Ryan's Baptism

It took us awhile to get Ryan baptized... we had to do a lot of coordination to figure out a good time to do it.  But, we finally got around to it in early January when we had everyone in town to celebrate Christmas and Caitlin's birthday.  The Westburys (Barney and Christine - Barney has been friends with Bryce for a very long time) are Ryan's godparents so we also had to coordinate with them. Only Barney was able to come to the baptism but we are so glad he could come!

Ryan is ready for the service to start!

Giving him the sign of the cross

Getting one of the oils from Deacon Dennis

Being baptized - he didn't mind one bit!

I think Ryan liked his candle which was lit from the Christ candle. He really wanted to grab it!

After the service, I took the opportunity to snap a bunch of family pictures since we were all there. Now just so you know, Barney had some horrible flu the night before/that morning. Poor guy!  He toughed it out for the baptism.

Thanks Deacon Dennis for baptizing Ryan!

Also, Caitlin and Ryan both were getting over their RSV (yes, they had RSV again... we are a magnet for it I guess). Caitlin was hit particularly hard so she was a little out of it...

Team Stacer!

He would not sit still for a photo. The second you set him down he was off crawling.

My little angel

My three angels!

Ryan and his godfather

The Stacer Family

The Hammel Family

Ryan's first cousins!

The grandparents

After the ceremony, we had a lovely brunch at our house with a few friends also.  It was a great way to celebrate Ryan and the beginning of his spiritual life in the Church. Thanks to Barney and Christine for being his godparents! They are incredible role models and we are so blessed to have them in his life.  We are so lucky that each of our kids has such wonderful godparents.. we love expanding our little family with them!

Christmas!

After so many weeks of waiting, it was finally Christmas! The kids were so excited for Christmas morning this year. After a traditional egg nog toast and waiting for family to arrive, we opened presents. 

Ryan's first Christmas presents!

He liked tearing the paper...

And eating the presents! His big gift this year was a temporal thermometer... I mean, what do you get an almost one year old who has 2 older siblings? Not much this kid needs...

Caitlin got lots of great presents including a Sofia the First doll, Doc McStuffins costume, clothes, a movie, and a gymnastics outfit!

Evan opening his presents... he got:

This cool Lego Ninjago sword, some more legos, a Jake and the Neverland Pirates playset, some playmobil, and clothes.

Caitlin being silly...

Ryan's first Christmas!

Kids playing with the new toys.. kept them occupied for hours on Christmas which was great!

And the 3 babies celebrating their first Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas PJs

I forgot to include the Christmas PJ pictures in the Christmas Eve post so here are those... too many cute ones so this can just be a post dedicated to pictures! Enjoy!

The cutest of Santa's reindeer

Christmas Eve - Church!

We made it to church on Christmas Eve after our cookie decorating. The service was lovely (and packed).  We took some pictures afterwards rather than fight the traffic back to the house. Here are a few of them.

Evan and Caitlin in front of the tree

Ryan

Attempt at a family shot

Mommy and Ryan

My three gifts

Once we got home, we took some pictures by our own tree while we waiting on dinner.

Ryan!

Ryan and Chelsea - aren't they so cute?

My three precious people

Baba and Chelsea

Mommy and Ryan

After dinner, we got the kids to bed... they were SO excited for Santa to come. We put out our treats for Santa and read our Elf on the Shelf book one last time. We said goodbye to Candycane (our elf). And then it was off to bed until Christmas morning!

Christmas Eve - Cookies!

One tradition we started with the kids is to make cookies on Christmas Eve for Santa (and us). This year, I tried a new recipe and the dough was amazing!  First time my cookies didn't spread at all. I was very wary because at first as the dough looked super crumbly. But it came together great.

Kids helping me roll out the dough and then cut the cookies. NOTE: I put the dough between 2 pieces of wax paper - no sticking to the roller, no messy flour - SUPER EASY! Got this off the same site as the recipe. Genius!

After they cooked and cooled, we were ready for some decorating fun. Uncle Will even helped!

Our setup! (You can see our countdown to Christmas sign too.)

Caitlin working on her cookies

Evan concentrating hard on his decorating.

They both did a great job decorating and we didn't make too big of a mess. Score!

Ryan wasn't quite old enough to help this year, but he enjoyed playing on the floor! As you can see it was a pajama kind of day. I loved being lazy around the house, making our cookies, and listening to Christmas music until it was time to go to church. Perfect way to spend our Christmas Eve.

Trail of Lights 2013

Once Oma got to town, we decided to go ahead and try out the Trail of Lights. Last year was fun but super crowded and difficult to get in/out.  With cold weather and babies, we weren't sure we should even go. However, this year even though the Trail is free, you could pay some amount of money per person to get in about 45 minutes early. We headed down to eat dinner nearby and then do that.  Let me tell you - so worth the money!

Here's us at the start. Normally it's so crowded there is no way you are getting a picture here. Even when we went in there was a huge line waiting to get in.

The Matz' came too!

We loved getting to walk through and see all the displays without feeling walled with people. I could even take pictures of the kids with them.

Caitlin loved taking pictures and wanted one with every display... Especially if it had princesses.

We met some firefighters handing out candy canes!

Oma and the kids

About the only downfall to getting in early was that we didn't get to stop and see our friends dance troope perform (because we wanted to get through most of the displays before it opened to the public).

After the Trail of Lights, we had to go see the Zilker Tree.

The kids enjoyed spinning underneath it with Daddy.

And finally we headed back to the car. The other big downfall was the weather - it was really really cold! We did not anticipate that Ryan would get so cold and wouldn't want to sit in the stroller much. We ended up carrying him most of the way so we could keep him bundled. Still, it was a fun time and so glad we paid extra to get in early.