December 2013 in Columbus-Visiting Friends and Family

All these Christmas posts are really getting me (Katie is writing this one) excited for Christmas this year.  To follow up on the most recent post, after we spent some time in Eaton, we went to Columbus for a few days to see friends and Peter and his family.
We first went to see Peter and Becca and the kids and wow it is crazy how time is flying and how much older they are all getting.  Little Tommy was 9 years old last Christmas. It was fun seeing them again and opening presents.

Afterwords, we went to see Katie's college friends, Sarah, Cathy, Lisa, Ashley with husbands and kids.  Cathy and Joey had just moved into a new house in Plain City (outside of Dublin) and had just had new baby, Max.  It was so much fun seeing everyone and meeting the newest Labyrinth baby.  Brady loved chasing their dog around the table, the kids had a dance party in the living room to Gangnam Style and then Brady had a party in the bath tub with Lily and Zane.

From Left to Right (Elliot, Brady, Zane, Lily, Parker)
Elliot and Parker are twins born a week after Brady, Zane and Lily are year older than Brady and the twins.

Just three bengals fans, getting along.

And we also made some time to stop over and see our good friends, the Rost's who had also just had their 2nd child.  Brady and their son Will are about a year apart and Brady loved his train table.

Christmas 2013 in Ohio

We made our way to Cincinnati for Christmas at the Mowry's after Charlie wrapped everything up for work.  In what has become an annual tradition, we went to the Wyoming Presbyterian Church for Christmas Eve.  Brady was not nearly as quiet as he had been the year before; instead of falling asleep on Charlie, we had to bring him out to the play area as he was trying to squirm around and show off his newfound powers of walking!

Brady also got to see some old Wyoming folks - like the Bartells, Charlie's friend's parents.  Paul was playing the violin as part of the service - and Brady was intrigued by that!

After church we continued the tradition of dinner at the Mowry's house.  The Caricos, Grumpa, Grandma Dorothy, Abby and us all enjoyed a nice meal put together by Leslie (and Tom said the prayer!).

Christmas morning, we woke up and opened presents.  This was the first time Brady was mobile and really able to participate.  He didn't completely understand everything - the act of opening the presents often was more exciting than the present itself!

Of course, a fun time was had by all...

Movies are the popular theme for Christmas night for us; Charlie and Mom went to the Hobbit, while the rest of the family went to see Saving Mr. Banks - the Disney movie about the Mary Poppins author.  

The next day, we went to Eaton for Christmas with the Caricos.  Brady loved his presents, there as well.  He particularly liked the stuffed animal dog he got - it was much bigger than him!

Also, he really liked playing with things at Bob and Sue's house.  The train tracks around the Christmas tree were a harbinger of things to come as far as his love of trains!  He also loved playing the piano downstairs, and dancing to the TV upstairs!

We stayed in Eaton for a few days, then headed to Columbus to see some friends up there.  But that's for the next post!

2013 Holiday season in Chicago

Unlike Thanksgiving last year, we did get the chance to travel back to Ohio for the Christmas holidays.  However for this post - we did put up our Christmas tree in our house in Chicago, and the standard stockings to decorate the house.

Brady's big present from us was his own chair!  He also got to open a few other presents while we were still in Chicago.

We got ourselves a brand new couch - which you can see behind Brady's chair here.

We also went to see Santa at Water Tower Mall the weekend before Christmas.  Brady actually did pretty well and didn't freak out.

After the trip to the mall, however, he was very exhausted!

It was good to catch up on some rest, though - we were heading to Ohio for Christmas 2 days later!

Thanksgiving 2013

Continuing with out catch up on the blog - Thanksgiving last year is next.  We didn't travel to Ohio for Thanksgiving last year, as we both were pretty busy at work.  But we did get some good family time, and got the chance to hang out with friends here in Chicago.  We spent the holiday with Charlie's friend Jason.  Jason's girlfriend, Sandy, had us and another couple over.

Here's Jason in the kitchen - apparently he pitched in appropriately - though Sandy deserved the most kudos for hosting! :)

Sandy's heat went out earlier in the day - but we made excellent use of space heaters and had a great meal.  Brady loved it as well!

Unfortunately, Brady wasn't feeling too great at the start of the day, and while he perked up when the food came out, we could tell he was pretty sick later on in the evening.  His temperature got pretty high, and since it was a holiday, we actually took him to the hospital.  Everything turned out fine; he was feeling better by Saturday.  Thanksgiving weekend actually wasn't the worst time for him to get sick - we just hung out at home the rest of the weekend and he didn't have to miss daycare or anything. We did have to leave the Thanksgiving dinner a little early, though.  But we had a great time - we're still unsure of what we'll do for Thanksgiving this year, but hopefully Brady will have a little better go of it!

November 2013

We are practically a whole year behind on this blog, but we are going to try to get caught up since we have done all these fun things with Brady and our family - and it will be nice to document it.  We'll try to do most of these posts by month.  This one is for November.

On the weekend of November 9th, we went back to Columbus for a wedding with some KPMG Columbus friends.  One of Charlie's old bosses, Mike, was getting married and it was a blast because our entire old KPMG crew was there.   Katie's parents came up to Chicago to stay with Brady and Griffey.  I wish we had some pictures from this night, but unfortunately we couldn't only find this one.

The next weekend - November 16th - Charlie's parents came up and got us all tickets to the Northwestern vs. Michigan football game.  We got a babysitter for Brady and the 4 of us took the "El" up to Evanston for the game.

All I remember is the weather turned very cold and rainy and it was a close but ugly game.  Charlie had to help with the recap - but basically, we basically neither team got close to scoring a touchdown and Michigan kicked a field goal as time expired to tie the game 9-9.  That meant overtime.  Katie (and even Michigan graduate Leslie!) were really just hoping that the game didn't go into overtime so that we could get out of the rain.  But overtime turned out to be very exciting, and Michigan ended up winning 27-19 in triple overtime!  It was an interesting experience - there were as many Michigan fans there as Northwestern fans, which is about what Charlie remembered from the time he went to an Ohio State game in Evanston.

On the way back, there were a lot of people getting on the El and somehow we lost Tom.   He got stuck behind a group of people and didn't make it on the same train as us.   Luckily, he found his way back home, but we were worried about him for a while.