Turkey Day & Isaac's 2nd Birthday Party!

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend! We traveled all over the state and got to see all of our family! We (Paul, Ashley, Gradyn, and I) left Wednesday afternoon for Ruskin and had dinner with my Dad, Zoya, and Irina at the farm. We then went to Hebron and stayed with Dan Wednesday night. We were up late that night making the desserts for Thursday.

Thanksgiving morning we finished making the food/desserts we needed to take for lunch and went to church in Hebron. We then went to celebrate Thanksgiving at my Grandma Marlene's in Fairbury with my Dad's side of the family. It was a fun time! We then went back to Hebron to have a Thanksgiving supper with Dan. 2 delicious turkey dinner's that day. After that we left for Lincoln so that Paul and Gradyn could ride to Pender with Andy, Cassie, and the boys. Ashley and I stayed in Lincoln to do some Christmas shopping on black Friday. We did a LOT of shopping and did some damage to the Christmas shopping list. It was a lot of fun. Ashley and I could definately shop for days and still keep going, if we had the money to do it!

After the shopping, I left for Pender and we spent the rest of the weekend there. Isaac's 2nd Birthday Party was on Saturday night. His birthday was on Thanksgiving Day this year! It was an Elmo themed party and lots of fun! We got him tickets to Sesame Street Live in Omaha on January 2nd, so are very excited to see how he reacts to that! The party was a lot of fun and watching him open his presents was really funny!

Also during our time in Pender we went to visit Gradyn's Great-Grandma and Grandpa Guenther so they could see him for a little bit. We took Isaac with and him and Grady had a lot of fun playing with Grandma Betty in her basement with all her fun toys! (Pictures below)

We left on Sunday morning to swing back through Lincoln to pick up Ashley and then head home. It was a lot of traveling and a tiring weekend (I didn't go to bed before midnight the entire 4 nights, which is very unlike me), but a lot of fun! And, it was awesome to get to see a lot of our family. We should get to see everyone at Christmas as we are planning on going to all 6 or 7 Christmas's that are planned! Should be an exciting (and possibly exhausting....) week! :)

Hope everyone is having a great Holiday season! We are getting excited for Gradyn's first Christmas! Should be a very special and blessed time!

Here are some pictures of our weekend:

This is Gradyn in my classroom at school when we went to the Christmas program:

Sharp Dressed Men

Here are some pictures from Paul's Uncle Tom's wedding. Don't they look so handsome? Grady even left his tie alone the whole time. The only time he even realized he could put it in his mouth is when I sat him down by Isaac to take a picture!

What happens when Daddy dresses me.....

One day when Paul was dressing Grady he didn't realize it was a onesie top so he put the jeans on first. He didn't want to go to the work of taking them off so he just buttoned the onesie on over top of the jeans. Grady didn't seem to mind!

Such a big boy!

As I have said before, Gradyn loves to be up standing, walking around, jumping, bouncing, any sort of movement. He pretty much never ever sits still. Which is starting to become more and more of a problem during church......but we keep him occupied with lots of puffs! He is now walking along all the furniture with 1 hand, standing by himself at times, and getting braver and braver trying to walk on his own. The good thing is that he is a pretty big chicken and scared of falling, which will be good when he is walking soon!
Here are some pictures of him standing, walking, etc. which is pretty much the only way you can take pictures of him these days!

Trick-or-Treat!

Here are some pictures of Gradyn on Halloween all dressed up as a penguin to go Trick-or-Treating, which consisted of being pushed around in the stroller while he followed his cousin Isaac around to some houses. :) His cousin Luke was also dressed up as a penguin, so we had 2 very cute little penguin twins and the Dragon Isaac!

Gradyn's First Snow!

We had about 14 inches of snow on Friday in North Platte. It had already snowed about 17 inches a month ago, so that is a grand total of about 30 inches for the month!
We were not in town for the first one, so this is the first time Gradyn has really seen snow or was around for it. It was a very heavy, wet snow with lots of drifts. I had to scoop part of our HUGE driveway for our family to have a place to park when they arrived and it was NOT fun. I am still sore 3 days later......
Anyway, here are some pictures of the snow and Gradyn sitting in the garage watching while I scooped! He didn't think it was very much fun either!

Videos Galore!

Here are the videos! The first one is of Grady and Dominic in the bath together! It was so funny how they would both laugh! Dominic would splash Grady and he loved it and thought it was so funny! The second one is of Grady with his new toy! He loves to walk behind it and push it all over the house!

This is just another video of Grady walking with his toy!