So much to be thankful for

We had a lowkey Thanksgiving.  Really, is there any other kind when you are nine months pregnant?

We had big plans to go into Philadelphia for the big parade but when we heard that the weather was supposed to be extra chilly and possibly so windy the balloons couldn't go up.  So we made the executive decision to skip the parade in favor of have Isaac pile into the bed and watch the parade from under the covers while gorging ourselves on cream cheese covered cinnamon rolls.  

We picked up Ryan's parents and headed out to my parent's house.  Football was watched, pie was eaten, and belts were loosened.  

We checked in with family near and far.  Here is my cute pregnant sister in law and Ryan's brother Patrick.  It is only a few more weeks till my first nephew arrives!

We were completely stuffed and tired when we arrived home.  We had just collapsed in bed, utterly exhausted when Ryan realized we had left his keys at my parents house: keys that he would need for work the next day. Because this is our life:  missing keys.  We called my parents and my dad agreed to meet us halfway, so we didn't have to drive a whole hour back to Leola.  My parents are so kind to us.

Since the meeting spot is a Walmart parking lot and things didn't look too crazy (it was about ten at night) we decided to stop in and see if they still happened to have a deal we had seen advertised.  They were out of Disney Xfinity but they were having a great sale on another item on Isaac's Christmas list, so we snatched that up.  Isaac's shopping is officially done!

It was a good time to relax, enjoy family and to think about all that we have been blessed with.   In no particular order:

• My wonderful family.  Especially my parents who have helped me so much this year (and every year).
• My extended family and in-laws.  Ryan's family remind me a lot of my own-- we are both the oldest of four.  I have really enjoyed getting to know his siblings and parents better this past year.  
• Our cozy townhouse.  Although sometimes it seems like it is positively bursting at the seams, it is the perfect place for us to call home.   
• Two fairly reliable cars.
• Ryan's job.  It was a rough year with a few really lousy jobs.  It is nice for him to have a job where he feels appreciated, that he really enjoys, and where is making good money.

Have a wonderful weekend!

I am still alive

I am still alive, just seems like there has been too much going on to stay on top of the blog.  I will do a pregnancy update tomorrow.  In the meantime, here is what is going down in the Stephenson-Horne household. 

Isaac really enjoyed his week at Scout Camp.  Tom had told Isaac about shooting BB guns and I guess he asked about it the very first day at camp.  He also seemed to enjoy swimming and archery.  I have been assigned to be a new Den Leader and thus, was obligated to go up to Scout Camp for a day.  I was pretty much terrified and forced Ryan to come along.  Those scout moms in hiking boots and frame packs intimidate the heck out of me, and I wasn't facing them alone.  It didn't exactly get closer to my comfort zone when we arrive because it turned out we were in charge of knots and... we don't know how to tie any knots...

Our first session was kind of rough, but we had an hour off after the next group and we coerced a den chief into helping us practice them over and over and over.  The second session went much better, although I never really got the hang of bowline knot.  

We had a very low key fourth of July.  Isaac had been spending a few days with my mother, so I drove out to meet them.  I mostly played with him for the morning (and worked on IEPs) and we watched an old school movie I remembered from my childhood 3 Ninjas.  Isaac was a fan.  His dad asked to change up his visitation schedule and he took him Thursday night.

This left Ryan and I to head into a neighboring town to see some fireworks.  It wasn't as fancy as Philly fireworks, but it was nice none the less.

When we got Isaac back, we decided to head up to Six Flags for the rest of the day.  It was unbearably hot (like 100 degrees) and the car even started to overheat on the way there, but we still had a lot of fun nonetheless.  Ryan was great to pick me up free cups of ice water at every concession stand we passed which helped a lot.

Jason Derulo was having a free concert there so we found a shady spot to enjoy it.  Isaac is very into dancing and choreography, so I think he enjoyed the show for that aspect.  Afterwards, there was enough time for Isaac and Ryan to hit up a few rides.  Ryan even hit up the rides that he normally avoids (like the spinning one below) so that Isaac didn't have to ride them alone, since I am out for the count on the everything except the carousel.

I randomly won a 50 dollar Sephora gift card from a blog giveaway and I went to spend my money the other day.  It has been a while since I treated myself to something totally self indulgent like make-up, so it was too hard to decide.  Among other things, I finally got a Tarte Amazonian clay blush (on my wishlist forever).  I got it in the color Exposed.  It is really nice!

The only other big thing is that Ryan and I booked our honeymoon cruise and are heading out July 18.  We leave from Miami and make two stops: Key West and Cozumel.  Then, when we return, Ryan and I will be spending an extra day in Miami before we fly home.  We are SO EXCITED. We keep watching youtube movies that other people have shot on our cruise, researching our ports, possible excursions and restaurants.  I am really looking forward to a few days away to travel and relax.  The countdown is on!

More Christmas!

These pictures are courtesy of my sister Jennifer! She and Drew have been in town for several weeks and it has been so fun.

Isaac has an obsession with sports and fitness. Everyone enjoyed coming up with crazy excercises for Isaac to do. Here he is laughing his way through some wall sits.

 

 

He also got out the shovel and helped clear the driveway of snow on Christmas Eve.

As a Christmas present they took Isaac out for a day.  They started out with breakfast at the Waffle House.

 

 

Then they took him to a rock gym!

He is rocking his new Christmas clothes and hat.

 

 

They said he got a little nervous when he looked down and saw how far up the wall he had climbed, but overall, he did great.

 

 

Thanks Drew and Jen for a great Christmas present!

 

Favorite Holiday

We had a wonderful Christmas and I hope you did too.  Ryan, Isaac and I spent Christmas Eve with my family.  Jenny and Drew have been here for several weeks and Joe slept over.  Tom and Kelly Ann joined us later during the day on Christmas.

My mom has so many fun Christmas decorations.  She collects Nativities and has tons of them.  It is always comforting to go home and see all of the familiar holiday decorations.  Here are a small sampling of her collection.

Christmas Eve was a low key night.  We were going to do the light show at Hershey, but there was actually too much snow falling.  We set off but turned around after a few miles, since the roads were quite slippery.

Isaac did a great job waiting until 7:00 until her got up (despite a false alarm when he misread the clock at 1:00 in the morning). Isaac got me so many thoughtful presents and it was adorable because he could barely wait to give them to me.  I had to beg him to wait until Christmas.  This stamped coaster was my favorite gift from him:

 

Isaac made himself photographer for a while and here are the blurry results:

Ryan liked all of his gifts, but especially his tortilla pan set:

My parents got us a zoo membership and Ryan got me the Up fitness band, a beautiful pearl necklace and a bunch of Lush products.  Isaac was spoiled with helmets, jerseys, sports posters, and books. 

I also forgot to take pictures, but a few days after Christmas we had Ryan's kids over to open their presents from us.  His kids surprised me and Isaac with really sweet, thoughtful presents.  Ryan's parents and sister Katherine ended up dropping by and then later on his brother and his wife Patrick stopped by.  Patrick's present to Ryan was converting some hilarious home movies from VHS to DVD.  Ryan's siblings and cousins put together some hilarious "mystery" movies complete with soundtracks and previews.  We watched the movies together and it was HILARIOUS.  It was a really fun night with his family.

We are so lucky and so blessed!  Merry Christmas!!

here we go...

I have been so busy spending time with family (Drew and Jenny are here-- hurray!), preparing for the holidays, trying to keep on top of a mountain of IEPs and other work stuff, and just feeling sad and depressed after the Sandy Hook thing. 

Sorry to neglect you little blog. I have posted like two times in December. 

Ryan, Isaac and I went to Washington D.C. with my parents and Jenny and Drew.  We went to the Smithsonian for a little bit (the Museum of American History).  We only saw a little bit of what there is to see there but we really enjoyed it. 

A highlight for Ryan was seeing Julia Child's kitchen which is everything from her home reassembled in the Smithsonian.  He was a little starstruck.

A highlight of the trip for me was when Isaac recognized the Washington Monument and then said to me "Mom, are we near the place where Martin Luther King gave his speech?" I welled up a little with mom pride.  There is so much to see and of course we only had time to do a little, so Ryan and I are already trying to schedule a return trip.  After dinner we went to the Washington D.C. Temple to see the Nativity Display and check out the lights.  As usual, the temple looked magical.

 The visitor's center was more crowded than I have ever seen it.  Hundreds and hundreds of people crammed in there.  We did manage to get tickets to hear a free Christmas concert that we all enjoyed.  This is the second year we have done a Christmas time trip to D.C.  It is becoming a nice little tradition. 

We made it through the end of the school year and now we can breathe a sigh of relief that we are on vacation.  Isaac has been rocking a lot of sports gear (including batting gloves to school, see evidence below).  His class had a secret santa gift exchange and he made out pretty well.  His new thing is that I "keep treating him like he is four".  I am trying to remember that he is growing up, but it's hard.  He will always be my baby.

I enjoyed my first Christmas at my new school.  This is what our principal gave us for Christmas:

 

So that was pretty cool.

Another Christmas tradition my family has is we all go to People's Light and Theater Company and see the Christmas Panto.  It is always hilarious with cross dressing, singing, candy, audience participation and local references.  My brother Joe wasn't able to make it, so my mom invited Ryan's daughter Gabby to come with us, since it happened to be her sixth birthday.  She did a great job and she really loved it (even declaring she wanted to it again for her birthday next year).  Check out her sequined Kelly Kitty shoes.  Pretty stylish.

Oh yeah, and my sister got me this super cute purse for my birthday.

 

I think that's the update.  Happy Christmas!

 

Frankenstorm is coming!

So if you are anywhere near theeast coast at all you know it's all about getting ready for Hurricane Sandy right now.  Isaac already has school cancelled for Monday and Tuesday (as usual, my school district is still in session, despite the govenor declaring PA to be in a state of emergency). 

I learned a new fact about Ryan: he is obsessed with being prepared for extreme weather conditions.  He was concerned that I have no flashlights in my house.  Then I remembered that my mom had made me and Isaac 72 hour kits as a Christmas present about 5 years ago and I had only a vague notion of where I had store them and no idea what was in them.  So we drug them upstairs and went through them.

These are what they look like:

I believe most of these things were ordered from a website called The Ready Store.  Like I said, they were a gift from my mom, so I am not too sure about pricing or anything like that. 

 I will show you what we discovered in the kits. 

Panchos, hand warmers, candy (I am assuming to keep your blood sugar up, but the candy in my kit was all melted), little flash light, matches, emergency blanket,  a card with survival tips. There was also water purifiying tablets, but I don't see them in this picture. Then  the top the photo are pouches of drinking water and, this gross block of lard or something that you can break pieces off and eat every few hours. 

SO GROSS.  I would have to be in some serious dire straights to eat that. 

The only thing in the front pocket of the backpack was this whistle.

The other backpack was FILLED with all kinds of supplies.  There was this little tent.  Who knows how to set it up, but I guess if we really needed shelter this could do in a pinch...

There was this candle that burns for 100 hours-- could be pretty handy to have this week as I am sure we will lose power at some point.

This backpack was filled with food...

More candy... tons of MRE in those brown boxes and lots of random little foil packets of foods.  The one pictures above is "fortified snack bread"... whatever the heck that is.  I am sure if I am hungry enough, I would eat it.

Most of this looked totally disgusting... but I was kind of excited about those little squarish packets on the top right.  They are COOKIES.  Does my mom know me or what?  There were also lots of these little kits baggies with napkins and plastic silverware.

 More first aid supplies...

More handwarmers...

And finally, the ever important roll of TP. 

I was feeling rather prepared when Ryan discovered another rolling suitcase in my garage that turned out to be a part of the kit too.  BONUS.

The outside pocket had another roll of toilet paper.  And this is what we saw when we opened it up:



It looked like food we might actually WANT to eat!!!

Unfortuneatly, pretty much all of the food was expired.  This is the pile of stuff we had to throw out: apple sauce, Chef Boyardee, granola bars, juice boxes, cereal, canned tuna and chicken salad. The next picture shows the stuff we were able to save:

Pretty self explanatory except for the little bottle. 

So I definitely need to replace the food that actually looks APPETIZING that expired.  Ryan and I also discussed adding a heavy duty flashlight, a change of clothes for each family member, possibly some cash in case ATMS are down, and some additional batteries.

What do you do to be prepared in extreme weather?



A few randoms

* Ryan and I were so proud of ourselves for getting his brother and sister in law the seven piece cansister set from their registery.  They texted Ryan tonight that it only came with four canisters.  Oops.  #awkward.

*We went up to Dorney Park for the last of the season this weekend. We have sure gotten our money's worth out of our season passes (thanks Ryan!) They had Boo Blast during the day and then at seven at night it turns into Haunt (super scary).  Isaac and I were taking off around 6 (a full HOUR before it was supposed to switch over to scary) and we stopped to use the bathroom.  When he came out there was a crazy looking man in a costume who absolutely terified Isaac.

 He began to cry right then and there and it took about 20 minutes for him to calm down.  He tossed and turned in his bed until after midnight that night until I finally let him come sleep with me.  Poor kid. 

* We had waffles and eggs for dinner the other night.  I'm broke and lazy.  It was a huge hit.  No points for domesticity were scored, but we all enjoyed it.  We also had dinner with my parents on Sunday.  Then my mom came in last night (Tuesday) and watched Isaac so Ryan and I could have a date night.  We have a Groupon that expires soon that we have been trying to use for AGES.  Everytime we go to use it something happens and we can't.  Same thing happened last night.  So we decided to just go out to eat and we stuffed ourselves SILLY at PF Chang's.  So yummy and delicious.

* We went swimming at the Y the other night on a whim.  We usually go on Friday nights, but decided to change it up and go on Monday.  We had so much fun.  It was the kick in the pants I needed to finally get Isaac signed up for swim lessons again.  He is not a bad swimmer but he could be stronger.  He starts lessons again next week. Add a point to the "good mom" column for me.

* We sent parent teacher conferences home the other day.  I can' believe this school year is almost a quarter over!  October is always a nice lull between in the insanity of September and the craziness of gearing up for holidays.    It is already time to think about Christmas shopping and where we will be spending holiday meals and how we will share the kids.  I love it though. 

 

We have been trying to get our holiday decorations in order.  We had a few small pumpkins left over from a Fall Fest at Isaac's school. 

 

We took the girls along and they made pumpkins too.  (Does Gabby look EXACTLY like Ryan or what?).  More fallish things are on the agenda:  tonight is the Pottstown Halloween parade, which is always fun.

 

Lucky me-- my mom showed up four more pumpkins.  We will have to find some time  for carving soon. 

 

Have a happy Wednesday!