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!

Brady's First Tee-Ball Practice

Yep they have tee-ball for two year olds and of course we signed Brady up to start baseball early.

He was a little unsure at first but after a few tries, we could tell he was learning and paying attention to the coaches more.  It was so adorable.

Follow this link for the videos that we took.  

Click here to view this video

Visit from Sarah and John - Nov 2nd

We are going way back in time to last fall for this blog post to catch up and document a very fun weekend.  Last November 2nd weekend, our good friends Sarah and John came to stay with us.  Katie and Sarah were roommates for many years before we both got married.  They came in on Friday while we were both at work and walked around Chicago till we got home from work.  One of Sarah's friends from Vet school worked at the Shedd Aquarium so she got us all tickets for Saturday.  This was our first time to the Aquarium and we had a great time.  Brady had just learned walk a few weeks ago so he was loving exploring the Aquarium from a new vantage point.  He loved the penguins and sting-rays and the dolphin show.

(we were still doing some knee walking though at this point :)

Afterwords, we went back to the apartment to take naps and watch the Ohio State game.   Saturday evening, we got a babysitter so that we could have an adults night out in Roscoe Village.  We had a big group for dinner at Piazza Bella , which is a great italian place just a few blocks from our place.  Our other college girlfriends, Kate and Rachel came and one of Sarah's sorority sisters came too.  After dinner we went to the Village Tap bar across the street where one of Kate's friends was having a birthday party.  Great bar with a really good beer list, including a Creme Brulee beer.  We didn't stay out as late as we used to since we had to get back for the babysitter, but we had a great time catching up on old times.

Turning 2!

Two years ago, baby Brayden was born after nearly a full day of labor!  It's been amazing and special watching him figure out the world over these past 2 years!  Happy birthday, Brady - mommy, daddy and Griffey all love you!

Happy 4th of July

This year we were not quite sure what to do because we wanted Brady to see his first fireworks but we were not sure if he could stay up long enough...but who were we kidding, this kid is a trooper.  Our friends Bryan and Kristen came to Chicago to visit Bryan's parents out in the suburbs and invited us to come out there and hang out.  They have a son, Will, who is 1 year older than Brady and a recent addition to their family, Kate, who was 6 months old.  Brady and Will seemed to have a great time.  Bryan's parents had lots of fun toys that Brady could not get enough of.  They had borrowed a pink cadillac from a neighbor that had a motor and a real stereo.  Brady thought it was awesome.  He couldn't reach the pedal, so the neighbor girl came over and took him for a spin.  He loved it until he looked back and saw how far he had gotten from mommy and daddy and started screaming to get out.  The fire truck was also a favorite and had no chance of scaring him.

   After dinner they had a dance off on the patio...which we all enjoyed.

After we ate some hot dogs and burgers, we sat outside and there were lots of neighbors setting off fireworks.  These were Brady's first fireworks because at only 11 months old last year, he definitely couldn't stay up this late.  We would point them out to Brady and soon he started mimicking us and pointing and saying "oh firework" each time he saw one.  It was a really nice evening and we stayed till 11pm with Brady just relaxing on mommy's lap.  He crashed in the car and luckily slept in alittle bit in the morning.  We are so blessed to have such a great little boy.  Overall, a great 4th of July.