Happy 3rd Birthday, Rudy!!!

We have been celebrating Rudy's 3rd birthday for almost a month now, and he still hasn't had his birthday party!

Please excuse the spaghetti face...

On his birthday, January 6th, we went out to dinner at the Bass Pro Shop in Richmond. It was fantastic and I would (and do) recommend it to everyone!!! There is a huge salt water fish tank in the restaurant, which kept the kids' attention really nicely. There was one black fish that swims the length of the tank non-stop, so the waitress told us that they nicknamed him "Phelps". :)

Rudy was terrified of this bear...

Jacob wasn't exactly thrilled that I made him stand next to it so I could take his picture.

The store has a laser hunting area thing...again, kids (and adults) LOVED it!

LOVE it when Rudy walks around with his hands in his pockets. :)

Today we gave Rudy his big present. Needless to say, he's thrilled with it. His reaction when he first saw it is priceless (see video below). He rode it around outside until his little hands were frozen and then came inside and told me, "I like my tractor."

Boys and their Toys

Stay tuned for pictures from Rudy's pool party in a couple weeks....

We got ripped off!!!

We decided to take the kids down to the Children's Museum in Richmond. MAN!!! What a rip-off!!! The admission fee was $8 per person (yeah, that's right...$8 for anyone over the age of 1). So the total for the 4 of us was $32. The kids had an ok time, but was it worth $32.....H*ll NO!!! But, we did get some good pictures...

After paying all that money to get in, we didn't have enough to get home, so Jeremy had

to get a loan from the National Bank of Jacob.

Cute Story

Jacob and I have been working on writing his ABC's and I bought him a dry erase book that goes through all the letters of the alphabet. He had traced all the letters and we were going through one by one and he was tellling me what each letter was. We got to "g" and I said a few words so that he would know it was a "g", like Gann, girl, etc.... I asked him, "What letter makes the "g" sound?"...he was SOOOOO proud and yelled out "EIGHT!!!!" It was precious. I still can't keep from laughing every time I think about it.

A Home-made Thank You Blog

Now that this semester is over, I definitely need to say THANK YOU to everyone who helped out during the very busy, stressful time. Thank you to all of the family and friends who babysat (many times at the last minute) and Thank you for all of the support in general. I wouldn't have been able to concentrate and get A's without all of the help and knowing that my boys were in safe hands. We are very lucky to have such supportive families and we love you all!

Merry Christmas!!!

Getting to Christmas was extremely busy and hectic, but well worth the wait. We never did decorate the house or even get a single ornament on the tree, but we all had a wonderful day and now have some fun (and not so fun) memories from this year. Meredith and Steven were missing because Steven was in the hospital wih RSV, but we sent his presents to the hospital so that he could still have fun opening and have some new toys to keep him occupied.

We LOVE having the Gaylers here for the holidays. The boys are always so happy see Aidan. It seems like the 3 of them would stay up all night playing if we didn't force them to go to bed. One morning, all of the kids woke up before us, so when I got up I found out that Aidan had taught the boys about strangers. Jacob let me know that he would be happy to shoot any stranger that he comes across. :)

Amanda and I had an awesome time looking at wedding dresses with Carrie. It's been a long time since I've laughed that hard. I think that any time you get more than one "Gann" in a room, you know it's gonna be a good time.

I have to give myself props on Jeremy's stocking. It may be hard to see, but I did an excellent free-hand, puff paint Redskins emblem.

As I sit here and blog, Jacob is sitting with me and insists that I type "Christmas is good"...so, there you go.

Of all the presents that Rudy got, one of his favorites is definitely this ball.

Joe's face after receiving the news that there's another grandbaby on the way...

Kids coming downstairs on X-mas morning...

Annual X-mas Party

The Christmas party at Grandma and Grandad's was great, as usual. The kid's were so excited when Santa called their names to come up and receive their gifts. Everyone was impressed with the gift wrapping on Rudy's dinosaur and Jacob had been asking Santa for Moon Sand for some time, so both kids were very happy(and very tired) by the end of the night.

Jacob's First School Performance

...and he actually sang this time. I had to bribe him with a treat, but it worked. I DID see him singing and we were all so proud of him!!! Jacob played a cow and I'm not exactly sure what he did as a cow, but whatever it was, it was wonderful! All of his grandparents came out to support him and I could see that he was very, very excited to see everyone.

There were so many families there that it was very hard to see anything and impossible to get a good picture, but somehow Jake saw Jeremy and I in the back of the room and we just kept waving back and forth during the play. I was so tickled that he was able to see us in that huge crowd of people. I am definitely looking forward to many, many more school plays.

Jake and his teacher, Ms. Lavonne