Merry Christmas Eve!

I have not updated our blog in forever! Lately when I think of blogging, it is the last thing I feel like doing. I am not sure why, I am just not that interested. I go in phases. It has almost been a month, sooo I feel like it is time I updated.

We have been busy, but having fun with the holidays.

At the beginning of the month we went to Festival of Lights Parade. Brady really enjoyed all the lights, but he did get chilly near the end.

If you look closely, you can see Santa repelling down the building, not sure why he did it, but it was funny.


We also made Christmas cookies, and ate way too many of them.

Last year, we started what we hope is a tradition of being salvation army bell ringers. So this year we along with Jeremy's parents, sister, and her family, we were bell ringers again. Salvation army normally has to pay bell ringers, so when people volunteer it saves a ton of money. Also, cute kids, candy canes, and Christmas Carols, bring in a lot more money. We had a fun time, and can't wait to do it again next year.

Crazy Bunch of Bell ringers

Even scrooge did some bell ringing
We have gotten quite a bit of snow this year, and one day I bundled Brady up and let him play in it. The only thing he was interested in seemed to be eating the snow, but we still had fun. I can't wait to get him in the mountains and in a tube or sled.

Brady and I were supposed to work in his class at our church for one of the Christmas eve services, but we both have colds, and I felt that I am too contagious to take care of other kids. It all worked out because instead we went to church with the rest of the family for a nice Christmas eve service.

Brady and Cousins at Christmas Eve service

We have a ton of presents to open in the morning, and there are even more that aren't in the picture!

I will share pics of Brady and his many presents and I hope to do better with blogging in the future. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.

I am thankful for....

I am so thankful this Thanksgiving for so many things, but here are a few.

God
Everything I have to be thankful for is because of Jesus Christ. Even if I lose every earthly thing, I know I will have an eternity in heaven because of what Jesus did for me. That is what I am always most thankful for.
"What is impossible with men is possible with God." Luke 18:30

My Husband
Jeremy is an amazing husband and father and I am so thankful for him.
He works very hard, for our family, and never complains. If you asked him what he wanted for Christmas right now he would say, something for Brady or I, or our family. He is a wonderful provider, and gives us more than we need.
He loves me and knows me and is my best friend. He always makes me laugh. He is the best partner and I can not wait to spend the rest of my life with him.
He is an awesome dad. Brady loves his dad, and I am so grateful that he has such an amazing role model to look up too.

Brady
I always dreamed of being a mom, but I did not think it would be this great. Brady is sweet, loving, smart, healthy, strong, active, funny, and just plain adorable and I am so excited to see the boy he becomes.

Family
My mom is my second best friend, next to Jerm, and I am so glad she and I are so close. She is the reason why I look forward to having a daughter one day. With her and my dad, I have always known how loved I am, and they make me want to be a better parent.
My Dad is so loving and giving, and I always have fun when I am with him. I will always feel like Daddy's little girl, and I love it.
My Brother is crazy but I love him. He always makes me laugh, and is a great brother.
My in-laws are awesome. Everyone complains about their in-laws, but I am so grateful for mine. They help us out so much, and I have always felt part of the family, and loved. When I married Jerm, I gained another mom, dad, and sisters, and you can never have too much loving family members!
All of my fabulous grandparents, and extended family. We don't always get to see them so much, but it is great when we do.

Friends
I have some of the best friends, all around the country. They would do anything for me, and I would do the same, and I love the fun I have with them all.

I am also thankful for a wonderful house, a great city, warm beds, plenty of food, clean water, a healthy family, religious freedom, indoor plumbing, living in America, safety for my family, and sooo much more.

This season I can not help but think of those who are so much less fortunate around the world. Even if we are having a bad day, month, or year, we have so much more than most of the world. So I am thankful and I hope you are too. Happy Holidays!

Smart boy

Here is a quick video of my super smart baby doing a puzzle. He gets smarter and smarter and it just amazes me how much he learns and grows each day.

Brady doing a puzzle from Melissa Yeats on Vimeo.

Playroom

I have always wanted my child to have a wonderful playroom. I look in the pottery barn catalog and just dream. Our house currently does not really allow for a playroom. There just is not enough room. I love our house, but other than the master our rooms are not very large. We were not really thinking about all of the toys our child would have when we bought the house. Since Brady's room is not really big enough for his toys, we had all of his toys in the living room in a corner. They weren't that accessible, and he did not really play with them often. He actually does not really play with any of his toys, he would much rather play with measuring cups, or something else he found in the cabinets. We hardly ever use our office, the computer in the office is broken right now, so it is just an unused room. I had the brilliant idea to make it into a playroom for Brady.

We hope to possibly finish our basement, which would add an extra 1000 sq. ft. onto the house. When that happens, the guest bedroom/ office will be in the basement. Until then I managed to push everything into a corner in the office and allow for more room for Brady's toys. While in Houston we went to Ikea and I got a couple of cute things for the room. I am happy with the way it turned out, and it will be even better when/ if we are able to move the office to the basement.

I took these pictures before we did anything to the room. I also took these at its worst. I was going through all of our filing, sorting papers, and of course Brady had to help, so it was a mess.
We have a futon,

bookcase,

filing cabinet, and desk in the room.

These are pictures of the room as a playroom...
We had an old TV that Brady can use to watch his shows when get gets a bit older. We got these cute wall decals and Brady loves to point at all of the animals.

These are neat art work displays for future Brady masterpieces.

These curtains are super cute and match the decals on the wall. We also got some matching pillows.

A happy boy in his playroom, with half of his dinner on his face, and ready for a bath.

Brady playing, he is so skinny that his pants fall off so he goes without pants around the house most the time, which he loves.

So it is really cute, and Brady enjoys it. It may not be a pottery barn playroom, BUT how blessed are we that 1- we have a house, 2- we have an extra room, at all, and 3- Brady has enough toys to fill up a room!

Halloween

We got our moneys worth out of Brady's costume this year. He was a tiger, and the cutest little tiger I have ever seen.

The weekend before Halloween we went to a friends party. Jeremy and I were Jon and Kate and Brady was the tiger.


Friday night was our Harvest Festival at church. It was so crazy that we barely got any pictures. It was fun, but Brady was mostly interested in playing in his normal classroom with the toys.


For Halloween we had pizza at Nana's and then we did a little trick or treating with Brady's cousins. Toward the end of the evening he had the trick or treating part down, and was very hyper from all of his excitment and candy.

Worst Cookies Ever!

Last Thursday was one of those days where we were stuck inside due to the snow, and it was really too bad to go out. It was a perfect day for hot yummy chocolate chip cookies. I started to make the cookies, with Brady helping by pulling everything put of the cabinets, but after i had already started I noticed I was missing a few ingredients.

1st mistake - no butter, I only had 2 different kinds of margarine.
2nd mistake - no brown sugar, substituted with real sugar
3rd mistake - ran out of vanilla mid pour, used half almond extract
4th mistake - did not have high altitude directions

So this is how my cookies turned out...

So bad, not even edible, and I was left with a huge mess, from Brady and myself. The worst thing of all was that I still really wanted chocolate chip cookies, so we ate half of the Halloween candy instead. I guess I need to stick to the premade dough.

Houston Part 2

This is part two blog of our vacation to Houston, Texas in October.

Tuesday we woke up and headed to Richmond, on the west side of Houston, to Jeremy's grandparents house. We were treated to a nice lunch made by Jeremy's grandma, and we ate with Jeremy's grandparents, Uncle, and Brady's 2nd cousin Mason. Mason was quite shy that day, but we had a very nice time. Brady loved playing with his great-grandparents, and running around and being his crazy self. Sadly I forgot to take pictures that day, but I do have cute pics from our 1st visit when Brady was just 6 months old.

Tuesday afternoon we went to my dads and Brady and I went for a little swim. It was a little cold, but not too bad for OCTOBER! Crazy that you can go swimming in October in Houston. Afterwards we went to have some yummy pizza, and once again Brady had a great time with Grandpa and Grandma Karen.

Wednesday was a pretty low key day. We started with delicious Mornings Kolaches. Colorado does not have kolaches so we ate them a few times :). Afterward we went to visit with Jeremy's 92 year old Grandmother, who still lives alone! She is an amazing woman, but she loves to talk! Her house is not Brady friendly so we spent most of the time out doors while Jeremy visited with his Grandmother. It was wonderful to see her and she really is inspirational.

A side note, Brady is so blessed to have 4 Great-Grandmothers, and 3 Great-Grandfathers who are still living. 2 of his Great-Grandparents are in their 90s, and all of them live on their own, not in any sort of assisted living facility. Maybe this is not surprising now a days but think about 50 years ago. I am so glad he has so many Grandparents who love him, and I hope one day he realizes how special this is. Also maybe he has really good genes and will live to be really old!

Wednesday was date night and we were thrilled. We went to one of my favorites Churrascos for a fabulous dinner. We also tried to find a neat place for dessert, but we are not familiar with the area, and also it was a Wednesday night, so we had dessert at Katz's deli. It was so nice to get out and I am very thankful to our parents who are our baby sitters and give us our date nights.

Thursday, we were really looking forward too. I knew that what we had planned that day would be awesome, so I was really looking forward to it. We headed into town to meet with my aunt and my cousins who are 3 and 17months old, and also my Grandparents. We all piled in cars and went to the Houston Children's Museum. I remember how awesome the children's museum was when I was little, and knew that it had been re-done recently, but it was even better than expected. If you are in the area you must go. If we lived there we would have memberships and go all the time! Brady was in heaven. i think his favorties were the flow works and tot spot. We were there for hours and did not even see it all. Here is a video of Brady at the flow works part.

Brady at the Children's museum from Melissa Yeats on Vimeo.

We also went to lunch and a church pumpkin patch. The kids had a blast and were nice and tired after a fun day. Brady was so sweet giving Jordan a hug at the pumpkin patch.

Thursday was date night again, while Brady played with Grandma and Grandpa Max. This time we went on a double date with our friends Brad and Jessica, and then went to see some other friends' new baby.

Friday we visited with more family, Jeremy's Uncle Jerry and Aunt Carol. We always have a great time with them and Brady had fun playing with toys Jeremy remembered playing with as a boy. Here is a picture of Brady and his Great-Uncle Jerry playing together.

Friday afternoon Jeremy played golf while Grandma and I drug Brady to eat Vietnamese, (another thing you rarely find in CO) play with his Great-grandparents, and shopping. Friday night Brady and I relaxed and packed while Jeremy went out with friends.

Saturday sadly was our last day. We played at Grandpas in the morning and then headed to the airport. Brady and Zoey the dog loved playing with this big ball together.

It was a very busy, but fun trip. We had a blast, and miss everyone already, but it was nice to be home and get back to normal.

Houston part 1

I have not really been in the blogging mood lately. I have become a blurker (which is someone who reads blogs, but leaves no comments and does not do there own blog.) I just can't make myself do it. Well I have the motivation at the moment, so here I go.

Where we left off in blog land was our trip to Texas. Jeremy has 3 weeks of vacation time each year, and if he does not use it, he loses it. We have taken little trips around Colorado, but Jerm still had 2 weeks of vacation time left. We had not been down to Houston in a while, so we decided to wait for what we thought was cooler weather and we headed down in the beginning of October.

Brady did very well on the plane, I think because he sees that no one is allowed to really move around so I think he figured that he isn't either. We have decided that 2 hours is his limit for being still, though. The flight was about 2 1/2 hours long and the last 30 minutes were a little rough. The minute we landed though, he fell asleep. I guess he did not understand that he was supposed to sleep during the plane ride.

Every time we go back to Houston, I always think it will be cooler, and less humid, it never is. I always feel like I need gills just to breathe, but it was a nice change from the snow we were getting in Colorado.

Our first day we relaxed and had to get the special groceries for Brady that my mom did not have like whole milk, and diapers.

Friday we were taken on a special tour of NASA, and got to meet some of moms work friends. She took us to see alot of the simulators for the space station which was very neat.

We then met a friend for lunch, did a little shopping, and went to Ikea. I wanted to go to Ikea because I knew they would have the perfect items I was looking for to decorate Brady's playroom. That evening we had dinner at our friends Brad and Jessica's house. They have a 6 month old little boy, Hudson who we had not met yet and we were very excited to meet him. We were amazed at how well Hudson can crawl and get around at just 6 months. Brady and Hudson will be good friends, but he was of course more interested in their dog, than Hudson.

Saturday we got to have lunch with my Dad, Step mom, Brother, and Grandparents. Here is Uncle Andy and Brady.


Brady does not do well in restaurants, so we were very happy when he did so well. Saturday evening we went to spend time with even more friends, and had a great time visiting.

Sunday we had a BBQ with my moms side of the family. It was so nice of my mom and step dad to invite everyone over, because otherwise we might not of been able to see everyone. Brady enjoyed playing with his 2nd cousin Riley, who is almost two. He really enjoyed playing with her toys, which of course Riley did not like.

We also fed the ducks and almost lost a finger or two, those ducks are very aggressive.

Sunday evening Brady and I got to spend some time with two old friends of mine, Michelle and Tiffany. it was so great seeing them, and it made me wish I had more time to see them. Brady of course was on his worst behavior during dinner, so they just had to take my word for it that Brady is a good little boy.

Monday we planned on going to the beach. It was so gross and rainy outside, and I was scared that we wouldn't have much fun. But as soon as we got there, the sun came out, and it was beautiful. Brady had a blast. The mud like sand and water were right up his alley.

Brady at the beach from Melissa Yeats on Vimeo.

Monday evening was nice and relaxing with a yummy dinner, and bluebell of course for dessert.

Here are more pictures, part two will be coming soon.

Aspens

We chose the perfect day to go to hiking to view the beautiful changing colors of the aspen trees. We had a great time and even learned a little. Even though out of the ground there might look like there are seven aspen trees, under the ground there is one large root, and therefore it is one tree. I thought that was very interesting.

So we hiked, had a picnic, and ended the day with a little blue bell ice cream for dessert. Even though we had the hiking backpack for Brady, he decided to hike a lot of the way. The trees were beautiful and I plan on enlarging and framing some of the pictures and hanging them up. They are not as good as the ones you see in the art gallery's, but they are not hundreds of dollars either.

It was a wonderful day, and if you are ever in Colorado during the fall this is a must do.

We are still in Houston and have been very busy, we will update on all of our fun soon.

Airforce Game

Before Brady we used to go to every Air force football game. Two weeks ago was our first game in almost two years. It was also Brady's first football game. I think he had fun, but he ended up falling asleep midway through. The best part of Air force games is the jet fly overs, and parachuters.


Brady, Nana, and Jerm waiting for the game to start.

Plane with parachuters overhead

Parachuters

Parachuters landing on the field
We were disappointed because they used to have a parachuting falcon mascot, but I guess he has retired.

Brady sleeping on Nana, I guess the game was boring.

Staycation Vacation

A few weeks ago we decided to head out of town and have a nice family getaway. Jeremy was on call for Labor Day weekend so we did not get to do much, but the following weekend he had three days off so we headed to Breckenridge. Breckenridge is only 2 1/2 hours away, but it feels like a perfect getaway. It is beautiful, family friendly, extremely dog friendly, and one of the cheaper mountain towns. I LOVE Breckenridge. Out of all the mountain towns it is my favorite, in every season. I give the trip to Breckenridge four **** for family fun, but also four $$$$ for expensive!

Our trip was kinda last minute. The dog sitter did not get back to us about watching the girls til Thursday night at 9, so we made reservations Friday morning. It is a slow time for the mountain towns, no skiing and no summer activities, so thankfully we did not have a problem making last minute reservations.

We headed up on Friday afternoon, walked around town, took a slight detour to a much farther grocery store because we forgot where the on in Breck is, and then checked into our condo.
I loooved our condo. It was walking distance to main street, where all the shops and restaurants are, but it is also walking distance to the lifts, and skating rink. It had underground parking, access to hot tubs and heated pool, and a balcony that overlooks an area that has concerts and farmers markets. Not to mention the size and decor was nice, and the bathroom was nicer than ours at home. I decided I had to have it! We looked up how much one would cost that was a similar unit, and it was only $450,000! What!?! It was a one bedroom! Maybe one day, but we really enjoyed it in the meantime.
After exploring the condo, we had a unpleasant dinner due to an extremely cranky child, and then an after dinner show. The show involved a very drunk man and his girl friend who got into an argument. They were yelling and screaming at each other as we were walking by and the guy almost hit his girlfriend! We went back up to our condo, but we could still see and hear the fight, and the guy started throwing beers and yelling at friends at the restaurant below our condo. We figured his parents must own the restaurant or half of Breckenridge otherwise the cops would be called. But eventually they settled down, it was quite exciting at the time.

Saturday was pretty gross outside, cold and rainy, so we had to try to find things to do mostly indoors. We layed around and Jerm made breakfast, Brady had a morning nap, and we headed out to explore. My idea was to go on an old gold mine tour, but I was overruled and we went shopping to outlet stores instead and found some great deals on some fall clothes for Brady. Hey I can't argue with shopping. We also found some Bluebell ice cream and we were very excited about that. We then went to a Italian festival in nearby Keystone. It was small but Brady really enjoyed the bounce house, and they did have great meatballs. We ended the day with some dinner and yummy cookies for dessert.

Sunday we drove around and explored, went to the Children's museum, went to a farmers market, had a super yummy crepe, and headed home.

Now that I think about it, we mostly ate the entire weekend, it was so good though!

Over all it was a great weekend and just the thing we needed to relax. I love being able to go on little vacations even if it is just a few hours away.

*All of our pictures are candid these days, we have to get him in action, that is the reason he never looks at the camera*