A Christmas Letter

Every year around Christmas time, I anxiously await the arrival of that first Christmas card in the mail. It is so fun to see pictures of how everyone has changed over the year, and on a rare occasion, we’ll still get an actual Christmas letter or two. These are my favorite as it is sometimes the only chance I have to read about what is happening in the lives of my friends and families. Because I get so much joy out of these letters, I decided I was going to write a Christmas letter this year as well. But, then I got to thinking and realized our whole life over the past year has been pretty much covered in this blog so that didn’t leave me with much to write about – there goes our Christmas letter. But, not completely defeated, I decided instead to write this little tidbit and post it to the blog. It covers the highlights and maybe even touches on a few things I haven’t yet covered in the blog, who knows. So here goes . . .

The year started off with the arrival of our baby girl, Lauren, who was born on Nov 28, 2007. While on maternity leave with her, our daycare got shut down by the county (every parent’s worst nightmare) so Trav and I decided that it would be best if I became a stay-at-home mom. I quit my job on Feb 16th and it will definitely go down as one of the best days in my life - I worked for a short, evil little man – so it was easy to leave and having more time with the kids sealed the deal. After working through the adjustment of being at home full-time and living on one income, we have finally gotten to a place where we are all happy and enjoy our new, less stressful lives. Trav (lucky for us) still has his job, which he has grown to love (okay, maybe love is a bit much, but he does seem to enjoy it). He has also started his own recruiting company – Ryan Douglas, LLC – (nice name don’t you think?) with one of his college friends. After having minimal success at the beginning of the year, he has found his stride and things are going good – he is truly our sugar-daddy and we are so proud of him for all of his hard work and dedication. Without him doing all he does, I would never be able to be the mom I have always wanted to be and for that, I am very thankful.

Onto the kiddos . . . Ryan continues to provide constant entertainment and pure joy. The kid never stops talking, but lucky for us (and everyone else who hears him); most of the stuff that comes out of his mouth is very humorous. 2008 brought many changes for Ryan, the biggest being that he became a big brother. He wasn’t too impressed with the new title at first, but has become a great big brother throughout the year by providing Lauren with hugs and kisses when necessary, and giving the doctor an occasional tongue lashing for giving his baby sister shots – a true sign of a good big brother. He also became an official “big boy” at the start of the year by being completely potty trained, started pre-school (which he loves), and just recently dropped the sippy cup for good – all huge milestones for him. Lauren did the usual “baby stuff” for the first half of the year – rolled over, sat up by herself, started eating solid foods - but lately she has really started to show us her true self. She is nosy (always in everyone’s business, especially Ryan’s), has an attitude whenever you try to get her to do something she doesn’t want to do, but through it all, is still the happiest baby ever. The kid smiles and laughs about 90% of the day and cries the other 10% (usually whenever she sees food that is not in her mouth, or has to get dressed – she hates it). For the most part, she keeps herself busy; so much in fact, it is easy to forget she is even in the house sometimes because she is off doing her own thing – an overall good little girl.

Now for me – what can I say, I am a frumpy, un-showered, stay-at-home mom who kicks back and eats bon-bons on a daily basis while the kids run wild - I wish! Actually, the frumpy and un-showered parts might be slightly true, but the rest is just a dream. This stay-at-home mom stuff is tough, but so worth it. The kids keep me entertained everyday and in turn, I take care of them the best I can. I have also tried to step up my wifely duties by learning to be a better cook for my hard-working man, and rubbing his feet every night - a small price to pay for the opportunity to stay home.

That about sums up the 2008 year for the Quast family – nothing too exciting, but fun non-the-less. We wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season and hope to see many of you in the near future.

Lots of love from the Quast clan.

PS I hope you all know that foot rubbing thing doesn’t really happen, it just fit so perfectly I had to throw it in there.

Happy Birthday Ryan

Gosh, it seems like Ryan just had his 3rd birthday, and yet, the big day is here again. How is that possible? Well, at Ryan's preschool, they like to celebrate every kid's birthday during the school year, and because he has a summer birthday, they use the kid's half-birthday dates (in Ryan's case, Dec 13th, which happens to be a Sat) and have that be the day the kids celebrate their "pretend" birthdays - what a deal! Anyway, to keep with the huge "pretend" theme, I decided I would be a great mom and make "pretend" M&M cookies for Ryan to bring for his birthday treat to class. Let me tell you, making pretend cookies is way easier than making the real thing, I just jump in the car, go to the grocery store, and come back ten minutes later with two dozens perfectly round cookies - don't I just make the perfect pretend Mom! Actually, I couldn't make homemade cookies anyways because all treats brought to class have to be store bought otherwise, you can bet I would have, and I'm sure they would have tasted just as good (maybe not). Anyway, as the Birthday Boy at school, Ryan got to be the teacher's helper, sit at the "birthday spot" during circle time, and be the leader when the kids line up at the door to get ready to go home. Here he is walking out class - first in line, just the way he likes it.

As we were getting his winter gear on to head home, one of the moms comes over to me and says, "I just have to tell you, Ryan is the sweetest little boy." I of course smiled, who wouldn't want to hear that their kid is sweet. Anyway, this mom (still don't know her name even though I talk to her almost every Tues and Thurs.) tells me that lately her daughter, Lindsey, has been talking about Ryan a lot. It turns out she has been having a hard time lately at school and Ryan has been the one kid who has helped her through it. Apparently he makes her happy (a little side story, when we walked into school today, Lindsey was the first person he saw, and he walked right up to her and with a kooky smile and some hand gestures, said, "I'm going to make you smile Lindsey." The still un-named mom, myself, and the teachers all laughed when we saw him do this and one of the teachers said, "you must laugh everyday with him around" - so true) and always makes a point to play with her - is it weird that I am super proud of him for doing that? Anyway, Lindsey's mom is telling me all of this, and then says, when she was helping out when the kids took a field trip to the pumpkin patch this fall, Ryan happened to be sitting on a hay bail all by himself and Lindsey was sitting on another hay bail with some of her gal pals, when she walked up to her mom, and said, "I'm going to go sit by Ryan so he has some friends too" - doesn't this stuff just melt your heart? Why can't adults be like this. Anyway, it seems the two of them have been their for each other and have formed a tight little bond. I'm so happy to know that Ryan understands how people feel, and he knows how to be nice to others. I'm not sure where he got it from considering Trav and I probably weren't the best role models (word has it Trav was sort of meanie to other kids when he was little, and I know I had a mean streak myself), but we're happy he has it.

Onto Lauren, she had a couple of big moments this week starting with her first visit to the "gym school", which is just the daycare at the gym we workout at, on Monday. Kids have to big at least one before they can go so I decided to try it out and she did great. I literally walked in the door with the kids, got their coats off, and they both took off towards the toys - no tears, no looking back, just time to play. I'm sure it helped that Ryan was there as a familiar face for her, but the teacher said she never cried, and just spent her time checking out all the new toys. I'm so excited about this, because now on real crummy days, I know I can just pack up the kids and drive the three blocks to the gym which gets them out of the house, and gets me some good exercising time - a win, win for everyone. She has also started preferring to walk over crawling, but has yet to completely master the skill. She kind of looks like a little Frankenstein when she walks with her arms straight out for balance, and a nice, slow pace to prevent any falls -whatever is takes to get the job done I guess. A couple more weeks and I think she'll have it down for good.

That is all for now. The kids are napping and I need to get some stuff taken care of around the house before our big outing tonight - we are taking the kids to our neighbor's 9th grade basketball game - Ryan can hardly wait to see his bud, Ashley, out on the floor "shooting hoops" as he likes to say.

Fun weekend: Part II

The fun continues . . . after a great night of sleep for everyone (both kids slept in until almost 8am!), we were all energized and ready for some fun. After sitting at the kitchen table and watching the snow come down for about a half hour, Ryan and I decided we should go outside and see it up close. When we ran the idea by Trav, he thought he and Lauren should tag along as well, so it turned into a family outing. But, before we could brave the elements, we had to get everything ready. I went out to the garage to pull down the sleds and found that only one of them had a rope on it to pull, so it was time to head to the hardware store to take care of that problem. After getting some new rope for both sleds (the rope we already had was too short), we bundled up the kids and headed down the street to a neighborhood park with some good sledding hills. This was Lauren's first time in the sled and she absolutely loved it. She would drag her hand along in the snow and lick her mitten as we walked and Ryan just loved being outside after so many cold days stuck inside. Daddy got to do most of the sled pulling while I took all the pictures. When we got to the park, Ryan showed how brave he was by going down the hills by himself. Daddy started off by giving him gentle pushes, but by the last ride down, Trav gave him a pretty good shove, and Ryan paid for it at the end of the ride by falling out of the sled (second video). The good part was that he didn't even cry, in fact, he smiled and said he liked it - a kid can always count on his dad to toughen him up a bit. After sledding, we walked back home and the boys shoveled out the driveway while Lauren and I went inside to warm up. A quick lunch and some warm hot chocolate, and everyone was in bed sleeping - this is way I love busy mornings with the kids, by the time 1:00pm rolls around, everyone (including parents) are ready to sleep the rest of the day away. Another fun day, another first for Lauren.




And finally . . . pictures of the kids and their rosy, red cheeks!

Fun weekend: Part I

We had a fun, busy weekend. In fact, it was so fun and busy that I decided to make it into two seperate posts instead of one, never-ending post. So this post will cover our fun events on Saturday, and I'll get to Sunday's events later.

Shakopee was having its annual Christmas kick-off this weekend starting on Friday night with a parade, carriage rides, and a visit from Santa. Our plans were to bundle up the kids and check it out, but when Friday night actually came, it was cold - not just cold, freezing cold and windy so we bailed on our plans and stayed home and watched the Jim Carey version of "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." The movie combined with some popcorn was enough to take Ryan's mind off of all the fun stuff I had told him we were going to do. Lucky for us, the celebration continued on Saturday with some more activities, so Ryan and I got up early, ran some errands, and got ready to have some Christmas fun Shakopee style. We started the morning off with Wendy's Wiggle Jiggle and Jam session at the library. It was a fun music show with lots of kid participation (I'm pretty sure Ryan was up front "helping" the majority of the time). His favorite was when he got to dress like a robin and flap his wings for one of the songs - he loved it. After the show was done, there were cookies and hot chocolate for everyone in the lobby - we of course took full advantage of this. Once we were good and full (and warm), we headed outside to track down the horse drawn carriage rides (this was one thing Ryan didn't forget about from the night before so we had to do it even if it meant standing outside in the chilly weather). Lucky for us, there were not too many braves souls waiting in line so it only took about five minutes to get our ride. Ryan liked the ride, but he was more impressed by the huge horse pulling us around. He wanted to actually ride on the horse, but after convincing him he would probably fall off and get hurt, he gave it up and decided it was best to sit in the carriage. With the carriage ride complete we walked over to another building to make some crafts. The crafts ended up being a bunch of cute little Christmas ornaments that were easy to assemble for kids. Again, there were not a lot of people out and about, so Ryan was able to take his time and make three different things - all of which are proudly displayed in our house. After the crafts, we were off to the best part of the day - a visit with Santa. Once again, when we arrived there was only one other family there so when Ryan got his time with Santa, he took full advantage. He jumped right up on his lap (which was surprising because Ryan has absolutely hated Santa until this year) and started giving Santa the important info - his age, 3, his name, Ryan, and his list off presents, a police helmet and fire guitar. I had to laugh as I watched Ryan on Santa's lap. To ensure he had Santa's full attention, he kept his face no further than 6 inches from Santa's at all times, and made sure to talk continuously so no one else could get a word in - the kid knows what he wants, and makes sure he gets it. We'll have to see if Santa comes through or not. To wrap up our fun, we headed over to the DQ for lunch and then went home for a long afternoon nap for both of us. It was a very fun day and was great to watch Ryan's excitement with each new thing we did. He is finally getting all the fun of Santa and Christmas and I'm not sure who enjoys it more, him or me.

Our horse drawn carriage rideRyan's crafts

Ryan was far too busy watching everyone else watch him to actually look at my camera - typical - so this is the best picture I got. Oh well, I'm sure we'll have many more Santa picture opportunities in the future. Maybe next year we'll get Lauren in there too. She was a bit too crabby and tired to join in the fun this year so she stayed home with Daddy and slept the day away - a fun event for both of them too.

A visit to Auntie's house

The kids and I headed up to Buffalo to visit Auntie for the day on Wednesday. The trip took a little longer than usual due to some snow in our area, but it was well worth it to check out Auntie's new house. Lauren slept most of the ride and Ryan danced along to Christmas music so it was a pleasant trip. Once we got to the house, Ryan as very excited. When we got inside and took our coats off, the first words out of his mouth were, "where's Grandpa?" We had to break the news to him that Grandpa Jim didn't move with Auntie and that he was back at his place in St. Peter - I guess Ryan assumed Auntie and Grandpa would always live together - too bad for Auntie that that isn't the case. Anyway, after the confusion of not finding Grandpa, we got to take a tour of the place and of course, Ryan was very excited about this as well. Everything was beautiful, pretty, or ridiculous (a new word he has been using lately which perfectly described Auntie's huge walk-in closet that was overflowing with her clothes) - ridiculous is right! After the tour, we each got to make our own little pizzas for lunch (which was delicious), and then headed out to take in one of Buffalo's finest stores - Walmart. Seriously, if you can't buy it at Walmart, do you really need it? I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Buffalo Walmart wasn't half as dirty and gross as the Shakopee one so I actually bought a few things and so did Auntie (word has it this is her new favorite hang-out). After a couple of more stops, we finished up our outing by taking a drive around the new neighborhood and then headed back to Auntie's place. The kids were both sleeping when we pulled into the driveway, but as usual, they woke up the instant we got into the house. Lucky for Ryan, Auntie was able to find some Diego cartoon on tv so he got to watch that for a while and Lauren kept herself busy with some toys. Ash and I took the opportunity to chat a while before the kids and I had to head back home so I could get to work. It was great to see Ash in her very own place and know that the last of the Loken kids is out on her own and doing just fine. I took a couple of pictures of the place. The first picture of the family room is my favorite . . . notice that Ryan is sitting on a blanket. Maybe you are thinking he did that by choice, but no, that's not the case. Ash and Mike have their priorities straight and opted to buy a new 32" flat screen tv instead of furniture because, who really needs furniture when you have blankets to sit on? I'm just kidding, they actually did buy the new tv, but not instead of furniture. They already have some, they just haven't gotten it moved in yet. I know Ryan and Lauren will be bummed when it comes though because right now the room is perfect for running around and playing, the furniture will only clutter it - something to think about Auntie. The other three are of the kitchen, and living room which are both still works in progress although I think they look great the way they are.

She walks!!

I was talking on the phone today when Lauren just decided to start walking. I obviously hung up (it was my sister so she didn't care) right away and got out the camera. I love that Lauren laughs and gets all worked up while taking her steps. When she finally made it to me, she wouldn't stop hugging (her version of hugging is ramming her head into me) and smiling - so cute - she was almost as happy as I was. Yeah baby, we are so proud of you! We'll see if she sticks with walking, or goes back to crawling later today.

The basement is done!!

Our almost two-year basement project is officially (well, everything but the tile being sealed which is a minor project) complete! Trav, Grandpa Doug, and Brian (Trav's uncle) have proven their worth when it comes to being weekend warriors. If anyone is interested, I will be taking bids for the three of them to do some contract work in the future. The project was a long, painful, and very messy journey, but we got through it all with just a few (pretty much every weekend) arguments about what to do and not do to. Lucky for everyone, Trav won out on most of them and the basement looks great because of it - even I can admit when I'm wrong every once in a while. So here is a preview of the basement. The finishing touches were just put in - the table, and the final two doors (one of which is my absolute favorite because it closes off the basement from the laundry room and keeps curious little babes out) - during the past couple of weeks. Having them in place along with everything else just makes the basement feel completely different - it finally feels like the basement we have always wanted and not just a construction zone - yeah! Check it out.

My favorite door

the basement shower

And a picture of the kiddies just for fun. Maybe Trav and I will finally have a house warming party one of these days now that we have more room for everyone - we'll see!