Emily's 2nd birthday!!

It's been a while now, but Emily turned two in February!  I can't believe that, times goes faster and faster!
We had a great day~!  She enjoyed having friends over and we celebrated with a dinner/cake/presents.

It was fun, fun, fun!  Enjoy the pictures!

Birthdays!!

I will start with Jeremy's since his was last week. He turned 14 on February 2nd!
He had a good day, went to our homeschool co-op, then we took him out to Red Lobster for supper that night and came home and opened presents. Then a couple days later, on super bowl Sunday, we had a birthday party which then morphed into a super bowl party. We had nearly 25 people here, it was a lot of fun to see everyone and to hang out!
I can't believe my first baby is 14!

Christmas time!

Here's a few pictures from our Christmas celebrations. Enjoy!

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!