Painting Luke's Room

After moving Jack to the basement, I got the bright idea to move Luke down there too.  I wanted to put him in my current scrapbooking room and then make the upstairs bedroom the new scrapbooking room/office.  Grandma and Grandpa Rickert had a weekend scheduled to take the boys so we could make the switch, but then my hesitations set in.  Not to mention, Jay's new baseball commitment interfered as well! (A later post on that!)  So, we decided to paint the room and leave him in there.  Both boys had been sleeping fairly decently and I didn't want to rock the boat.  We painted it a blue which will eventually be the color I'd want the new office to be anyways.  Here are a few pictures.

Christmas 2011--Part Three (Randolph/Ryan side)

Christmas day and the following day brought us to Randolph.  Every Christmas Day afternoon, we go to Jay's grandma's (Grandma Butch) where the entire Ryan side fills her house.  The crowd is getting larger and larger as all the cousins are growing up, getting boyfriend/girlfriends, spouses, children, etc.  Grandma Butch insists on gifts for all, so opening presents takes a long time, though, over the last 15 years, it has toned down considerably!

Papa & Luke

Aunt Jody, Laylea (Jay's cousin's daughter) and the boys!

Papa & Grandma Ryan

The morning of the 26th, we went to Jay's dad and Julie's to open gifts with them.  This was the first time we did that.  Usually they brought our gifts to Jay's Grandma's on Christmas Day.  This was nice.  We had brunch and played for awhile.  The boys got a new kitchen from them!

Christmas 2011--Part Two (Northfield/Rickert side)

Christmas Eve was spent in Northfield--Rickert side.  Anna, Jake and Ella were home from Boston and Heidi and Bruce came as well.  It was the first Christmas with THREE grandchildren!  It was great to have a full house!  We went to church in the afternoon, *tried* to get pictures of the grandkids, had grilled steaks and opened gifts! It was a great time.

It's virtually impossible to get a good picture of three kids, two of which are babies!

It's even more impossible to get Grandma and Grandpa to look good too! Piece together each of the following pictures and there may be a good one!

I had gotten Jay a MUSTARD sweatshirt the night before.  He carried on and on about the ugly color but then resigned that it looked OK.  So then, when Jack happened to open a sweatshirt from G & G that looked nearly the same, he flipped out giggling!  Here they are in their matching MUSTARD sweatshirts!

Weekend Getaway

Jim and Sandy offered to take the boys overnight and put us up in a hotel for the night.  This was a gift to us for Jay's 15th heart transplant anniversary.  What a welcomed gift.  We took the boys to their house and then we escaped to Downtown Minneapolis for the weekend.  The biggest surprise was that we had record warm temps that weekend.  60s in November!  We were able to meet up with Duncan and Kristy for dinner sans kids for the first time in 5 years!  That was a treat---adult conversation without kids interrupting!

Grandpa Jim and Grandma Sandy requested that the boys arrive in their Gopher gear so they could "try" to get a cute picture for a football frame they had!  Both Sandy and I had our cameras clicking like crazy.  I'm not sure what she got, but these were the best shots I had!

Tweite's Pumpkin Patch---October 2011

We invited Grandma and Grandpa Rickert to join us this year to pick pumpkins. We were all excited for our trip to Tweite's. The weather was perfect! We got there only to realize prices had gone up to $9 per person. Yikes! That was a lot of money for 5 paying people. (Luke was free.) We decided to partake in the free stuff such as pumpkin picking and a few photo ops rather than pay full price for the animals and mazes. We had a good time picking pumpkins and we only spent about $15 on pumpkins and gourds!