Busy bee!

Wow, a whole month? That's about the length of time that I've taken to get ready for Christmas.
I think I am ready and I've paced myself well this year so, so far stress free yeah!
I am sooooo excited for the kids to open their presents on Christmas morning I can hardly wait!
We are surprising them big time this year and I think they are going to fall over when they see what we got. You bet I'll post pictures AFTER Christmas! I hope you are all ready too and can enjoy some food, friends, and family over the next couple of weeks. Getting together is precious time that can easily be effected by us wanting things just perfectly and then we get grouchy and stressed. I know, I've been there. But I am realizing that it's not the setting that matters or that's even remembered much, it's the time spent together talking and laughing that really matters.
And hey, if that fancy supper never gets made, just make grilled cheese or order pizza. It'll be a good laugh!
Enjoy some random pictures and have a VERY WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS! And most importantly, don't forget to focus on Christ's birth, not santa or presents. :) Feliz Navidad!

Halloween time!

Slowly, I'm catching up on sharing pictures with you! They boys had a great time
trick or treating, and made some beautiful pumpkin pictures!
Even Emily got into it and wanted to carve a pumpkin too so I grabbed one of my pie pumpkins
and carved it with her.
Emily was a chicken, or a duck, I'm not quite sure what it was but it was really cute!
The boys were dressed up too, it's so hard to decide what to be!
Everyone had a good time, the weather was fabulous, and the boys got a lot of
really great candy with tons of chocolate in them. MMmmmmm.......

Seriously? That long??

I'm so sorry, I had no idea I hadn't posted in almost a month! I guess it's been a busy one lol!
Football ended, Jeremy's team took 2nd place and I'm not sure what place Ryan's team took.
It was farther down than 2nd but they both did a great job putting forth good efforts throughout the whole season. I'm really proud of them!

Emily's doing well, learning and growing! She learned how to jump and it's really cute. She loves to play some music and jump to it. She's really into her baby dolls too and caring for them. She carts them different places like the grocery store, takes them in the van, swings with them in the swing, etc. She also loves to help me clean up around the house, I'm really loving the natural helpfulness!
The boys didn't have that natural "cleaning" gene. That would have been nice!

Jeff's doing well, still working and still thankful for a wonderful job.

I've started going to a turbo kick class at the YMCA, it's a blast! Beats my body up real good and muscles and getting stronger. It's amazing and I look forward to it every week. Tuesday's the boys and I have been playing basketball there while Emily goes into the child care area. She loves it in there and even has a little friend that she looks for in there. She enjoys the little kid gym area and they do crafts and have baby dolls to play with. Who wouldn't like that! lol!

I've been studying the paleo diet and it looks like a pretty good, healthy eating mindset. It is based on meats, fruits and veggies and no processed foods or sugars. Now, before I go any farther, please understand that I LOVE my sweets! But I've been trying to not eat much sugar for about a month now and I do feel good! I just had some coconut milk tonight as a treat and surprisingly enough it tasted sweet and I thought that it would do nicely to satisfy a sugar craving. So this paleo diet uses a lot of coconut milk and natural sugar. Yum! Oh, and I've lost 20 pounds, only 5 pounds away from pre-Emily-yeah! A do have a lot more to go but at least I'm going in the right direction. haha! It's very interesting to study health and nutrition. Do you realize that the fat you eat doesn't make you fat? That's a crazy twist isn't it! It's the carbohydrates that your body stores that makes you fat! It's the breads/pastas and cookies (gasp!). So, by cutting those out, voila, the weight comes off. That's what is supposed to happen anyway. :)

Okay, so here's a whole bunch of Emily pictures but then in another post I will post a bunch of our halloween pictures and those will have the boys in them. Enjoy!

Corn husks!

For the first time the boys made corn husk people. They had a lot of fun and I think they turned out great! We did some art today using the secondary colors on the color wheel. We love art time and the ambiance of classical music playing and the smell of a fall candle burning.
Enjoy the pictures!

Misc. happenings

Well, let's see, Spike our oldest kitty just turned 19 this month! There's a picture of him enjoying a box and some catnip with his 2 other kitty family members. Also, I managed to get a picture of Ryan playing football. He looks great out there! Emily wore a pony tail for the first time this month and learned how to say "pretty" which she says quite often for her cute shirts and even told Ryan that his shirt was "pretty" today. lol!
We had a visit from Jim, Tiana and Sasha this last weekend and all enjoyed spending time together.
Other than that it's been a great month with some heads-down school going on. The boys are doing great with their studies and we've gotten into a really good routine. Even Emily stands with her hand on her heart for the pledge of allegiance. :)

Visiting Grandma Stensland and updates!

We went to Iowa this past September to see my beautiful niece get married to a wonderful man. We also enjoyed seeing lots of family and friends, it was great! We also appreciated spending time with my mom. Emily loved playing with play dough with Grandma! Here are some pictures from our trip.

What's going on around our house right now? Home School- and lots of it! The boys are full force now into all their subjects. Ryan is doing great and Jeremy is amazing at keeping up with all of his assignments. I'm very proud of them both! Jeremy is learning sign language this year and really likes it! Emily evens enjoys school time and will stand with her over her heart for the pledge of allegiance. She likes to play with toys and sit at her desk during school, then she and I go upstairs and do some focus time activities like legos or play dough. She is really enjoying the routine and so am I.

Jeff spent a week down in Rochester for work and here at home it was the busiest week we've had in months. I managed to keep up but it was high energy the whole time-whew, I can chill now that he's home. Lately, I've been whipping up some stuff in the kitchen like homemade salsa, homemade ketchup, water kefir (it fizzes like soda pop and when you add a little juice it tastes like pop but it's healthy for you!), dehydrated watermelon and am going to make some pickled watermelon rinds this week still.
Anyway, football is still going on, baseball is done now as of last Sunday. One more football game on Saturday for both of them and then it's time for playoffs. Woohoo!

Randomness

Here are a few pictures from this last month. Our days have become a bit more "serious" with the start of school and all but we still have a good time. The boys don't sit still for pictures much, unless they're studying and those don't make for the most interesting of pictures. So here's some of Emily doing her thing! :)

Welcome fall!

Whether we like it or not, it's that time of year. Things change. Kids are in a bigger
grade, wearing bigger clothes, the trees are giving up their leaves and the feel in the air
is different. I love summer, I am missing it already. I don't do enough sport stuff outside
to really say that I love winter, I just endure it. Yes, it's fun to play outside in the snow
with the kids but I don't like being cold and I get cold easily. But here it comes, so I guess
I'd better embrace it since I can't do anything about it. :)
Here are some pictures of what we've been up to. Mainly school! It's going well and my students this year are "preschool", 5th and 8th grades. The boys are working hard and taking their studies
seriously, that makes me happy. They have a lot to work to do each day and it involves me a lot.
I guess that's one reason why I haven't been on here for a while. Plus they are in football AND baseball so our weekends are completely taken up by sports. We did manage to sneak down to Iowa to see my mom and my family at my neice's wedding. Angela was beautiful! Brian you've got yourself a real gem. :)
We also hosted a neighborhood party last Saturday. It was wonderful to visit with those who were able to make it and it was a beautiful day.
Today we are taking the morning off of school to head to the apple orchard and hopefully we'll see some things on our nature scavenger hunt list from our science book and check off a few things on that too.
Enjoy the pictures and hopefully you'll hear from me again before too long! And oh, if you are wondering what Ryan is examining, it's his food. I bought a lighted magnifying glass for doing models so he was testing it out. :)

And a few more!

Thanks for looking at our trip!

More Michigan beach pics!

I hope you like lighthouse beach pictures because I sure have a lot of them!
The beach here is where Jeff proposed a short "few" years ago. :)