Catching up to the New Year...

Oh so many things have happened since my last post. After vacation, we settled back into everyday life...working, playing, just hanging out

Before we knew it it was Halloween and time for trick-or-treating. Last year was pretty fun because Tyler enjoyed the candy, but this year was just awesome. After much going back and forth on what he wanted to be he finally settled on a monkey...and a cute little monkey he was!! At one point he was going to be a dinosaur, in fact for a couple months he was...then one day we were on the internet looking at costumes and I found a cute dinosaur costume and asked Tyler if he wanted that one. He looked at it for a minute and said to me with a concerned look on his face, "No mommy, I can't be a dinosaur for Halloween, I will scare myself." That's when we changed the plan and started choosing something else. Caleb was a pumpkin for Halloween, and since I'm the picture taker in the family I didn't get a picture of myself with my orange pumpkin shirt on. It was fun though, I found the iron on pumpkin face shapes and put them exactly where they should be on my extra large belly. We also made a family trip to the pumpkin patch, but it was a super cold and snowy day so we didn't stay long. We got our pumpkins and left pretty quickly.

John and Tyler had fun carving the pumpkins...okay so maybe not Tyler so much since there wasn't too much he could do. He loved playing with the seeds as John scraped them out of the pumpkin into a bowl.

As quickly as it came, Halloween was gone and in with Thanksgiving. We didn't do much, as John had to be at the station. Tyler and I went to hang out with my family until dinner time and then we headed to the station to eat with John and Dave and his family. The following Saturday we got together with the Blunt family for dinner.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we realized that it was waaaay past time to get the new baby's room ready for him...so we quickly started (and finished) that project. My husband is wonderful (no matter what I say sometimes ha ha) and I decided I wanted stripes and a chair-rail and he made it happen. The room is adorable, but it was a long weekend for my husband who really does not enjoy painting. He marked out all the stripe locations then taped and caulked ever single one and painted. Thanks to my mom and nieces who gave up an entire weekend to help us move things out of the room and paint.

Tyler had an early birthday party this year because we weren't sure when the baby would come and didn't want him to miss out on anything if I happened to be in the hospital on his birthday. For his party we went to a place in Loveland called Jump-in. It's full of inflatable castles and slides and was really the perfect location for a toddler party. The kids came and wore themselves out, ate cake and sandwiches and then everybody went home. For Tyler's actual birthday we hung out just the three of us and tried to make it a special day for him. We had lunch at Chik-fil-A and then took Tyler to his first movie in the theater. He enjoyed it, but also got a little restless. Good thing we were the only people in the theater because he felt the need to run up and down the stairs for a few minutes before we snagged him and made him finish watching the movie. All in all a good day for our buddy boy.

Then four days later we found ourselves driving to the hospital to have little Caleb. Scheduled c-section (since Tyler was a c-section) went well...though I was soooo nervous about it. Everything went as planned and our newest little family member was born at 9:36 am and weighed in at 9 lbs 11 oz and was 21 inches long and looked exactly like his big brother when he was born. There is still no doubt that these boys are brothers, as they look so much alike. The only difference is that Tyler was a teeny little peanut at 6 lbs 10 oz and 19 inches long. We didn't realize how much bigger Caleb was until we started comparing pictures from Tyler at his same age...and then the difference is significant. Caleb is also much hungrier than Tyler ever thought of being...because he's huge. Somehow I am managing to keep up with his appetite.

After much planning and last minute shopping Christmas finally arrived. Tyler couldn't wait for Santa's arrival. He kept telling us how Santa was going to come down our chimney and bring him stuff. It was an awesome year and so much fun. Tyler and I wrote Santa a letter on Christmas eve and for the first time we left Santa a cookie and some milk. I think Santa liked his cookie and milk and brought Tyler the one thing he asked for...a Mack the Truck tent. He also loaded the stockings full of so many fun things!!

Caleb didn't know it was Christmas, he really only cared about eating when it was time...but it was still a fun year with our new little gift! Tyler tells us almost every day that he's glad we have a baby and how much he loves him.

We are a hugely blessed family and couldn't be more grateful for our two awesome little boys (though we wish the little one would sleep through the night...) and are looking forward to 2010 and what new and exciting things life will bring for our little family of four.