Micah Crawling

Christmas Morning, 2008

Jack has caught on to the Santa bit. He was extremely giddy Christmas morning as we made him wait to walk downstairs to see if Santa came to our house. Miraculously, he did :) In full force. Combined with Santa's presents were 4 or 5 boxes of presents from family! Thank you to all for the things everyone sent! We opened one gift right off the bat and then had dodo's for breakfast. I think next year we'll have breakfast in the middle. Jack actually wanted to rest in between presents so we'll do breakfast as a breaking point next year if it gets too crazy again! Hopefully next year we can also come out to New York the weekend after or something to celebrate out of town! More good times to come!

A new thing for me this year was a real christmas tree! We picked it out and cut it ourselves the day before Micah was born. When we finally found the ONE, Brian started cutting it down and it started to snow. Just enough to make it a beautify scenery. Wish I would have a picture but the memory will be there forever. Jack complained about the cold a little but nothing could have ruined that moment. It'll be one of my favorites. Micah must have sensed the excitement too cuz he wanted out that next day! I wore long sleeves and gloves to do the lights, got a little itchy but it was a blast! I love the real tree tradition. May have to keep that one going.

Christmas Eve 2008

The Christmas chaos! This year marks a special marker in our families lives as it is grandma's first christmas as a survivor from ovarian cancer. Keep it up grandma! We had two christmas trees this year. The kids had thier tree in the family room and opened all of their presents first to keep them busy. Then the adults moved to the living room and had a little more quiet to open theirs. It worked out well and this year we were able to see a lot more gifts opened rather than the prior years histeria!

Micah enjoyed his first christmas as he slept through most of it. Between the fire, all the people in the house and everyone cuddling him, he was extra warm and comfortable to sleep most of the evening and be up for the night! Stinker wanted to catch Santa Clause already.

Christmas Competition

I'm back! Tax season is over and I'm ready and raring to catch up on all the missed blogging fun! Starting with Christmas and Winter 2008! Here is the 2nd Annual Christmas Food Competition. It changes every year, last year was Best Chocolate Cookies. The rules of the game are simple (not in any order), 1. You can never have made the item at any family event prior. So I can't use my artichoke dip! 2. The item has to be popular by the majority of the present group. i.e. no octopus tentacles...ew. 3. Taste 4. Presentation



1st Place: Sara Bacon wrapped Scallops in a white cream sauce.













2nd Place: Mom and Dad. Bacon wrapped shrimp. I think the green was a pesto sauce. (Seems like the judges favorites involved bacon...good to note)

3rd Place: Dan.
The bottom is a Mushroom and i think there was either a shrimp or a scallop in the center. The green is a pesto sauce.

4th Place: Erin. Baby red potatoes stuffed with a garlic herb cheese and topped with parsley. Went awesome with the kilbasa.

5th Place: Beer Battered Shrimp. Sean should have gotten points for the preparation time he spend sitting in the basement frying all of them!

6th Place: Brian He made a grilled vadelia onion dill dip with pita for dipping.

Uncle Den was the judge so I won't steal his thunder and disagree with what my ratings would have been :) Although the last place bird looks awesome in our family room! It was a lot of fun and can't wait to figure out what we're going to do next year! The discussion is already happening! I made a fried stuffed macaroni on top of it for fun. Turned out pretty good but I think I'd need to practice to bring it out at parties!

Cheer Up!

Cheer Up Grandma!
Good Times are ahead! It just takes a little longer sometimes :)

The Snuggler is waiting for his snuggle partner!

Micah Brian

MICAH BRIAN

Born December 8, 2008 @ 10:55 p.m.

He was due Friday but Monday at work I wasn't feeling so hot. I wasn't sure it was labor or at least not real labor so I worked and just kept an eye on things. By the afternoon I was questioning it to my co-workers. They all had plans of action in case I needed to rush to the hospital! By three they contractions were 10 minutes apart, nothing major, but I called my doctor and she said to go home and rest. Well, in the mean time there was freezing rain outside, expected to turn into snow. I stayed at work but had grandma and grandpa pick up Jack from daycare so I didn't have to have him jumping all over me that night. Five rolls around, still nothing notable happening but I thought I could stay near the hospital instead of going all the way home just in case. I started the drive on the side roads towards the hospital, by the time I'm there the contractions are 5 minutes apart. So I went in just to check if anything was happening, oops, 4.5 cm dialated. Mom was panicing that I was there alone so two seconds later Jean shows up. I call Brian, who just went to Minneapolis on the 3 o'clock flight for his flight bag that he needs to catch the next flight home. By the time I got my epidural I was around 8 cm's dialated. My doc. was happy with waiting because Monday night football was on. Brian managed to get a text to me from his plane saying they were circling MKE because of the snow. Jean was gearing up to help deliver Micah! But thankfully, he made it with no time to spare. The Doc. broke my water while Brian was changing out of his uniform and 12 minutes later we had our healthy baby boy!

A proud big brother. We had to convince him he wasn't a sister but he's been wonderful otherwise. Jack's only wanted to give him back once and we had to explain that covering his mouth isn't a good thing to a crying baby. Anytime he squeaks now I hear Jack either calling for me or mimicking the cry now.

To Cute!

Christmas is Coming!

We're continuing Great Grandmas tradition of helping decorate Granma and Grandpa's house after Thanksgiving. Every year all the cousins would decorate grandma's house in candy cane lane. Sean would do the lights outside, Dan I remember putting up the Dicken's villiage and Matt and I would sit in the basement and check lights and decorate the bar. Hopefully our kids can make some fun memories of their own and continue the tradition to their kids someday.

All these kids do is dance and run in circles when they're at grandma and grandpas!

We tried sledding. It was fun until the wind hit you. Here's some videos of the 5 times they went down the hill. After we realized it was freezing out (which didn't take long) we went to McD's to the playland. Much warmer!

Jack took a shot at ice skating. He did pretty good but lost his motivation quickly. That is until he saw some cute 7 year old girls and wanted to show off for them. Miraculously he was able to skate after that?!