February 2011

Hello Everyone,

Hope all you Minnesotans are thawing out:) We've been keeping busy here in Las Vegas. Jay has been coaching basketball as an assistant on varsity for Faith this year. It was a big change from the middle school team he has been coaching the past 5 years. It was fun to watch the kids he started with play their senior year. Unfortunately there was no championship for them this year. The season ended last week.

Gioia is really enjoying being a big sister. She is very nurturing toward Braden. (Sigh of relief). She's always making sure we take care of him if he fusses, gives him his nuk when he needs it and likes to pretend her babies are just like Braden. She has enjoyed going back to daycare to play with her friends as Kim went back to work at the end of January. She is learning new words everyday and is starting to put sentances together even if we don't understand them. She can say the letters of the alphabet somewhat clearly with us helping her and is so adorable as she says her night time prayer with us.

Our newest addition is getting bigger and bigger everyday! He's following our faces and looking for us when he hears our voices. Braden loves watching Gioia and just looks like he can't wait to move around with her. He is a little charmer already with his adorable smile. Enjoy this video we just took 2-18-11.

Peaceful baby boy

Gioia still loves him...and he loves the attention

We got her hair into a ponytail superbowl sunday:)

Braden's 2 month pictures

Christmas/New Years

Christmas and New Years brought plenty of family to visit.

Kim's Mom and sister, Amanda, came down to visit for 5-days (Dec.17th-22nd). They had the displeasure of experiencing, what I claim, the longest storms in Vegas history. It rained for 5-days straight (every second they were visiting).

This was the first time we were in Las Vegas for Christmas. It was very different to celebrate the birth of Jesus with palm trees and 55-degree weather. It was very relaxing not traveling for place-to-place-to-place, but we did miss everyone in MN.

This was taken one night when we were trying to teach Gioia how to stay in bed and fall asleep at night. She got the "falling asleep" part down, we just need to work on "staying in bed."

Jay's whole family came out between Christmas and New Years. Adam and his family came early, along with Mom, so we traveled to the Grand Canyon for quite the adventure. The whole trip seemed like a Clark Griswold vacation, but in the end everything worked out.

Eric and his family came later in the week. We had the Schutte Christmas in Vegas along with the Braden's baptism and New Years at Red Rock Casino while everyone was here. It was great to for all of the cousins to play for 3-days non-stop. Gioia was complete wiped out after that weekend.

In a 14-month period, Mom will have gained 6 grandchildren (one more is still on the way).

It will be a crazy next couple of months. Kim will be going back to work in a couple weeks. Her classes start up again at the same time. Jay is trying to finish his Masters Program, hopefully by February, while basketball is in full swing.

We plan on making a couple small trips back to MN this spring along with our big trip in the summer.

Take care!