Merry Christmas!

As I write this, I sit here at work on Christmas day thinking to myself that I should probably be mad that I'm not at home with my family but I am actually Thankful. I'm thankful because this morning as a family we woke up and celebrated our first of many Christmas together. We had the opportunity to sit down an open gifts, I got the chance to see the priceless look on Addy's face when she opened each gift with a smile and would simply look at us an say, "Open". It's crazy because I also think to myself that in the past two months at work we covered 7 cop shootings. Five of them fatal, one holding on for dear life with the help of life support, and one recovering with a shot through the neck and I think to myself about how hard it must be for those families not to have their love ones to celebrate this special time of year. I think there are many things in life that I take for granted so for this Christmas I am not going to do that and even though I am at work I will be able to go home to a family that LOVES each other and cares for each other and with that what else could you ask for.

We want to wish everyone a HAPPY, SAFE, and MERRY Christmas. We hope you get a chance to enjoy it with your family!! I promise we will post a whole lot of pictures of us opening gifts but what a day to CELEBRATE ! MERRY CHRISTMAS from the GAMRADTS!!

10 Things I love about Christmas!!

There are always certain things that I love about Christmas.

10. Picking out that perfect Christmas tree. I have been trying to convince Kristi in buying a fake tree for the past 4 years but have failed every year. I do have to say that I love this years tree though. We got it at Home Depot and we got it early enough where we had a lot to choose from. I think that is the key because the last couple years we were late and I didn't like any of them. With this being said I will continue to try and convince Kristi on getting a fake one but I'm sure I'll be blogging 20 years from now about us picking out our real tree at some tree place.

9. The smell of Christmas treats. This year Kristi and Addy spent one Saturday making a whole bunch of Christmas sugar cookies. All I can say is when I came home from work it smelled so GOOD!! It reminded me of when I was a kid walking into my Grandma's house for the holidays. You could always count on two things , 1 my Grandpa sitting in his chair and 2 my Grandma cooking cookies.

Here is Addy cutting out a candy cane. From what I heard Addy was pretty in to it and Kristi loved it as well!

8. Trying to get the perfect Christmas card picture. I didn't anticipate on how hard it would be this year with a two year old and twins, but let me tell you what I almost said forget it and told Kristi that there was going to be no Gamradt Christmas card this year. But Kristi calmed me down and here are a couple of pictures that didn't make the cut. At first we thought we would do the dog with the kids but after two tries the dog was eliminated this year.

When it came to the kids we took about 30 pictures. I'm telling you trying to get them all smiling and looking at you at the same time is pretty much impossible.

7. The annual Santa picture. Kristi's family started this tradition a long time ago and Kristi has now made it ours. I think the greatest thing about these things are that if the kids are crying the better they look. In this one I love how Addy is sitting in the sled as far away from Santa as she can get and just begging us to get her out of there. I LOVE IT!!

6. The anticipation on opening gifts. The only puzzling thing about this is when I was a kid it seemed like our tree was filled with gifts. As I write this I look at our tree and see 6 gifts I'm not complaining I'm just wondering where did all those gifts come from when I was younger.

5. The 1 gift you get to open early!! This year we decided to let Addy's open hers a little earlier then usual since we will be heading over to Kristi's parents on Wednesday and who really wants to drag a toddler bed over to Bellevue and back. While Kristi and Addy were over at Matt and Lori's with Brooke I stayed home and set it up. She was actually pretty excited.

Some people might say, "Who gives someone a bed as a Chrismas gift." My only response to that is, you can't look at it as a bed you have to look at it as a big JUMPING toy! Here Addy is testing it out!!

It's crazy how big she is getting and I have to say it's only been a couple of nights in the bed but things are going pretty good. There has been a couple bumps but nothing that we didn't expect!

4. EATING!! I think every year I tell my self that I'm not going to get carried away with snacking but every year I find my self eating everything and loving it!! I know it's bad but lets be honest who doesn't eat on the holidays and tells them self, "It's ok but as soon as Jan 1st comes around I'm going to start my diet!" Why change tradition!!

3. That one special thing! This one changes every year. This year for me it's the boys celebrating their first Christmas. I know they will never remember it but we will. Look at these guys how couldn't you be excited to spend Christmas with these two.

2. Spending time as a family!! I wish I had a recent family picture to put in here but I couldn't find a recent one so I had to split us up into 2 different ones. These were taken just last weekend when Tim came into town and we met him at Las Margaritas. Here are Owen and I just chillin next to the sun!!

Here is Kristi with Addy and Easton. To me there is a lot of things going on in this picture. Addy has someone on hold and is wondering when is this stupid picture going to be taken so she can get back to her phone call. Easton is wondering how he could get that cell phone out of Addys hand and into his mouth and Kristi is like I can smile for 2 more seconds so you better take the stupid picture.

1. 24 Hours of the CHRISTMAS STORY!! How can you not watch the Christmas Story on Christmas. It's the greatest show ever!! I think the first thing I do when I wake up on Christmas morning is grab the remote of the bed stand and turn it onto the Christmas Story It's a must!!

Who doesn't love the lamp!!

And how can you not laugh when you see him wearing this!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!! I hope you and your family have a safe and Happy Holiday season!!

Our Little Reader!!

This morning I was over in the dining room feeding Owen some breakfast, and I just happen to look over and see Addy reading a book to Easton. It was too good of a moment to pass up, so I quickly grabbed the camera and snapped this picture before Easton decided to moved on.....

......and let me tell you, it wasn't that long before he decided he wanted to go off and do something different. The only problem was he didn't check with Addy first because if he had checked with her, he would've realized that she wanted him where they started, and that she wasn't afraid to use physical force to get him there. HILARIOUS!!

Addy was determined that, "Carl goes shopping." was too good of a book to just let him off the hook. I think she would've dragged him down the block, around the school, and back home if she needed to. I'm not sure as a father if I am supposed to jump in when moments like this happen to make peace, but I'm telling you in incidents like these I just have to let things go. They are just too good to watch, so I decided I'm just going to let them play out.

In this incident I guess they settled on playing peek a boo and forgot about the book. Addy had Easton laughing so hard.

After a couple minutes, Addy left, and I went back to feeding Owen. When I looked over, guess what I saw?!?! That little devil, was he playing us the whole time? I think he might have had this master plan the entire time, and him laughing with Addy was like his evil laugh saying, "I got you my pretty!" Sometimes kids just amaze me, and I have to take my hat off and say, "Well Played Easton Well Played!"

I assisted Easton in setting up the book in this picture. To my amazement he did actually sit there for a couple minutes and look at it. Wait a minute... Did he just play me so I would open the book for him? This man is too GOOD! Lastly, I think we all would be better off just keeping this to ourselves and not telling Addy about it. I'm not sure what her reaction would be if she found out that Easton did end up reading the book with her dad's help. I'm telling you I saw her physical side today, and I don't want her wrath unleashed on me so SHHHHH! I wonder how many books Easton has left before he fills up his Book-It and gets a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. Man I miss those things!!

Happy Holidays!!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Thanksgiving. I apologize we haven't blogged in a while I guess with work, the kids, and every thing else going on I haven't found the time to do it.

I hope this month will be better.

I think everyone has something that kicks off the holiday season, for some people it might be Thanksgiving, for others it could be when they set up their Christmas tree, for me it's when a local radio station starts playing 24 hours of Christmas music and believe me if it was up to Kristi that station would be on in our house every second of the day up to Christmas if I would let her.

I guess one of my big responsibilities this time of year is to hang up the outside Christmas lights. I don't do a whole lot but it's enough. The biggest problem I have is the elementary kids that walk by and steal a light bulb as a joke. It happens like 10 times a year "Hey kids not that FUNNY!! I'm watching you!" Here is a picture of our house with our lights.

I have two neighbors in which I have a little competition with each years it's called, "lets see who can get their lights up first after Thanksgiving." This year Chris won and let me tell you what as soon as Kristi saw that he had his lights up she was in my ear yelling, "Ryan you need to get out there NOW and put up the lights before Clay beats you as well!" I am glad to inform everyone that I did beat Clay. Here is the entrance to our house.

I try to add something every year . This year I added a wreath that I got at silent auction at work. Kristi has always wanted a wreath so when I saw it I had to make a bid. I'm hoping some day I will have the house decorated like the ones in those beer commercials where the lights go with music but it's all about baby steps.

I guess one of the biggest things that we have done in the past month is separate the twins. We had them in the same crib but it got to the point were Easton was steam rolling his brother every five minutes so we decided to separate them and put Easton in his own crib. We also hung up their names just so they wouldn't get confused on which crib is theirs.

These are the names that my mom helped us make when she was here a year and a half ago. I think they look really good and the thing I like the most about them is that they are totally different then any other names that I have seen. My mom started out with just plain white letters and created something simple but pretty cool.

Here are the boys! I think Easton might be doing his Elvis impression in this picture plus as you can see he's not afraid to show a little chest. "Hello Ladies!"

Addy and Easton just taking it easy. Easton absolutely LOVES Addy. She will come up to him and start bobbing her head up and down and he just laughs and laughs. I think Addy is starting to have a little bit more fun with Easton as well . I think now that he is crawling/moving across the floor with his arms she is seeing that they actually do move instead of just lay there.

Kristi put her scarf on Addy one day and let me tell you what, it looked so good on her. We had to grab the picture of her. I tried to get Riley involved but as you can see still after 3 1/2 years the dog still just ignores me.

I think the last thing that has been happening in the Gamradt household is that we got a new TV. Kristi and I saved up for a blue-ray player so I went to Video Only to buy one but instead of walking out with just the player. I walked out with a new 58 inch plasma, a mounting bracket, and a blue-ray. I guess the point of this story is don't send Ryan into a electronic store to buy anything because he has no self control when it comes to this type of stuff. Matt was nice enough to come over and help me mount this beast on the wall.

Now that everything is done. I LOVE it! The TV is just amazing and the blue-ray is ridiculous. I also love the fact that it is mounted to the wall. It opens up our living room so much and actually makes it look bigger. (sorry for having our computer open. It usually isn't like that!)

After I snapped the first picture Addy got mad at me because she wanted to be in it as well so here is a picture with Addy and the TV with the focus still being on the TV where it should be.(J/K)