from Chick File with the Principal, a T-shirt and are featured on the Brockett School morning news. We are so proud of Ryan for being the first child from his class to be chosen as the "Bobcat of the Month". He was selected by his teachers for this special honor for good behavior, hard work and getting along well with others!!

Way to go Ryan!! You're our favorite Bobcat!! (I think he gets it from me...)