T minus 6 weeks

Not only has it been a fun-filled holiday season, but it has begun the immenent countdown to adding little boy #3 to our family.

Christmas this year was spent at our home with Ryan's mom, dad, brother Kyle and his wife Brinly coming to visit us. We are so lucky that everything worked out to have some family with us to celebrate. Ryan only had two days off work so the extended family made the trek to come to our place- and if you ask any of them it was quite the drive in a packed car to accomodate our wish to have family around for Christmas! Thank you to all 4 of them for making the trip down here. It was wonderful to have a full home. Hope you are crazy enough to do it again sometime :)

I really wanted to keep it low-key as far as presents go and we did better than last year, but it seems like the boys still end up with way too much. We did one, combined gift from Santa, one from mom and dad, one from great-grandma, and one from Granny and Grandpa. That doesn't include the little things in their stockings like a toothbrush and gum that they love just as much.

If you asked Tyler what he wanted for Christmas this year he was consistant at saying, "A kitchen, a drawboard (easel), and more train tracks". Don't know why he stopped at three- but I'm glad because it worked out perfectly. The boys have a fun little kitchen to play in from Santa and so far it has actually worked to keep them out of my real kitchen a little more. And, as it would go, Tyler is playing more with Jake's toys and Jake is playing more with Tyler's.

We tried to teach Tyler more about Christmas really being about Baby Jesus and not just Santa. I think he kind of got it. Hopefully next year it will really sink in.

Speaking of the Christmas spirit, Tyler had the opportunity to go sing at an alzhiemer's home with his preschool class a few Mondays ago. He was all dressed up, so handsome, and then he got there and wouldn't sing a thing! He is so stubborn sometimes. Jake went on up and got a jingle bell to sing and we even had the rare occasion to have Ryan with us to see Tyler. I think Ty sang the last verse of the last song for the sweet old ladies. He perked up a little and helped hand out the cute little ginger bread men that the class made to give out.

Jake has loved all things Santa this year...except the real Santa. He will point out any santa he sees and yell "santa!" (think buddy the elf...it was super cute) and he was so excited the first time we saw Santa at the Bass Pro Shops...until he realized it was actually a real human. I wish there were words to describe the look on his face as we got closer and closer. Jake was still waving and thought it was so cool to see a real santa, until we got up there to talk to him, then Jake looked scared to death and kept telling me "done! done!". Needless to say, no pictures with Santa this year.

On top of the holidays I have been having more and more Doctors appointments to check on our latest and greatest. So far so good. We are still going to meet this little guy about three weeks early (depending on what an amnio says) and they are keeping a close eye on me to make sure that I am not in any danger. It will be a fine balancing act at the end between waiting for the baby to mature and keeping me safe- but I'm pretty sure this baby is huge already and knows he needs to be ready for an early appearance (or at least that's what I tell myself to excuse the excessive weight gain)

And Ryan has had a few appointments of his own. He has been fighting some unknown illness for the past few years and on our third doctor we have finally found out that he has been fighting a staph infection all this time. Thankfully it is fairly easily treated and we are about two weeks into treatment. We are hopeful that the right dose of antibiotics will do the trick this time around and we can be done finding new doctors and figuring out what has had him dragging for so long.

Ryan has also completed course work for his bachelor's degree...finally! We are so proud of him for sticking with it and making school, family, and a full time job look so easy. He finished up around December 10th and now we're just waiting for all the transcripts to be reviewed and transfered to the right school to be "officially" done...but we know we are. Not to mention that Ryan is a total smarty pants with nearly all A's. His degree will be in Business Managment with an emphasis in communications. We can't wait to see an actual BS degree in our hands! It has been a long time coming- but so worth it. Congrats baby!

Life is good, times are hard, and it is wonderful to have eachother. We are grateful for wonderful family offering love and support and two sweet, spunky, independent little boys who challenge us every day. We look forward to a new year of health, energy, and adventure with three boys. We hope this holiday season has found all of our friends and family doing well and enjoying the time together. I look forward to having some time to update with pictures but that would mean that the stars would have to align and I need to catch up big time so maybe next week ;)