Helping Grandpa

The boys really got into the spirit of things...helping each other open gifts, gathering up the wrapping paper. Here you'll see them lending a helpful hand to Grandpa.

Gifts from New Mexico

We thought that the New Mexico crew would enjoy seeing the boys with their new gifts. The books were a hit and we wore the jammies right away. Here they are opening their gifts from you.

Pajama Party

Christmas in November! We so enjoyed our crazy time in Grand Rapids. We missed the NM crew. Hope all is well.

New Picture II

New Picture

Here is an up to date photo/ultrasound image of the new NM Hollebeek baby. Any guesses as to gender?

Weekend Fun

We enjoyed a fun but busy weekend. We celebrated at a first birthday party of a friend's daughter and squeezed in a trip to the doctor. Ryland's double ear infection wasn't responding to the antibiotics and Leighton and Paxton got their flu shots. Fun for everyone!

more pics of the boys

Hey all,
I'd been receiving request from people to update our old website so I decided to set up a little blog for the boys. It's way easier to update than a webpage. Of course I will still be posting here but now I can provide our blog (http://brechtings.blogspot.com/) to non-family and non-Hollebeeks to keep up with the boys. Some of those pics are duplicates for you all but I hope to do a better job of sending out pics.

Update

I realized that I have not posted in some time. Things are going well in NM. Aidan still loves school and Teddy still loves playschool. Aidan is taking piano lessons and seems to be enjoying it. "Twinkle, twinkle little star" and "Charley Brown and Snoopy" flood our rooms with periodically throughout the week. Stacey is feeling a good deal better than the first trimester and is vigorously continued her Writing Lab work and student teacher observations for WNMU.
Chief Manuelito continues to be a challenge for me as a beginning school counselor, but I am learning a great deal.
Fall has finally hit NM this week as the lows have hit the teens and the highs right now are in the 40s and 50s. This is a far cry from last week's highs in the high 60s and low 70s but the seasons change. Fortunately, we have almost finished our wood collection for the winter and have already cleaned out the chimney pipe.
That's it for now.

Happy Halloween

A great time was had by all! We enjoyed a fall festival at our church the week before Halloween. Then our small group from church came over for Halloween for chili and trick-or-treating. The boys did great and seemed to really enjoy touching all the candy.

Fall 2008

Halloween

Greetings. We just finished five days biking the Outer Banks and tonite we are in Charleston SC and then on to Orlando. Had a great time on the bikes and were grateful, as always for safety. Hope all is well with you all Love Dad and Mom

In deep thought?

Robin was sorting through all the old pictured in our office and ran across some funning pics, this being one of them. I guess its not really appropriate but it was from a trip out to NM after we were first married

The Details

So, here is the deal. Depending on the measurements, the baby is due somewhere in between the 1st and 6th of April. We have known about this for a few weeks, but received confirmation of it yesterday at Stacey's appointment. As to names, Teddy likes "Barry" while Aidan's choice is "Little Willy", so we go with a combination of "Little Willy Barry"...fortunately, Mom and Dad get the ultimate veto power. So, that is the big news from NM.

Greetings all:

We are safely returned from the land of Harleys and Miller beer. At least we got to enjoy one out of two. had a great time, weather could not have been better, the ferry ride across Lake Michigan was smooth both coming and going. No bkike trouble or health issues. We had a great time staying at the mission hopuse and have made some new friends as well. We were quite the hit at the morning servie of the Beloit Rd Baptist Church. I made the day for a couple of little kids that I took on rides. I think you could hear them sqweeling downtown!. Anyway, I have included a couple pics for your enjoyment

Not a "Techy"

Hi Kids,
I thought I was posting comments to your updates, but I now see that nothing has posted. Guess my comments are out there somewhere and will surface at some point.
Thanks for all the pictures......of grown up looking Aidan and his supportive little brother (were there any tears in Mommy and Daddy's eyes??), the great progress in the kitchen, the West Michigan cuties, and the "Dream Team" from Ky. It's SO fun to be with all of them/you, but when we can't the pictures are treasures. Thanks, Matt, for setting this up, and all of you for keeping us in the loop of your lives.
We will post some pics of Milwaukee upon our return. Hopefully I'll come home with a less dramatic souvenir this time =).
Love to you all,
Mom

Great pics

Hey thanks to everyone for new pics. Looks like there's a lot going on. Leighton Ryland and Paxton appear to be about a year older than in July.

Congrats to Aidan on the first day of school. He looks so grown up on the pictures.

Dirk and Stacey, the kitchen looks fabulous. I hope you have been taking "before" pictures as you start each project!

Matt, you apparently forgot that stuff left in storage reproduces in the dark and yuou end up with twice as much junk.!

Mom and I are off to Milwaukee starting tomorrow. , joining a few hundred thousand of our closest friends. Weather is supposed to be great and we are looking forward to the ferrry ride over and a few days of "Harley community"

Thanks for the updates
Dad

Pics from summer

Now that we have been relegated to the slums of dial up, we don't check this as much as we used to. But I had the camera at work today and thought I'd update the blog with a few pics.

In other news, I have managed to clean out the 3 stalls of the garage just in time to have out two storage pods delivered. How is it possible we moved into a house that is twice the size but I can't seem to find enough room for all our crap. And heaven forbid we get rid of some of it.

First Day of School!

Here are the pics from the first day of school for excited Aidan and proud little brother Ted. I guess that Aidan was so pumped for school that when Stacey and Ted dropped him off, he went running to find his friends while Stacey and Teddy were still getting out of the car. I thought that he might at least wait until third grade before he ditched his family. Anyway, the first day was great and Aidan even more excited for tomorrow because he gets to ride the bus to school!

Kitchen Update

Here are the left and right side views of the NM Hollebeek kitchen project. As you can see, the cabinets are in as well as the floors, etc. The beautiful counter tops are not permanent, but temporary 3/4 inch plywood as we await Gallup time in the building industry...very functional (when was the last time that you vacuumed your counter tops?) but not exactly what we wanted. Time will tell.

Update from Lexington

Hey all,
Things have been pretty busy around here so we haven't been able to post any new pics or videos for awhile. Here are some recent pics and videos of the boys. Work continues to be very interesting. I begin the psychology orientation tomorrow, which should be very informative. Talk to you soon, Em