Ryan turns 2!

Our little guy, Ryan, turned two on the 27th. He didn't really understand what was happening, but Jack and Callie were very excited about the balloons and cake and things, so Ryan caught on and was excited, too! We went to "Toys R Us," according to tradition, and got Ryan a ride-on toy train.

Jack and Callie were happy to help Ryan open the rest of his gifts.

We should also mention that Ryan is finally walking! He took his time, for sure, but now he's doing very well.

Right now, Ryan really loves Elmo and stars, so we incorporated those things into his birthday. He has always loved stars. One of his first words was "uppa-buh," which means "up above," which means "star." Even now, he still calls them "uppa-buh" instead of stars, even though he can say "star" just fine. 

We made a couple of star cupcakes for Ryan to eat, since he still struggles with using a  fork.

Yum! Still tastes just as good!

Christmas 2013

We had a fun Christmas this year. The kids made gingerbread houses, as usual. They were very excited about it, but when they finished putting on the candy, they wanted to eat them immediately. We made them wait a little while so we could display them for a day or two at least!

Here are a few pictures of the kiddos by the tree, along with their finished gingerbread houses.

And here we are on Christmas morning! The kids got fun Christmas pajamas and a movie to watch on Christmas Eve. 

We got some wonderful gifts from family and friends and we all had a great day. We even got plenty of snow to make it a white Christmas! We hope everyone else had a wonderful, merry Christmas, too!

What Not To Do On Vacation

We had a little adventure while vacationing in Florida for Thanksgiving this year. Luke Thomas Marshall was born! He was born at 31 weeks gestation (9 weeks early) and weighed 4lbs, 5oz. He joined our family on November 25th, 2013. He is currently still vacationing in Florida, waiting to get home to New York! We did not want to leave him, but things were just not working out any other way. We are really looking forward to having him home with us soon.

Since Luke was born just a couple of days after we arrived in Florida, Mom missed out on most of the Disney World adventures, which also means we don't have many pictures right now. We're working on borrowing some from Grandma and Grandpa!

The day before Luke was born, we visited Animal Kingdom. Jack and Callie were very excited to be at Disney World! Ryan was just excited to be around so many new sights and sounds.

After we walked around for a little while, we stopped at a restaurant for a yummy (and pricey!) lunch. Next time it's PBJ's at a picnic table! But the kids really enjoyed the fun restaurant and seeing so many people. 

We went on a safari ride and the kids loved seeing all of the animals. Jack was asking to go on a roller coaster after that ride, though. He said Animal Kingdom is just like the zoo. He just hadn't seen the rest of Disney World yet!

The kids got to wear their super cool Disney World shirts on another day. They say "Marshall Family Vacation 2013." This picture was actually taken at the hospital while we were visiting Luke, but hey, that was part of our vacation!

It was actually a little chilly on one of the days we visited the parks. That was just fine with us because we did not want to be dying in the heat!

The kids got Mickey ears. Jack got some R2-D2 robot ears because he wanted to turn himself into a robot. Callie only wanted black, even though there were pink princess ears and other colors. She just had her heart set on the classic ears!

Ryan wouldn't keep his ears on very long, but he really liked them!

On our last day, we went to Downtown Disney to do some shopping and sight-seeing. Jack and Callie loved playing in this fountain while we relaxed and ate lunch. Callie wasn't interested in getting wet at all and Jack managed to stay relatively dry...

And here are the goofy kids with their matching Mickey shirts! Hopefully we can manage to scrounge up some more pictures of our trip, not to mention more pictures of Luke!  We will try to update soon.