"Help You"

  "Help you." This little phrase is something Garret says all day long. He LOVES helping. Just this evening I pulled out some pancake mix from the pantry and Garret, hearing the pantry door open and close, somehow pulled himself away from his beloved "Monkey" aka Curious George and ran into the kitchen saying, "help you mama." It often makes projects a bit longer but I love the extra help especially when it comes from such cute chubby hands.
   Garret loves helping Ace most of all. Ace goes into the garage and Garret is close behind. Every evening Garret gets to help his dad feed the dogs. All of dad's jobs seem so much cooler than mom's and so Garret is quite busy following Ace around all evening saying those sweet little words "help you." The wonderful thing about Ace is that he is always willing to have Garret's help as well even though Garret clearly gets in the way and can make the task more challenging. For example, the other evening Ace was changing out the brake pads in one of our cars when Garret and I pulled into the driveway. Garret got out of the car and ran toward Ace, "Help you daddy." When the boys came back inside I asked Ace how it went. He said it was great and it was especially helpful when Garret used the flashlight not to allow light for Ace to see but as a hammer on the tire. 
    The other day our shower head just popped right off, shooting water right up into the ceiling. My ever so handy husband bought a new shower head that day and went to fix it before I had to endure another dramatic shower. Garret of course was right behind Ace, eager to lend a helping pair of hands.


 Better take a closer look to make sure Dad isn't screwing anything up.
 Just hammering away
I love this little boy and hope he is always willing to lend a helping hand. 

That time of year again.

It's that time of year again. The Stryker family gets family photos taken and I fill an entire post with way too may pictures. Every single year I worry about these pictures. After we take pictures I come home telling Ace, "the dogs were too crazy this year to get any good pictures" or I say, "Garret was to cold and grumpy and probably none of the pictures are going to show how happy he is." This year was NO different. We didn't take as many pictures with our dogs so I wasn't too worried about that. BUT Garret was a wild man at the park. He wanted to run and play the entire time. When we tried holding him he was always squirming to get free. Then the other part of the time he was reaching for Jeremy's camera or other tools Jeremy had brought for our photo shoot. I was certain it would be slim-pickins this year. BUT again I was pleasantly surprised to find that Jeremy was able to capture my wonderful family in all their glory. Another successful family photo shoot! 

If we need to get you a family picture for this past year, feel free to leave a comment with the one you want and we will get it printed off as soon as we can. 

 Can't have an annual Stryker photo shoot without at least one yellow lab.








 I couldn't have made a better choice four years ago. Im still so happy, he's still so handsome and we still have a lot of fun ahead of us. Love this man!








 Even in his wild and crazy moments he is pretty amazing!

 We are so happy to add another boy to this mix.



 Jeremy must have done something really good.


Sweet Garret Timothy


I absolutely adore this one! This is what we look like the majority of the time.

Happy holidays! From a very happy and blessed Stryker family.