10 days in the Desert

As our Christmas gift this year, my mom flew our family out to Arizona for 10 days in the desert with her and my brother. We decided to go the week before Christmas because the Browns were playing the Cardinals on the 18th which is also my mom's birthday, nothing like killing 2 birds with 1 stone!

Any way, so we got to Arizona on the 17th and got the kids situated with my mom and brother and then Chris and I stayed in Phoenix for 2 days of quiet while the kids were off to Tucson. I have to say the 2 days of quiet was very much needed and appreciated! Chris and I got to sleep in, sort of, go out to dinner, hadn't done that since the summer, and got to go to a football game without having to figure out babysitters. It was all SO wonderful, hopefully we'll be able to do it again in the not too distant future, but more than likely it'll be at least 2 years away....

The rest of the trip was like having Christmas all week long for the kids! It seemed like everyday my mom had something planned and when she didn't have something planned we found something fun to do!

A look at some of the fun we had:
(I also posted all 221 pictures from the trip on Facebook.....my mom sure does like to take pictures!)

In-N-Out Burger for the first time......Yummmmm

U of A Basketball game! Go Cats!
(coincidentally they were playing Oakland, a team from Detroit)

There was LOTS of swimming in the pool...I mean hot tub :) The weather was too cold for pool swimming!


Baking Snicker Doodles
The boys helped to measure, mix ingredients, roll balls, and dip the dough into the cinnamon sugar, and they turned out great!


Much needed haircuts


Cowboy and Cowgirl time!
Rylan LOVED the cowboy boots, you'll see them a few more times below:)


Jewelry time with Mana


A visit from Michelle (my old coach)


A few of my favorite silly pictures in front of the Christmas tree



Sugar cookies this time! And Rylan wanted to join as well :)


Brenden by his Fathead and the Christmas Tree


Christmas Morning!

Stockings are stuffed to the limit!

Opening Presents

Nintendo 3ds for the boys, they must have one awesome Mana!

Rylan's own Jewelry, complete with clip on earings :)


Fun exploring in the Desert


And of course, BASKETBALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A very good time indeed! With so much fun and excitement for 10 days its now time to wind down and relax until the New Year that will bring even more chaos and craziness with moving and the arrival of quatro - our current name for the new baby :)

We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and has a Happy and Safe New Year!

Christmas Eve....Monkey Style

After a rocky start to the day we had a very nice Christmas Eve. The rocky start began with taking the boys to have them pick out and buy each other Christmas presents. They knew that Mana (my mom) was going to be giving them a present today and they both began whining that they wanted the presents they were buying each other instead - since they pretty much had figured out what the other had picked. We had to have a long talk on the way home about the meaning of Christmas. That Christmas is not about presents, but about appreciating what you have and the spirit of giving to others. For the most part, I think it started to sink in as they were much better behaved the rest of the day.

We spent the day making sugar cookies and decorating them, watching football - Yay Lions!, playing basketball, having a nice dinner of sloppy joes, and opening one present before bed. In the usual tradition of our family our one gift was new pajamas. And this year my mom went all out with Monkey PJs for everyone, including the grown ups.

The kids are now in bed with strict instructions to remain in their room until the alarm goes off at 7:30am or someone comes to get them, whichever comes first. We still have some wrapping to do tonight and we need to stuff the stockings. The cookies and milk are out and ready. We're just about ready for it to be Christmas. We hope that all of our family and friends are having a wonderful holiday as well. Merry Christmas to all! And to all a good night!

1st Visit with Santa

When we arrived on Saturday in Arizona my Mom and Brother took the kids with them down to Tucson for two days so Chris and I could have some quiet time away from them. One of the adventures my mom had planned was to take the kids to see Santa. Jake is nearly 7 years old, Brenden nearly 5, and Rylan 16 months and this would be the 1st visit for ALL of the Eby children to see Santa at the mall - GASP! I know everyone takes their kids to see Santa every year and I've seen tons of the cute baby photos where the kid is screaming in terror on Santa's lap. As cute as all of this is I have never had the desire to partake in this holiday tradition. And quite frankly the kids have never asked. In there defense, they may not have known until now this was possible. Its just that I hate the mall at Christmas and avoid it all costs. I have found that I prefer to do most of my Christmas shopping online. Now I'm not a completely awful mother, the boys have had Santa come to their preschool to give them books so its not like they were in some state of shock to see a Santa at the mall. I was told the adventure went well, they got to do some clothes shopping to keep them distracted while Uncle Chris waited in the long line. Now to see if this will become a new tradition or if they'll simply forget about it next year, fingers crossed its the latter ;)

We are having a wonderful time out here in Arizona and hope that everyone has a safe and happy holiday!

Merry Christmas!

Craziness x4

Remember in August when I was sad that Rylan was turning one and there would be no more babies? Well, the Universe this fall said SURPRISE! in a big, big way. That's right folks, Eby baby #4 will be arriving sometime this summer. The official due date is July 10th, but so far all of the kids have been early, Jake 10 days, Brenden 14 days, and Rylan 19 days, so this one could easily be a June baby. Of course Chris is already trying to madden me by telling me this is the one that is going to go past its due date, not sure if I'll be able to handle that. No matter, there will be a baby this summer!

So far everything has been going well. Hormone levels early on rose as they should and an ultrasound at 8 weeks revealed our newest peanut. This pregnancy has reminded me more of Jake and Brenden's than Rylan's. I have been super tired, TONS of cravings already - especially salty or spicy foods, only a little nausea which has already gone away for the most part, and the hair is already getting super thick. According to old wives tales it appears to be another boy, which is what I think. The Chinese gender predictor chart has predicted a girl - both boys were predicted to be girls and Rylan was predicted to be a boy - so to me that also suggests boy. We should be able to find out for sure sometime in February at the 18-20 week ultrasound.

This obviously came as a bit of shock to us, but we are thrilled none the less. The kids are all excited, well Rylan not so much since she doesn't quite understand yet :) We have told our families and are slowly leaking the news to friends. With this being my 4th the pooch is already in full swing so its going to be pretty hard to hide soon. Officially I am 11 weeks 3 days and I look closer to 4-5 months, how quickly the body remembers! I'll try my best to keep people updated throughout the pregnancy.

The Craziness that is The Eby Family is about to go up a notch!

Thanksgiving

I've hijacked Chris's computer again, this time to bring you the highlights from Thanksgiving.

This year we would host our first Thanksgiving. Since being married we have either done Thanksgiving at Chris's parents or at my mom's house. Not this year, with our crazy life we decided we really didn't want to go anywhere so we invited Chris's family - Pete, Ginger, Meredith, Todd, and Dylan.

Now I've made a Turkey before, but only once, so I had been chatting/emailing with my mom for a few weeks to make sure that I would have everything I needed and for all of her helpful hints to make sure the Turkey and fixings turned out just right. And I have to say, between the two of us I cooked one heck of a good meal - Thanks again mom! Ginger and Meredith also brought lots of goodies to add to the feast and all credit goes to Ginger for the gravy - I'm not a gravy person at all and figured I'd just screw it up. It was a wonderful meal created by a wonderful family from near and far :)

Everyone arrived in the afternoon a couple of hours before dinner time so the kids had lots of time to play and the adults had lots of time to catch up. The boys - Jake, Brenden, and Dylan - had lots of fun playing and it looks like they'll be creating all sorts of mischief for years to come. Even though Rylan is the only girl - for now, hopefully Meredith will be changing this - she was happy to be chasing the boys and had fun "reading" books with Dylan. It was a lot of fun to watch all of the kids together since it's not often they're all together.

Peter, Ginger, Meredith, Todd, and Dylan stayed the night at a nearby hotel and we all met for breakfast the next morning. It was a short, but very nice visit. Since we're moving and have a lot going on next year it'll probably be at least a couple of years before we host again, but I look forward to it! Hope everyone else had a happy and safe thanksgiving!

I'm back...sort of

Well I didn't get a new computer when Chris went to Cleveland, but Chris is out of town right now and left me his so I'm hijacking it and putting up a new post finally :)

Where to begin, where to begin... I guess I'll go to my camera and see what I can recall from the pictures I took.

Jenny's Market - Well I've always seen everyone's pictures of their kids in a pumpkin patch and so I thought maybe I should get in the action, this would mean I would actually have to GO to a pumpkin patch. Anyway, we needed to get out of our house for a few hours a couple of weeks before Halloween so we decided to take the kids to Jenny's Market to pick out pumpkins. We had and ok time. Actually, everyone except Brenden had a nice time and Brenden didn't like the smell from the animals so he was pretty grouchy until the very end when we got some cider. Both boys chose one pumpkin each and Chris and I decided that would be enough since we have to do the majority of the carving still. All in all a successful trip to the market and I finally got some pictures of the kids among pumpkins!

Two peas in a pod - Lately Rylan and Brenden have been doing some bonding. Since Jake is in school everyday, its just Brenden and Rylan together on Tuesday and Thursday when Brenden isn't at DK. Its been quite interesting to watch. I see a lot of similarities in the way Brenden and Jake used to interact when Brenden was one. There is a lot of copying by Rylan and a lot of not sharing and taking things from Rylan by Brenden. Overall, I think they get along pretty well and I think that when they are older they will likely be good friends as they are both complete goofs.

Tomboy - Every time I let Rylan outside the first thing she goes for is the hockey sticks in the garage. She's also a fan of the soccer balls and just running after the boys. She may not end up a total tomboy, but she'll certainly be able to hang with the boys whenever she needs to.

Halloween - I honestly don't know why kids go trick or treating any more. Both boys came home from school with FULL bags of candy and other goodies! Its unbelievable. Anyway, I guess a lot of the fun is getting dressed up and running around like a bunch of crazies with your friends in your neighborhood, which also decribes an average Wednesday or any other day around here :) The boys decided this year to be Transformers again. Jake would be Ironhide, which was a new one for him, and Brenden would be Optimus Prime for the 2nd year in a row. Unlike last year though, Brenden was quite willing to wear his Optimus mask for my pictures and trick or treating. I did not dress Rylan up in a costume, but I did have a Halloween onesie for her that my mom had sent. I know a lot of parents dress up their infant/toddler kids, but is my feeling that they need to be able to ask before I will spend the money and/or have the fight to get the costume on, you can think that's mean or wrong or whatever, but that's the way we roll around here. The boys had a lot of fun in the neighborhood and came home with more than enough candy and Rylan and I had a nice time handing out candy to the kids that came to our house. Another successful Halloween with enough candy to last us months once again!

Michigan Ladies - Now that the boys are older and pick out there clothes on their own I can rarely, if ever, get them to wear their Michigan gear on game days. Generally it only happens when they get to go to the games. But Rylan on the other hand, she still lets me pick her clothes out so its Michigan gear on game days! I decided this week I would pull out the jersey in honor of the 1st Michigan/Nebraska game as Big Ten opponents, and I have to say she made it look good!

So that's it for the pictures, but here's the other stuff:

Brenden is doing great in DK. Chris had his parent/teacher conference last week and the teacher had a glowing report. He is doing very good at learning to write/spell his name and has made a lot of friends. He only had a couple of areas to work on, like counting, but all in all he was exactly where he needs to be in order to be ready for Kindergarten in the fall. His teacher also noted how different Brenden was from Jake since she had Jake a couple of years ago. We already knew that, but its always funny to hear how surprised people are by how different they are :)

Jake has been doing well in school. He had a very good stretch of 2+ weeks of not missing recess for getting in trouble. That of course changed last week with him missing it 3 days in a row, but I'm trying to focus on the positive. We have his conference on Monday and I expect an overall good report with any issues being related to listening and being disruptive. He seems to be doing really well with his reading and math skills, he can read an entire book by himself, so I would be surprised if there were any academic issues, but who knows there's almost always a surprise or twist when Jake is involved ;)

Rylan is a nut. She may very well be the craziest of all the Eby kids. She is really enjoying life and growing like a weed. We have her 15th month check up on Monday so we'll see how she's doing in the stat department. She's not talking quite yet. She's trying to parrot us and does have a few signs, but its pretty hard to understand what she's saying still. I don't think she will be delayed as Brenden because she seems more interested in talking, but I think it'll still be a bit before we can really understand what she's trying to say. She does understand almost everything we tell her or ask her which is helping to reduce the tantrums and frustrations on both our parts.

Chris and I are pretty boring. He works and I coach. Right now he's in Hilton Head for a wedding for one of his cousins. Next week we'll be hosting Thanksgiving with Chris's parents and his sister and her family. Chris has a lot of work/travel over the next few weeks and then we'll all head out to Arizona to spend 10 days with my mom and brother for Christmas - SO excited for warm weather!

Nothing new to report on the moving situation. We have had A LOT of showings and some interest, but alas no offers. I'm hoping something will happen early in the new year, but I'm not holding my breath....

Computer problems

So a few weeks ago we had a random power outage and when we finally got power back the computer wouldn't turn on. Chris took it in to be looked at, but no luck. The computer was too old to be saved without spending about the same as a new computer would be. So I have been without a computer except for using Chris's at night.

So I have lots of great pictures and stuff to share, but I have to wait until we get a new computer before I can put it all up. Chris is going to Cleveland soon and they have some old computers in his office there so hopefully one of those will work for us until we can figure something else out.

Until then I'll leave you with this, we took the kids to Jenny's Market a few weeks ago to get pumpkins to carve and other yummy treats and the boys were Transformers (again) for Halloween and Rylan was her cute self :) As soon as I can I will post pictures and more!