Christmas 2011

Dad and Zander stopped through St. Louis on their way to the farm this Christmas, so we got to celebrate with them and Carl, Kathleen and the kiddos a few days early. Ryan and I then went up to Indiana for Christmas with the Deetz's on Christmas eve and Christmas with Mom and Grandma Murphy the day after Christmas. I didn't take any pictures of those though - sorry! Next weekend is Christmas with the McMurray's! We love to keep the celebration going!

 Zander holding Emmy

 William loving his new "choo-choo pajamas"

 "Ing'id!"
William has recently decided he can say my name now. It's quite a relief to not be called "MawMaw" in public anymore! :-)

Lily checking out a prized christmas present. 

 Zander and Lily prove that there's more than one way to stuff a cat.

 Drama queen.

Zander putting his anatomy skills to work - sewing up the cat. 

Lily got a hold of my camera and took lots of strange (and very close up) pictures. This one of a pile of presents turned out kind of cute though. 

Zander's turn to open!

Dad's looking excited! 

Ryan's first time holding Emmy. He was too scared to hold her when she was brand new. As luck would have it the first time he held her, she spit up - but, he did continue to hold her! :-)

Ice Skating with Lily

Lily and I went ice skating last night. It took her (and me) awhile to find our "ice legs" but by the end of the night, we were doing pretty good! It was a nice set up with an outdoor rink, a fire pit for roasting marshmallows and even some free hotdogs, cookies and hot cocoa. The rink provided the red skate assists pictured below. I wasn't sure about them at first, but it really did seem to help.

Pictures from the weekend

Mom and Grandma came down this weekend. Tuesday found a new friend!

Grandma holding her latest Great-grand-baby.

Ryan and I spent a good portion of Sunday night giving airplane rides. Lily looks like she's about to do a face-plant in this one!

Mom with baby Emilia

Mom got William a cool marble set for his birthday. Somehow Ryan and I ended up trying to put it together...

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?

So it's not really a cookie jar, but William was cracking me up with his master skills at climbing up to the candy no matter where we put it. That kid likes his candy. :-)

Day at the Zoo

William was a bit under the weather today, so he had to stay home but Lily, Ryan and I had a great time at the zoo!

Frog parking only. All others will to "toad". :-)

Otters are my favorite and they were very playful today!

Love this picture!

The lemurs were in fine spirits too!

Climbing like the goats.

Emilia Jane

It has been a busy month! Not only did we get married, but newest niece Emilia made her appearance on the 19th! She's absolutely adorable - not that I expected anything less!

Transportation Museum

While Dad was in town for the wedding, we found a little time to take a trip over to the transportation museum (a favorite of William's.)

Lily was exceedingly excited by this toilet she found on one of the trains.

William was scared to cross this track as this train looks like it's coming. Dad was kind enough to "stop" it for us!

A partial Deetz family pic on the milk train (my apologies for the orientation - can't seem to figure out how to rotate pictures on here!)

I love this picture of William because it's so him, but also because he got his head stuck in this window right after this shot was taken. The next few minutes were spent trying to convince him he had to stick his head out further and turn it to get it back in while he was yelling "stuck! stuck! stuck!" Poor kid!

Lily and William get a ride from Carl and Grandpa.

Honeymoon Staycation

Ryan and I will be taking our official honeymoon to Costa Rica in January (we can't wait!), but we did a little staycation honeymoon the week after the wedding. Ryan wasn't feeling too well for a portion of the week, so we didn't do much, but we did get a few fun activities in.

Our first trip was to Meramec Caverns. It's a pretty cool cave!

We also went horseback riding on a very pretty trail not too far outside of St. Louis. The horses all had some serious personality which made it extra fun!

Happy 1 Month Anniversary to Us!

Today marks me and Ryan's 1 month anniversary! Many people have asked us how we're liking married life and, for the most part, we believe it's pretty much like before married life. :-) But, regardless, we're enjoying it!

I've been very delinquent about blogging all that we've been up to lately, so I'll try to do some catching up... again.

The wedding was absolutely perfect as far as we were concerned. The weather was great, the venues were beautiful, our wedding party was awesome and we had a great time. We were so happy to see so many family and friends and had a great time dancing the night away. We still catch ourselves reminding each other about fun memories from that weekend.

We won't get our pictures back until mid November, but here are some shots we've rounded up from others. (I know several of you still have photos out there and we want to see them!)

Ryan has said from the beginning that he wanted a ring tatoo instead of a regular metal ring. We got him a ring from Spencer's for the actual ceremony (classy, I know) and then he went to get the tatoo the following week. The tatoo artist warned us that ring tatoos don't hold up too well, so we'll see how it works out in the long run, but for now, it's pretty cool!

Less than a week away...

I can't believe we're 6 days away from the wedding! Everyone said the time would go fast as we got closer and they were right! It feels like the last month or two have flown!

Generally, I think we're in good shape and have most things done for the wedding. I have this coming week off of work so I should be able to finish up all the last minute things without too much of a problem. And, all in all, so far we haven't had too many hiccups (knock on wood!)

We're both super excited and pretty much every evening we find ourselves talking about "in just 6 days...." We're really looking forward to seeing everyone and having a great day celebrating our happiness!

I have no idea what I'm going to spend all my extra time on once the wedding is over, but I'm sure I'll find something!

I'm so glad we decided to get married in the fall. I just love this season and my mind is a jumble of all the exciting, fun things that are coming soon! I mean there's the wedding of course :-), but that will be quickly followed by the birth of my new niece, opportunities for apple picking, s'mores, bonfires, Halloween and more! Ryan and I are already looking forward to taking the canoe out frequently the week after the wedding when we're both off work! Just can't wait for all there is to come!

Aloha!

I've been home about a week now, but it's been a crazy busy week! I finally have a few minutes though, so here's a review of the trip in pictures!

Snorkeling on the reef. There were lots of cool fish and in this picture I caught a bit of a squid (yellowish-brown one towards the bottom.)

The camera doesn't quite do the colors justice, but this was a pretty fish.

This is me hanging out on the sandbar - our first stop on the snorkeling trip.

I was totally stoked to see lots of sea turtles on the snorkeling trip as well! They were hard to catch on camera, but this is at least proof that I saw them!

The infinity pool was one of my favorites and I spent most of Friday afternoon in it. They had these orange bean bag things that you could sit in and just lounge at the edge of the pool and look out over the ocean. While doing this I actually got to see a sea turtle playing in the ocean for quite awhile.

Just a pretty view at sunset one night. As you know, I was actually there on work, so we didn't get much time to sight-see or explore during the week, but we did get to enjoy some dinners on the beach!

Sunset.

One of the things I was most impressed with in Hawaii was all the rainbows. In particular the fact that you could see objects behind the rainbow. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything but sky behind a rainbow before. I also thought the misty rain that they have there was particularly fun.

All in all, it was a great trip and while I paid for being gone a bit this week, I'm still really glad I went. Ryan wanted to know if I wanted to change our honeymoon destination from Costa Rica to Hawaii. While I think I'd definitely like to go back sometime, I'm still super excited that we're going to Costa Rica in January!