Surprise Blessing

Since Chase got to announce the last pregnancy, I figured it was Jacob's turn....

That's right, baby #3 is coming end of May!! 

Quite a shock to us as they will be less than a year apart but we are very excited!

I've been feeling great, just tired, as Jacob is not the best napper/sleeper. I am trying to keep Jacob my baby as I know he will have to grow up way too fast.

I can find out what I'm having in a few weeks! This is going way to fast. Here's a video of what Chase wants. I switched up the order because when he was younger he would always say the second option but he's been pretty consistent this time. Between my me and my two good friends here (8 kids) there is only 1 girl, Abi, so that's where it gets the name from. I guess its only fair since Abi has a baby doll named Jacob!

Merry Christmas {Afternoon}

So Chase was ready to dig back into the presents right after church. Jacob was tired after church but we knew we couldn't hold Chase off.  If the gift wasn't a toy he could play with right away he was ready to go to the next one.

He got good at helping us with our gifts as well!

Playing with some of the gifts outside.

Trying out his new bike. He's gotten pretty good at it. We went for about a mile bike ride today and he went the whole way, pretty fast at times too. I just wish we had sidewalks here.

Jacob woke up and Chase was eager to help him open his gifts!

Jacob, of course, just liked the paper!

Just love his smile!

For dinner we went over to friends house for dinner. We had a Happy Birthday Jesus cake. The boys could help blow out the candles :)

 

We missed being with extended family but it was a nice and relaxing Christmas. We look forward to going up to my parents this weekend and out to Kansas in mid-January.

Merry Christmas {Eve & Morning}

Wow, I have a lot of pictures so I am going to make it 2 posts. They are probably very repetitive but I don't get tired of seeing my cute boys and their smiles! 

We decided to let the boys open their stockings on Christmas eve. Chase is still at the age where if he gets a gift he wants to play with it so we figured we better spread it out. 

On Christmas morning Jacob woke up around 7. Chase was still sleeping so we could get a few minutes with Jacob.

 
We finally woke Chase up around 8am. With church being at 10am we wanted to do a few things beforehand  and we were excited for Chase to take it all in. We started off with the Christmas story....

....and putting baby Jesus on our advent calendar. 

I wanted to be a good mom and make homemade cinnamon rolls. They were okay and we had Pillsbury as a back up.

  We took the standard pictures in front of the tree.

And then dug into the presents. Well Jacob was starting to get tired so he took a nap after his first one.

Chase continued on though...

We strategically let him open the Thomas station so he would play with it while we got ready.

Our family after church. 

The afternoon/evening will have to be in part 2 :) 

Off to watch football and KSU basketball! Merry Christmas!

Jet Photos

We attempted to do jet photos for our Christmas Card picture this year. There weren't any that I really liked...if you see the jet you can't see us and vice versa. I feel like that this point in our military career everyone knows what Brad flies. So we took our own again. Is is not the best picture (neither boy is smiling) and if I wasn't obsessed with Christmas Cards I probably wouldn't send any out but it would just feel wrong. They are a little late this year (didn't change the address from our England address so they had to re-ship) but they are going out tomorrow. Here are our out takes....

 

Half a year!

Is this little man really half a year?? Where is time going? I don't have his appointment for another month but I've had to put away most of the 6 to 9 month clothes and he is pretty much in 12 months (the cloth diaper doesn't help either :) We are doing solids twice a day now. He likes cereal, apples, pears and sweet potatoes. He also just cut his first tooth. He is not the best sleeper. We had a rough spell a couple weeks ago (but now I'm hoping it was the teeth) where we were putting in his paci and re-swaddling him about 10 times a night. I tried to take away the paci but after 2 hours of crying I gave in and now we are just not swaddling him. He is so big he wouldn't stay swaddled so we just got rid of that. Its been a little better but he is still getting up several times a night. It's amazing how quickly you can forget about a rough night though when they flash their smile :)

He is doing really well sitting up and he is pretty content most of the day.

Chase was up when I was taking these pictures and wanted to be in some. 

Kind of an awkward pose, huh?!

Chase is a good big brother and will help me out if I ask him to give Jacob a toy. He doesn't like helping him sit up though. Chase has been busy with Christmas Parties with all his little activities (pre-school, AWANA and Dance). He enjoys doing his advent calendar everyday and helping me make these. We don't put presents under the tree till Christmas Eve so I don't think he really gets it yet. We talk about why we celebrate Christmas a lot and I hope these truths are taking hold in his heart. I like the verse he had to say for AWANA this past Wednesday, Luke 2:11 Today...a Savior has been born to you, he is Christ the Lord.

Sorry for the long winded posts. I actually have referred back to what I've written about Chase a lot as this is the only place I write down what they are doing, etc. So its more for our memory! One of these days I will work on a baby book and probably refer back to here a lot!

DC Wedding

We headed up to my parents for a quick weekend to attend the wedding of my childhood friend, Hannah. My parents went as well and that was fun. Huge thanks to the Kauflins for watching the boys! It was easier to say goodbye to everyone knowing we will be back up there over New Years.