Dad's Turn- Family Christmas Card

Well... I made the mistake this year of saying to Kas "I don't think I need to write a Christmas letter because we didn't really do much, ill just write a blog post or something."

So here I sit on Christmas Eve, doing exactly that, and updating the world on our year.  I also have all my wrapping to do, and a little pink bike in the crawl space waiting to be assembled... quite the honey do list for a holiday if you ask me.  And three four glasses of Champagne sure isn't going to help.

But I digress.  Like I mentioned earlier, 2012 was a whirlwind; what with a baby and a move across country so naturally this year felt somewhat vanilla.  One exciting thing we experienced early this year was the longest streak of weather in MN under 60 degrees since 1861 (October- May).  It was nice to be a part of history and all but we decided the best way to celebrate was to get the hell out of here.  We used Kassi's 30th birthday in April as an excuse for a seven day trip to Jamaica (which luckily we booked before paying our taxes on April 15th).

I had never been to Jamaica before but for all knew we could have been anywhere, we never left the hotel pool, much less the resort.  I felt kind of bad not getting even a taste of the local culture but then I realized I was lying in the tropical sun having buckets of red stripe delivered and that I couldn't care less about the culture.  Except of course for the bobsled team but they were unavailable for some reason (might have been because I demanding to meet them at the concierge desk in nothing but my swim trunks... at 9am).

In 2013 Lyla grew into a full blown kid.  Gone are the days of her quietly crawling around on the floor.  Now if she sits still for more than 30 seconds it's because she is asleep or because Dora The Explorer is on.  She is constantly on the move, constantly gabbing up a storm, and constantly demanding to have things her way... very much like her mother, not me.  I actually resisted momentarily when Kassi insisted on bringing home my parents vast collection of books on parenting a strong willed child but then decided to just let her win that one.  Happy wife happy life they say.

We also perfectly nailed the conception window for baby number two this year and we are looking forward to welcoming Everly Joy Chapman to the clan in March.  That was the only month we had available due to Lyla's second birthday in February and my 30th birthday in April.  Needless to say Evie is already more punctual than either of her parents.

No big promotions this year for either of us, but work for both Kassi and I continues to be pretty great.  Kassi loves Oracle and I love Life Time and for the time being both fit pretty perfectly into our work, family, baby, blogging, cooking, rugby, another baby, cats, and a dog kind of life.

So here is to the momentary conclusion of yet another year.  We are thankful beyond belief for the blessings we have received and for each one of you.  Our friends and family, near and far, mean the world to us and we wish we could see more of you this Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Love,

 Ryan, Kassi, Lyla, Evie, Tim, Carlos, Kevin