Part Two: STL

Here are a bunch of random pictures from the STL portion of our Christmas adventures. I had to start with this one because it is SO cute! We spent a couple of days in St. Louis visiting family and friends before the official festivities began. We got to go to lunch with Dane's grandparents and his cousin. We also stopped by my Uncle Larry and Aunt Mickey's house to see the extensive model train set-up that my uncle has. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures from their house, which is too bad, because they had a great time.  I also got to see my friend Katie and her husband and step-daughter. It was a lot of shuttling the kids around, but they were troopers.

The day after we got into town, Tom and his fiance, Jen, got to my parents house and then Terry and Andrea. The boys were excited to see their aunts and uncles. It is rare that the Weber siblings are all under one roof, so it was a ton of fun. My mom bought a new version of Cranium and it was hilarious. All I can say is that my little brother portrays Brooke Shields like nobody's business! 

We celebrated our family Christmas on Christmas Eve with way too many presents and a delicious famous breakfast compliments of Chef dad. Then we headed to my Uncle John and Aunt Mary Alice's for the big Ryan gathering. The kids all had fun together and it was so nice to actually get to go to a family function! Plus, the rates we got at Hotel Weber were reasonable given the sweet accommodations.

 

Sibling Love

Tom and Jen

Terry and Andrea

The Sisters

The Family Picture

Sadly, this was the best of all of my attempts to get a picture of the boys

Gram and Gavin

True Joy (for the Thomas paper)

The Webers

The Ryan Clan (Yeah, I know)

Meredith and Gavin

Jen moonlights as a conductor

Gavin's new truck

All Aboard

Little Drummer Boy

Andrea won the award for best wrapping job

Presents!

Gavin's dog ears from his stocking

Liam digging in his stocking

Uncle Tommy and his Godson

Daddy and Liam

Chef Dad making Christmas breakfast of bacon, eggs and hashbrowns. (many chickens were forced to work overtime to supply the eggs for this meal)

Uncle Terry and Liam

Baby's first Christmas!

Early risers!

Still sleepy

No Papo! I do not want to come out from behind this table.

Lunch with Mamo and Dado

Gavin and Mamo

Gavin eating a loaf of bread

The Other Christmas Story: Part One

We didn't just celebrate Christmas this year, we celebrated Christmas four times. Yes, four times. I was actually off for the holiday. That makes two years in a row (keep in mind that last year I was about to birth Gavin, so we were stuck in KC at home preparing for G-day). I was really excited to get to go to St. Louis and Columbia and do it the way that I remember Christmas being like as a kid...lots of family, fun and general chaos. First we celebrated in KC. I wanted the boys to be excited about our little family Christmas and have it first to avoid overtired, overstimulated boys at the end of our trip. The Friday before Christmas we had dinner over at Lynn's house (Dane's aunt) just like we do most Fridays, but then we came home and opened presents. Liam was so excited it just got me pumped for what was to come. Here are some pictures of our little KC Christmas. Of course, these were the "mommy and daddy" presents, as it was too early for Santa.

Feeling Old (A blog shout out to Sheila)

On the first night that Dane, the boys and I were in STL for Xmas, we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Immediately after being seated, we ran into the Jones family. This is what made me feel so old. This family used to live in my old neighborhood that I spent probably thousands of hours babysitting for! I haven't seen the kids in quite some time. Their oldest is in high school. WHAT?! I started babysitting their oldest (I think) when he was about 6 weeks old...maybe younger. I cannot believe that he is in high school. Their second son is the age that I was when I started babysitting the first. This blows my mind. Their youngest does not remember me because when she came around I had sadly moved on to college. I even went to Mexico with these people on vacation.  It was so great to see the kids and how grown up they are, but made me simultaneously realize that I am getting old. Sheila told me that she has been checking our blog, and therefore, this is a shout out to her. Thanks for making me realize how old I must be if I am now the one looking for the babysitter! It was great to see you, Jason and the kids! I wanted to squeeze those boys but didn't want to scare them off since so much time has passed. Hope that you had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Christmas Card Photo Shoot

Why is it so hard to take a good picture of two children at the same time? This was the result of our photo shoot. I should have waited for Dane to be home to help me, but I got anxious and wanted to get it done. Below is a sampling of my quest for the perfect picture. I settled for less than perfect when I lost the crowd. You will just have to wait until they are sent to see the winner!

Trains at Union Station

Last weekend, we went down to Union Station with some friends of ours to see the model trains. Each holiday season, they build this huge display of model trains. Our friends have two kids as well. Aidan is about 4 months younger than Liam and they just had a baby girl over the summer, Maeve. It is nice to have friends with kids to hang out with. Liam and Aidan get along so well and they (of course) both  LOVE trains.

Liam and his friend Aidan looking at model trains down at Union Station. It was so cute they were so excited and walked around holding hands. There was so much to see, they just kept pointing things out to each other.

This was our attempt to take a nice family picture for our Christmas card...as you can see the boys were less than thrilled.

Gavin 11 months!

Dane telling Gavin about the trains

There was even a tree with Thomas ornaments all over it. The boys were jealous that it was not in their houses.

Christmas Decorations and First Snow

Liam entranced with a music box

Gavin seeing snow for the first time (that he remembers)

Pretty exciting stuff

My boys and the Christmas tree

Liam with Santa at the Luminary Walk

Who needs toys when there is tupperware?

We haven't posted in a couple of weeks. Not too much to catch up on. I worked on Thanksgiving so Dane spent it at home with the boys. It was a crazy day at work and needless to say it wasn't hard to come up with a million things to be thankful for, with #1 being that my children were not in the ICU. 

To make up for Dane and the boys missing Thanksgiving, I made a full turkey dinner, stuffing and all, the weekend following. It was a nice night. The boys ate it up and afterwards, we went to the Overland Park Arboretum for a Luminary walk. It was a mile walk through the arboretum which was candlelit. Very nice. There were also lots of christmas lights and decorations. There were carolers and bonfires. We had a great time despite the freezing rain. Liam even got a quick visit with Santa. I wasn't sure how he would do, be he was thrilled to jump on the jolly guy's lap and tell him all of the things that he wanted for Christmas. 

The boys have been doing well. Liam is just hilarious. He is so excited about Christmas coming. Everything is just generic Christmas...."mommy, there is christmas in there. Look at the christmas over there, etc." He talks about Santa everyday. I am sure that some of it is coming from daycare. We are working on potty training with him. It is tedious. He has his good days and his bad. I am working the Santa angle and told him that Santa wants his diapers and that he would bring him underwear in their place. He was excited and then asked if he could have Dora underwear...hmmm don't know how I can pull that off. I am pretty sure that they don't make Dora briefs for little boys. It is a work in progress. Not too much is new with him.

Then there is Gavin. Oh, Gavin is so lucky that he is cute. That poor baby has now had 8 ear infections. The most recent is being extremely stubborn for which he is on his 4th antibiotic in 5 weeks to try to treat. I think that he is going to get tubes. Our life (and his) is consumed with these ear infections, He is miserable, not sleeping and missing day care (which equals missed work/clinicals). He is such a happy guy until it is bedtime. He screams. He screams for 1-2 hrs sometimes. It is heartbreaking. We try to rock him, give him Motrin, rub his back, turn on his music. Nothing works. If you let him cry too long, he bangs on the wall....seriously. When you go in his room, he begs to be held and points to his doorway. What he ultimately wants is to come into our room/bed. We are not letting him. It will only breed bad habits that we do not want to start. So, we are letting him cry it out. We actually turned off the monitor the other night and we fell asleep to him screaming. Once we get rid of infection #8, I plan to seek an appt with ENT to discuss tubes. It is not a perfect science, there are risks, it may not work, but it is all that we have. I feel like we owe it to Gavin to make him more comfortable.  He is close to walking. He takes more steps everyday. Maybe he will be a walker by his birthday...which is just around the corner. I can't believe that he is going to be ONE! It has been a fast year.  

Dane and I are hanging in there. I just ended my semester and have a million things on my to-do list for my break. (what else is new). Dane is just as happy that my semester is over as I am, so he can try to get some serious work done. I have Christmas off so we will hopefully get to see lots of family. I think it will be such a fun year with the boys! Here are some recent pictures:

Gavin on his 1st Thanksgiving

One of Gavin's favorite pastimes is hanging out by the dishwasher. You never know what you are going to find in there. Unfortunately, not only does he have access to the dirty dishes, he has a tendency to go for the knives. 

I don't remember Liam ever playing in the kitchen cabinets. He just wasn't one of those babies. He actually played with toys. Gavin would be happy to live in the tupperware cabinet. He does not require toys to be happy. Because of his love of tupperware, it is as is Liam is reliving his infancy and enjoys spending time in the cabinets with his baby brother. They are pretty funny together these days. 

Maybe this should have been the Christmas card!