Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We've had a wonderful Christmas spent with family! Hope you enjoy your Christmas and have a Happy New Year! I spent my Christmas Eve morning at a core class at the Y, and I spent my Christmas morning trying to get out of bed (haha). I am so sore, but we are enjoying it regardless. Ryker is having a great first Christmas too! I'll post pics of the stockings and presents later! :) Here is our Christmas card and Christmas letter from this year! :)

Dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas! 2011 has been a wonderful year for us!

As most of you know, we welcomed our first child Ryker Thomas into our family on March 18th. It has been such a delight to have him in our family. He is so much fun and is growing way too fast! He is a very social and happy baby. He loves all people. He started crawling in October and is quite the active little guy. We wouldn’t be surprised if he is walking before the new year. J

Cynthia finished her student teaching and graduated from BYU-Idaho in April. She started working part-time at the Children’s Education Center at the YMCA in Beverly in July and is having fun putting her degree to use. She is in the Enrichment Committee in Relief Society and is enjoying getting to know sisters in the ward. She ran her first race, the Wild Turkey 5 Mile Race, on Thanksgiving Day in Salem. Other than working three hours a day, she is busy being a mom (and wife) and is thoroughly enjoying it!

Joe started working for Biogen in Cambridge at the beginning of June. He is enjoying it. We are fortunate enough to have an aunt and uncle who commute there, so he is able to carpool with them, which is nice. He is the Assistant Ward Mission Leader in our ward and loves doing missionary work. He is currently looking into starting a Master’s program, but is still unsure of what he would like to go into. Although his 12 hour shifts can be rigorous, he enjoys his many days off with his family. He is having a blast being a Dad!

We recently had the privilege of helping our ward out in a community service project. We collected food and personal hygiene items for homeless people. This experience has really helped us get into the spirit of Christmas! Service is an amazing thing!

We hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love,

The Gebhardt’s

John 14:18 “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.”

Food for Thought

Last night as I was laying in bed, I found myself thinking about macaroni and cheese. Why, you ask? I have absolutely no idea. The kids in the Toddler lab had it for lunch yesterday at work, but I see kids eating it all the time at lunch. I don't even like mac n cheese that much! It brought me back to a letter I got in October (on Benji's birthday, actually). It reads:

"Dear Cynthia Gebhardt,
Enclosed is a copy of your recent labs. Your total cholesterol and LDL or "bad" cholesterol is elevated which gives you an elevated coronary risk. The recommendation is regular exercise, weight loss and a diet low in saturated fat. Please work on these lifestyle changes and I would like to recheck fasting labwork again in 6 months. All other tests were within normal or acceptable limits. Please set up this lab visit and call the office with any questions. Take care."

Back in September I had to get a physical for work, and the nurse wanted me to get some blood work done after fasting 12 hours. That was the letter I received.
Guys, my LDL cholesterol was 146! That is so bad! It is expected to be under 100, recently changed from under 120 or something like that. Joe's mom said that she has never seen someone with it that high, and Joe's mom and sister have had problems with cholesterol in the past. My mother-in-law suggested that perhaps it's genetics because honestly I wasn't eating that bad, and I was exercising a little bit and trying to lose weight. Well, neither of my parents have high cholesterol, so what is up with me?

Oh, and the part where it says, "Please work on these lifestyle changes..." How do they even know what kind of lifestyle habits I have? What if I was already doing all those things?!

Cheese is BAD for your cholesterol. So, I was thinking perhaps maybe I was craving the cheesy mac n cheese because of my cholesterol perhaps? Well, at least my HDL cholesterol is within "normal or acceptable limits."

I guess I'll have to keep exercising like crazy and eating extremely healthy!

Ryker is 9 Months!

Ryker turned 9 months last Sunday. He is such a fun and sweet boy! At the doctor's on Tuesday, he weighed 23.5 pounds (89th percentile) and he was 30 inches long (between 75-85 percentile). He said his head is a good size, which isn't surprising...Joe and I have pretty big heads. LOL. Right now he is enjoying everything. He just wants to explore everything (especially things he shouldn,t) like the wood stove and the heaters and cords. He has such a cute and sweet personality, we love it! He can say "more" ("mo") when he wants more food. And we think he says "Hi" because when he sees someone he smiles and says "ha" We just pretend like he is saying "Hi," anyways. Oh, we just love him, we do! :)

My two favorite Handsome Boys!

I like this pic because you can see his curls in the back. :)

"NOM NOM!"

A Video that Makes Me Smile

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving and a great Black Friday! :) Joe had to work Thanksgiving day, which kind of stunk, but we have him for Christmas so we're pretty happy about that! Plus, Friday felt like Thanksgiving too, and we had Joe home for that. We spent Thanksgiving with Joe's siblings and their significant others. Joe's mom did a wonderful job on the food. MMMM... So good! I did miss my family this Thanksgiving as well, but we had fun! And it was another happy day because I ran my very very first race, a 5 Mile Wild Turkey Race in Salem. I was hoping to finish it in an hour, but I finished it in 54 minutes and 22 seconds! Crazy I know! Katie figured out that there were little chips on the back of our bibs (numbers we wear) and that's how it tracked when we crossed the starting and finish lines. I have to admit though, I thought I was going to barf after I crossed that finish line, but it went away right away, so thank goodness for that. It was cold and I was decked out in my technical shirt, head band, mp3 player, and gloves. Glad I didn't wear a jacket because I was sweating like 3 minutes into that race. I had to take my gloves off and hold them because my hands started to sweat. I'm so thankful that it was so sunny and beautiful on Thanksgiving because the day before it was dark, dreary, windy, and rainy. It was also a beautiful day because Joe's brother Steve finally got engaged to his girlfriend Tracy before the race! Congrats and it's about time! Ryker needs some Gebhardt cousins! It was kind of neat because all of the girls ran it.... me, Joe's sister Liana, Steve's fiance Tracy, and Rick's (Joe's oldest brother) girlfriend Katie! And we all did awesome. I was last place out of all of us of course, but I can't complain! We all came in within a minute or seconds of each other. Well, Tracy was like six minutes before us all, but close enough. ;) After we stopped running and were standing there for a little bit, we got pretty cold because it was still under 40 degrees out (I think) and we were wet from sweat. I pigged out at Thanksgiving dinner so I'm pretty sure I canceled out any calories I burned that morning. I wish I had gotten a picture of the event, but oh well. I was wicked sore yesterday too. My shins, my quads, my ankles, my feet were all so sore, but I sure love that feeling! :) Here are all the girls results. I think if you double click you can see it better. :) It gives what place number, the name, where they are from, their bib number, age, gender, age group, time, and time per mile!Thanksgiving dinner was delicious as I said before, and Ryker had a blast with his uncles and aunts! :) He was also very happy when Daddy came home that night!
Friday morning, we went to have breakfast with Joe's dad and sister. It was fun, and then Joe and I were off to the malls for some Black Friday shopping. I saved 120 dollars at Kohl's and got some things for Christmas at a couple other shops and another mall. We went to dinner with Ricky and Katie at Chili's, and we had a lot of fun. Ryker joined us for that one.
Anyways, we love the holidays and we had a great last couple of days! :)Here is my technical shirt and my bib. I figured since I didn't get a pic of me wearing it during the race, I'd just take a pic of what I wore. Not proof, I know, but man am I happy I finally accomplished one of my goals! :)
Ryker's first Thanksgiving! :) I'm thankful that I can be a mom to such a wonderful boy and a wife to such a wonderful man! :)
I'm grateful for my sweet little boy. Check out that turkey with his huge blue slippers on. :)
Thanksgiving dinner knocked him out. Haha. Seriously though, we were all eating dinner at the table and looked over and he fell asleep. :)

I'm thankful for so much this year. As I mentioned above, I'm thankful for my family, I'm thankful for all that we have been blessed with...and we have been blessed with so so much! I'm thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that I have a Heavenly Father who loves us and wants what's best for us so that we can return and live with Him after this life. I know that that couldn't be possible without Jesus Christ atoning for our sins. I am forever thankful for Him. I love Him. I'm thankful for eternal families and that I can be with them forever. I can't imagine life without my family. :) I love them so much! Happy Thanksgiving everyone! :)

8 Months Old!

Ryker turned 8 months on November 18! We can't believe it! He has learned so much in the last month, it's crazy! It's amazing how fast such a little person can learn! Here are some things about Ryker!
-Ryker learned to crawl at 7 and a half months (it was about time! He's been trying so hard for like 2 months now!)
-He loves pulling himself up in his crib and bouncing and walking around in his bed
-He is very very talkative and now says "Ma-ma!" (first said it on 11/11/11)
-He likes to mimic people as you will see in the video below.
-He can have yogurt now, and I'm pretty sure that's his favorite thing. He also loves his Mum-mums, which is like a cracker for a baby (dissolves in his mouth)
-He is cruising (furniture walking)!
-He loves being on his legs; he definitely wants to walk!
-He wants to see everything that is going on around him and will grab at everything. He especially loves grabbing things off the shelf at the grocery store.
-He just wants to do what everyone else is doing
-He started this new thing where he looks at people all innocently, and it looks like he is wondering if he is supposed to be doing what he is doing.
-He really loves his mommy and daddy and is really starting to be clingy. When we try to give him to someone he'll lean towards us like he doesn't want to go, but when we give him to someone he doesn't really cry either. He also started this thing where he lays his head on our shoulders when we pick him up or take him out of his crib when he is crying.
-He's so cuddly.
-He likes when we sing at church. I'm pretty sure he tries to sing because it's only when we sing hymns that it starts to sound like he is shouting. He did it during the closing hymn last week, and then when we were in relief society he did it again. I think he likes to sing.
-He really enjoys the song "Called to Serve"
-He likes to dance to music.
We love him very much. He is just growing up way too fast! Love you Ryker Thomas! :)

Celebrate!

A glorious thing happened to me yesterday. I was putting away Summer clothes and getting out Winter clothes, and organizing maternity clothes, prepregnancy clothes, etc. Well, I forgot about my favorite pair of skinny jeans from before pregnancy. I was just messing around, but I tried them on and they fit! I was so happy that I danced around in them while cleaning all day yesterday! Makes me want to go buy my second pair of skinny jeans ever! I've been converted to the skinny jeans! :)