Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar??

Hummm. . . It sure smells good in here. I think mommy made some yummy treats. I am going to climb up on my stool and check it out. Hummm. . . here is a bag full of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Reaching. . . .

Got it! Mom is on the phone, and not even looking. SWEET.

Dang it! I should have stayed in the kitchen to eat my treat. I got caught.

Mommy, don't I deserve a little cookie. . . .

Match Day results

Match day was yesterday! It was a wonderful day. After a horrible night's sleep we woke up, and kept checking John's email every five minutes.. . . Then it came, like at 8:35am. We gathered ourselves together, and took a deep breath and checked it!

The email stated that John matched to:

Children's Mercy Hospital!!!

Yeah! We celebrated the great news with family and it took it a minute to sink in , wait,

That is in Kansas City Missouri!!

Yep, so we are moving. John starts the first of July. We could not be more excited. It is a great program, his time will be spent in the hospital not in the classroom, and we get a decent stipend.

I am so proud of John and all of his hard work.

Here is a picture of Kansas City!

Here is the hospital John will be working at.

His new stool

Jude loves his stool he got for his birthday.

He loves to climb up and reach anything on the counter or in the sink.
Whenever I am in the kitchen, he runs in, climbs up on his stool, and tries to help me.

So cute.

Holidays in beautiful Arizona

After we returned from Puerto Rico, I went home to Arizona where I spent the next few weeks with my family. My sister and her boys were there with my parents and we had so much fun together. John joined us after he finished up the boards and school, and we spent Christmas and the New Year with our families. We enjoyed spending time together, and the beautiful weather.

Here is John teaching Jude how to swing that bat on a sweet toy that my parents got.

We had so much fun. My parents house was a crazy one. Those 4 boys are full of energy. Bath time was great. All four boys in the tub was so funny. ( Jackson is hiding behind Jude)

December 14th- The first cut.

The finished product. Look at that little spiky hair cut. It is so cute, we love it.

Here is Jacob. He loved putting on Grandpa's reading glasses.

We did a little belated birthday party for Jude with my family. It was a fish party, and here we are going fishing.

We went to a Santa party with family friends. Before the party, there was a historic firetruck that we were invited to go see, the kids could get in and run around on it. It was awesome. Here is Jude driving.

Here we are on top, waving with Caden close by.

And here is Jude at the Santa party. You can see how happy he was to sit on Santa's lap. This party is amazing- it is the REAL santa, and check out his elf. I remember him when we started going when I was like 5, and now Jude is here. It is cool.

Our family playing out the nativity. We have the angel ( me of course, ha ha), a little shepherd and John as a wise man. We played out the nativity with family and friends at the Hunter's Christmas party. ( My sister's husband's family)

Here we are on Christmas Eve with the whole family. Here we are with our matching Pj's. We were all excited with our "workout" pj's instead of matching striped footie pj's.

The four boys on Christmas day, wearing their personalized superhero capes I made.

Here is our Superhero! Jude, we love you.

Jude playing with his wooden train set at Grandma Taylor's house.

Buzz Lightyear trying to help daddy paint the bathroom.

And of course our little boy posing with daddy when we went out shooting.

We had such a great time in Arizona. We enjoyed all our favorite restaurants, spending a day at Crackerjax- playing miniature golf, go karts and bumper boats, seeing a live musical frosty the snowman play, going to the beautiful mesa temple a few times and we even snuck out and did a little snowboarding.

Now we are back to Buffalo, back to real life, and freezing in the snow!!

Getaway to Puerto Rico

Early in December we sent Jude home with Grandma to Arizona, and John and I made a quick escape to Puerto Rico. John happened to have an interview for a residency down there, so we made a vacation out of it. Well, he was not too impressed with the program but we loved our time there. We made the most of our time by enjoying many beautiful sites, while relaxing and enjoying husband and wife time without our little boy. After a little hold up with our lost luggage and living in the same clothes for a day, the vacation went smoothly. We enjoyed a night kayaking tour through the bioluminescent bays. It was amazing.

We also were able to spend a day scuba diving. It was beautiful, we saw eels, fish, a barracuda, and beautiful coral.

We spent a day in the El Yunque rain forest enjoying beautiful views.

We wrapped up the vacation by taking a small airplane to a remote island Cuelbra and spent the day on the most beautiful beach ever. (it is the 2nd most beautiful in the world). We enjoyed swimming and doing some snorkeling and sipping on a little tropical drink.

Thanks babe for talking me into going and leaving our child. It was hard to leave him, but we had such as great time. Straight from PR John continued the semester of school while I went to AZ and met up with Jude and stayed for almost 4 weeks over the holidays.
That post coming soon.

Jude and Family Pictures

Okay we are back. It has been a very busy month- Puerto Rico, Arizona, Chirstmas etc. But I will start with some beautiful family pictures we had taken by our wonderful and talented friend Megan. Most were of Jude celebrating his first birthday but we had a few family shots done. We love so many of them, and I picked several to post so beware of a lot of pictures.

Monkey Party

On Saturday we had a monkey party to celebrate Jude's first birthday. We had so much fun. There were lots of monkey treats. The kids had fun doing a pinata, playing with balloons and monkey masks, watching Curious George and eating. And of course the man of the hour our little monkey looked so cute, and had a blast even with no nap. And he loved playing with his cake more than actually eating it.

The table full of banana bread, cookies, and cupcakes.

the little monkey!

Daddy put the pinata on Jude after all the candy was gathered up.

Here he is with the cake, his hands were covered. The whole time he was trying to get the frosting off of his hands.

Nice job Jude.

We love our boy more than we ever imagined. He is such a fireball, and so much fun.
I can not believe a year has passed with him in our lives.
Mommy and Daddy love you.

Happy Thanksgiving

This year I am grateful for so many things.

We enjoyed spending time with our wonderful son Jude on his first Thanksgiving, and with John's mother MaryAnne and brother Jordan.