Happy New Year!

Here's more from the snow storm Christmas Eve/Day...Happy New Year to all. Have fun and drive safely!

Our Little Family Christmas Morning

Because we slept at my mom and dad's place, the sleeping arrangements were a little goofy. Josh and I slept in the basement bedroom. Riley was supposed to sleep upstairs in the crib, because Adrienne will only sleep in Grandma's "big girl bed" now, and Meg, Chris and Adee also spent the night in case Brynn decided to make an early arrival. However, in the middle of the night, Riley decided she was scared of Santa landing on the roof, so she ended up downstairs on an air mattress with Grandma and THEN she was worried about Santa coming through the chimney, so Grandma had to tell her Santa was going to leave her toys at her house, not Grandma's house so she would go to sleep finally.

Around 7:30 a.m., my mom brought Riley down to wake up Josh and I and then we found out Santa really DID come to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Sneaky guy! (And lots of fun packing a car ahead of time and hiding everything!) She opened the presents from Santa and Baby Jesus and she was SO excited to open her "Lightyear" toy, whom she also calls Buster. "He brought me what I wanted!" she screamed.

We have NO IDEA where she got it in her head that she wanted Toy Story's Woody and Buzz Lightyear from Santa this year. She has MAYBE seen the movie once and that would have been almost a year ago! But she was excited that Santa knew! We had gone to see Santa, but she got stage fright and forgot to tell him what she wanted, so it was really amazing that Santa figured it out.

I should also explain the Baby Jesus gift. When I was a kid, we had a manger that was empty at the beginning of Advent. We would do an advent chain with good deeds written on it, and for everything nice we did, we got a piece of straw to put in the manger. If there was enough straw at Christmas, Baby Jesus would appear on Christmas morning sleeping in the manger, and there would be a present from him to us for his Birthday. We modified this tradition a bit, but essentially, Riley got "straw" in the form of yellow paper strips where we wrote her good deeds down and put them in the manger. When we came home, Baby Jesus was sleeping under our Christmas tree.

Happy Birthday Uncle D!

In the midst of all the photo chaos, we would like to take a moment to wish Uncle Darin a very Happy Birthday! We wish you many more happy celebrations ahead!

And I also can't forget that Darin's birthday also happens to be my friend Maureen's birthday too. Happy Birthday Mrs. Barkley!

Winter Wonderland?

I'm sure most of you know this already, but this Christmas was not my ideal concept of a White Christmas...if there HAS to be snow at Christmas, it certainly does NOT have to be a DUMPING of over a foot and nasty road conditions for the holiday. But that might just be because I prefer no snow at all... Here are some of the reasons we decided last-minute to stay overnight at my parents and redirect Santa's flight plan accordingly.

Christmas Eve Afternoon

Before the whole family arrives, we let the kids open their presents from all the aunties and uncles, grandma and grandpa so that it's not a big chaotic mess later in the evening. This went really well this year, since we opened all the adult gifts the week before and this was all about the kiddos! Zacky even shared his remote controlled car with Riley and showed her how it worked. He was such a good boy!! I don't think there were too many sharing issues except when Riley and Adrienne both wanted to ride Adee's new trike. That's not to say the kids were angels...no naps mean random meltdowns...but we survived ok!

The picture of the kids in gift bags was my mom's idea for a Christmas card...except I'm not sure yet if anyone got a good picture with all the kids looking in one direction:) We'll see I guess!

Y'all Ready for This?

I warn you...this is going to be photo overload for the next few days. I will attempt to cram in Christmas Eve and Christmas Day into the rest of this year:) Smooshed in the middle might be a few more pics of Brynn and that will be followed, hopefully, but some good shots of the wedding we will be attending this weekend. I make no promises that this won't spill over into next year;)

Let's start with Christmas Eve. We traditionally celebrate CE at my parents house usually with my grandparents, and every other year this includes my aunt, uncle and cousins on my dad's side. This year, Dan and Sharis have moved "home" to MN, but Timmer was out of town with his girlfriend's family so it still wasn't as packed of a house as it could be, but we certainly are a crowd! Including 6 kids under the age of 3 this year (Brynn held out just long enough to miss the party). The kids had a great time entertaining themselves at dinner and "Uncle Duck" provided the pony rides just in time for the "jammy party" after!

Note: Meg is the expert french braid queen in the family. Riley let her do her hair pretty for the night.

Daddy's Girl

I will have more pictures of both Brynn and Christmas to post soon, but it's been kinda busy around here trying to put away Christmas gifts, fix our snowblower, visit the new niece when I can, and try to get this house looking back to some form of "normal"...I have a semi-low key week ahead, so hopefully I will get more done on the photos. In the meantime, this is a picture Josh took of he and Roo after her skating lesson last week. She doesn't have lessons this week, so here's a "filler" until I can do more.

Welcome to the world Brynn Cooley Tredinnick!

Ok, this information is REALLY delayed. Meg certainly didn't take all day with this one, in fact from the time contractions started to the delivery, her labor was only 3 and a half hours. I got a call at 6:45-7 a.m. ish that they were on their way to the hospital and by the time we got there she was already here! She was dialated t 8 cm when they got to the hospital... So, here it is, the news you've been waiting for:

Brynn Cooley Tredinnick was born this morning at 8:31 a.m., She was 7 lbs. 13 oz. and 20 inches long. Mom and baby are doing well and excited for their new arrival. Adrienne won't be allowed to meet her baby sister until they come home on Monday, due to the H1N1 visitation restrictions at the hospital. That bums both Meg and Chris out a bit, but they will have some time to bond just the two of them and then Big Sis can snuggle her soon!

Katie and I are both responsible for posting pics on Meg's blog so if you want to see pictures, go to Trackin Treds...I have different pictures than Katie does because along with the no kids visitation rule, they only allow 3 guests in the room at a time (including the Daddy) so we didn't get to all welcome her together. More pics to come this week, I'm sure!

Stay Tuned....

Baby news may be coming soon...

TIGF - Christmas Edition

I am so unbelievably thankful for this Christmas! I'm thankful that Meg and Chris didn't have to be at the hospital over Christmas because Meg really didn't want to miss seeing Adrienne on Christmas morning. I'm thankful that everyone arrived safely and got home ok despite the foot or so of heavy wet snow we got here in the past 3 days. I'm thankful that I managed to get our Christmas ready for a transition as we ended up staying over night at my parents house Christmas Eve and Santa had to arrive at a different location than we had anticipated. I'm VERY thankful for my mom's carmel rolls and having us for a slumber party (and even Doodle Dice). I'm thankful that we made it to Schuster's today and that Riley is spoiled by four wonderful grandparents, three great grandparents and her aunts and uncles. I'm thankful that some friends of ours who did end up spending the holiday at the hospital now have a healthy baby boy!

It has been an amazing Christmas! Thank you to everyone for our gifts and especially the gift of family!

Funny side note: Grandma Linda and Great Grandma Mary asked Riley if she was a good girl to get presents from Santa. My daughter, rather appropriately responded: "Almost."

Merry Christmas Everyone! Pictures and video to be posted this weekend.

Riley's High Speed Skate

Riley's Skating Super Status

Turn on your volume and listen to what Daddy has to say on this video!

Her First "Report Card" - She Passed!

Riley had her last skating class of session one, level one last night. We have really liked her teacher, Miss Megan, and hopefull the teacher at level 2 is just as nice, because Riley passed! Honestly, Josh and I both thought she would have to take level 1 again before she made it to level 2, because this is not uncommon in early skating, but she rocked the ice last night and did a great job! I'll post video in a bit too. She has made a lot of progress since her Nov. 16th debut. Go back and check it out on the Hockey 101 tabs to the right:)

P.S. Josh was really annoyed with me for this tope picture. I tied a jingle bell to Riley's skate and you could hear it all the way at the top of the bleachers:) Hey, it's the week before Christmas!

Holidazzle - Part 2

Top to bottom:
Santa sits on his lighted reindeer float
Snowflakes have been in the parade forever. I secretly want to be one someday!
Captain Hook (no Tinkerbell on this float...weird!)
City Bus (not sure the purpose of this one, but it's one of the best lit floats

Holidazzle - Part 1

Here's some of the highlights of the Holidazzle Parade in Downtown Minneapolis, for those of you out-of-towners:)

Top to bottom:
"String" of holiday lights (this is an updated version but some form of these lights have been in the parade a long time!)
Choir float (I include, only because 100 years ago, I got to perform on this float with my high school choir. I know...Dork!)
Twin Snowman (fairly new, but one of my faves)
Pinnochio (fairly new)

Mom and Dad's Anniversary/Adult Christmas

We had to do a little gift opening ahead of time this year for two reasons. One, it's getting harder to open everything with the kids around because if we do it early on Christmas Eve we mess with nap times and if we do it later, it messes with bedtimes, and Second and probably the most significant reason is that Meg could go into labor at any point now and Christmas Eve might turn interesting real quickly! So we decided to do the adult gifts this weekend at the same time we celebrated Mom and Dad's anniversary. That way, Christmas Eve is all about the kids!

Thanks Mom and Dad for sharing your anniversary and thanks everyone for the great gifts! As you can tell, Adrienne liked "mo-mo's kiki" best, but we feel pretty spoiled all around! We are so lucky to have a wonderful family and that's the best gift of all:)

Pre-Dazzle

Since this was the last weekend for Holidazzle, we decided to take Riley on Friday night. Not knowing exactly what time it started, but knowing is was around 6ish or 6:30, Riley and I headed down to meet Daddy at 4:30 and stake our place in the skyway so we wouldn't have to freeze. Riley did amazingly well sitting in that space for 2 hours until the parade started. I'll post parade shots later in the week after a few more important events.