Catchin Up!

Well, it has been waayyyyyy to long since I last posted. I have probably written 4 or 5 posts in my head over the last several months but just never got a chance to put them down in my Blog. So now I am going to try to briefly catch things up without going into too much detail or pictures.
So, we went to Colorado for Christmas! It was great to be with my family again (well, some of my family) for Christmas. It has actually been about 7 years since I was "Home for the Holidays". It was a lot of fun and extremely busy. I had quite a few people to see so we were on the go every day. I was excited to spend quite a bit of time with my youngest sister Rachel (who is now engaged!). And we did way too many other things to mention. Not exactly your relaxing vacation but good none the less. I was able to spend New Years there as well and celebrate with my oldest and dearest friend Carmen and her family.

Good old Pikes Peak / Making Ornaments

Leaving Cookies for Santa/ What a Cute Dad

New Years at Carmen's / Me and Rach

The kids and I got sick about 2 days before we had to head home which made for a loooooong day of flying, on top of layovers and Nathan having diahrehea and leaking on me half way through the day. All in All we got home safe and it was good to see Steve again. Not so good to see all the snow. :)

January went by so fast and before I knew it it was Nathan's birthday. My little boy turned 2!!! Wow I can hardly believe it! Steve's parents came up a few days before his birthday and celebrated with us. I had a little party planned for him on his actual birthday but strangely everyone ended up cancelling on me. I was really bummed but of course Nathan had no clue which is good. I know we have many years ahead of us for birthday parties. My neighbor did have a little party for her daughter, who is a couple days younger than Nathan and made it a party for Nathan as well, so that kind of made up for it.


Along with Nathan turning two has come the two year old "I want to do EVERYTHING myself" phase. Which is fine when it is something I can let him try to do but not so great when he wants to cut his own slice of cheese and freaks out when I don't let him. He has however learned how to put his pants on himself and sometimes his shirt, open his own yogurt, granola bar wrapper, etc. put his own shoes on and, unfortunately, take OFF his pants and diaper, causing some problems of it's own! Such as... peeing on the floor, constantly wanting to run around naked, and in the instance of the other night, taking it off after he pooped and getting it all over the carpet and himself. Mmmmm, fun! Something I never experienced with my little girl. hmmm I'm thinking he is ready to potty train though, since he takes his diaper off almost everytime he pees or poops in it, and says potty. So that is exciting. His facial expressions and sense of humor constanlty makes us laugh. He farted the other day and said " Oh, Burp, Scuse!" It was sooo funny! Maddi is doing great in school and will be turning five in just a few short months which really has me freaked out. Where has the time gone? She is getting better with Nathan and helping more with things around the house. I think the book my sister sent me "Don't Make Me Count to 3" has really helped all of us, and I have only scratched the surface, still reading the book. I can't wait to compare this time next year.
Ok, that is enough for now, I think. Whew....
Thanks for listening to my ramblings.

Cherish The Moment

So after reading this blog that Tara posted "Bring The Rain" I really felt like God used her writings to open my eyes a little more and truly appreciate every moment I have with my children. It is so difficult to remember this day to day, especially through the whining and fighting, but with God's grace, I am working hard to stop and think about how these children are a wonderful miracle that God has blessed me with. It helps me to react so much more calmly in situations that are irritating to me.

Now to get to the revelation I had today while laying with my son for his nap.
As most of you know my children have required a lot of me when it comes to nap time and bed time. Maddi, now being 4 going on 5, is a great sleeper and I have no problems with her going to bed, but for the longest time she had to sleep with me and now history has repeated itself with my son.
I have gone back and forth so many times with the whole co-sleeping thing and the making them sleep (or scream it out) in their own bed. I always worry what the "right " thing to do was and mostly based this on other "people's" opinions. Most often I find myself irritated and rushed trying to get Nathan to sleep so I can go about my day and get stuff done. Today was different. I don't know why I haven't thought about this before, but I guess better late than never, and all in God's timing I'm sure.
As I lay there with Nathan I felt calm and relaxed. Not in any hurry to go do other things but just enjoying my time with him. He Always wants me to read a book before nap or bed and I am always trying to hurry through it, or read only one because I had other things to get done. Today I really focused on how much he seemed to cherish that time with me. He kept putting his arm around me and squeezing me while jabbering. Then he would kiss me and roll over. A min. later he would roll back over and touch my eye or my nose and laugh. So precious. He was loving just having me next to him. Having my undivided attention.

It was then that I realized that I spent most of my day in a hurried rush to push them off to play or to watch cartoons so I could get some work done. (It's hard working from home, not that it's an excuse) I didn't really make a lot of quiet one on one time with my kids throughout the day. This made me very sad and thinking about it makes me feel like such a horrible mom. But then I realized too that this time of putting them to bed or down for a nap IS my one on one time with them. Laying down at nap time and every night can be something to look forward to! A special time to spend with my kids. And while I don't have to lay with Maddi anymore, I have fallen away from reading to her before bed, praying with her and tucking her in. Again I am always more focused on trying to hurry and get Nathan down that I kind of have left her to fend for herself. Sad I know.

Today, God revealed to me that I CAN cherish this particular time with my kids. While it may not be what all other moms do, this is what works for me and my kids. That especially since I am trying to get work done during the day the Least I owe them is an hour or so laying down with them, reading, cuddling and giving them my undivided attention. So what is an hour or so at bed time cuddling with my son. He looks forward to it. And so should I!
Forget all the people who say I need to get Nathan to sleep in his own bed and to the point where I don't have to lay with him. (although this does make it tough for babysitters) They will be older and pushing me away before I know it.
So for now I am going to enjoy every moment I have, (even if it means sleeping with them) to cuddle with my babies.

Thank You God for these most precious children you have placed in my care, and let me never forget to Cherish Every Moment.

IT"S HERE!!!

It is officially winter here in Traverse City, MI. While I am not at all excited about the wet, fluffy, white stuff, my kids are quite the opposite. Madison ran into my room the first morning we had snow jumping up and down yelling "mom, mom, come look it's snowing! Can I go out and play in it?" This is at 7:00 in the morning, and she is wanting to go play outside in the snow. Kids are sooo funny. Well needless to say after breakfast and some impatient waiting on Madison's part, I bundled up the kids and sent them out to play. Last year Nathan was really too little to play in the snow and enjoy it so he thought it was the best thing ever. They had a great time. Here are some pictures, hope you all enjoy. Maddi can't play in the snow without eating it! They thought it was so fun to throw snowballs at the door like they were hitting me with them. Not sure what that face is all about, pretty funny though.Ready or not here it comes...

Halloween Traditions

I don't know why I think Halloween is so fun, but I love it! I know a lot of people are against celebrating it or whatever but it's about traditions. And what you teach your kids about it is what they will get out of it. For me, I have always loved playing pretend, or dress up, and Maddi definitely follows after me there. I also love carving pumpkins and it is a great excuse to make fun cookies and other goodies to eat. Plus, just to see how much fun the kids have going door to door and "Trick or Treating" makes this a really fun holiday to celebrate.

We were lucky this year and had a master pumpkin carver join us for the festivities.
Nathan loved pulling the "guts" (as Granddaddy called it) out of the pumpkin. He thought it was so fun.




Maddi on the other hand did not want to touch it.











Even Daddy joined in on the carving fun.


And the results of our hard work. Can you guess which one Granddaddy did? If you guessed the Frankenstein one you would be correct. My spider one was done with a template unlike his which was completely free hand.













The next day Maddi and I made pumpkin shaped cookies from a little kit I had bought last year. She loved decorating them and made some really great faces on them all by herself.
And finally, it was time for us to get all dressed up and go "Trick or Treating".
Maddi was Tinkerbell ( and very convincing I might add) and Nathan was a fuzzy caterpillar.
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He got so into it saying "Trick or Treat" at every door. Although sometimes he got a little confused and would put a piece of his candy out of his bag from the previous house into the bowl at the next house. It was really funny. He would put it in there and say "Thank You". click for larger image
Even I got a little dressed up, (Like I said I still enjoy doing that. Hey, I will do it when I'm 80 if I can get away with it.) :)

And finally the treats I left out for the kids who might come by our house.

Unfortunately I forgot to leave the porch light on because it was lite out when we left so nobody took any candy. It's still sitting out there by the way. I guess I'm hoping someone will come to the door and take it, because we have way too much candy as it is.


(If you made it to this point, Congratulations! You have now read the longest blog ever...As you can see I took a ton of pictures (using my dad's awesome camera) and this is probably not even half of them but I will post some on my facebook as well. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.)

Fall, Fall, Fun For All!

As I previously posted the colors were changing up here and it was so pretty. They have since all fallen off the trees and now it looks quite sad and depressing. But I did get a few pictures of the kids before they were gone so here they are...


We also took a trip to the pumpkin patch with some friends and had a lot of fun seeing the animals and going through the corn maze, as well as picking out pumpkins. (Although I thought the pumpkins were quite expensive at $6-$7 for the medium sized ones.)

Maddi insisted on pulling the wagon with the pumpkins in it. She actually did a really good job but people kept looking at me like why aren't you helping that poor child.


The corn maze was really fun and actually pretty hard. We would have been lost in there for hours but it was really cold so we kind of cheated and cut through to get out.
All in all it was a fun day and we got a couple of good pumpkins to carve for Halloween!