Free Range Family

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Beautiful Lengths...

January 21, 2015

Well I finally did it! I cut and donated my hair! As of this Sunday, I had been growing my hair out for donation for two years and nine months. I donated a total of sixteen inches to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths Program. I chose to donate through Pantene this year (I donated through Locks for Love after I had Alan) for a few different reasons. Around the time I had originally planned on donating, I had heard some negative comments about Locks for Love. I spoke with my boss, who also runs the Livestrong Program at the Y, about other options and she introduced me to Beautiful Lengths. Pantene joined with The American Cancer Society to develop this program in 2006. They have since donated more then 500,000 ponytails! That is 24,000 wigs! :D They also are a bit more lenient on their donation requirements, which is more realistic to these days with how many women dye their hair. This was the program for me. If you have never heard of Beautiful Lengths: (Taken directly from th

Tucker's Birthday Party

January 19, 2015

I love my job, for sooooooooo many reasons! One of them is my Y family! The people that I work with aren't just coworkers, we are a community, we are our own family. Our children grow up together, we celebrate holidays and birthdays together, we support those who need it and praise those who have succeeded. I wouldn't want my little family to grow up anywhere else! :D Speaking of Y family members, one of Alan's best buddies had his fifth birthday this weekend. He just happened to have it at the Y (as do most staff kids, our birthday parties are so popular!) and he invited Alan. We all had such a wonderful time! The party was football themed and there were several of Alan's classmates there as well. Anna tagged along for the party, she did pretty good too, considering she was the youngest in the whole group! :) She hung out with Tucker's teenage sisters almost the whole time lol. Already such a diva… Thanks for inviting us Tucker! We had a wonderful

The YMCA Annual Campaign and Dance Stuff

January 13, 2015

BIG things going on for me in 2015, big and exciting things! :D I had a wonderful weekend with some friends who were town, who are very well known choreographers in the dance world. And I had two super cool things happen to me at work as well. Yes! I am so happy and cannot wait for this year! After all the hard work and the rough year we had in 2013 and 2014, I know that wonderful things were bound to happen this year! I just hope that a new house for our family is ALSO in the cards this year. I will keep praying and keep spreading that good karma! So we will begin with the work news: I was offered to join the YMCA's annual campaign this year. Our annual campaign raises money to provide more memberships, scholarships and healthy lifestyle programs for our community. All of our annual campaign donations help with either our preschool or afterschool programs, our scholarships to families and senior members, our Livestrong program, our Get Started program, our aquatics and sport

Winter Break Adventures

January 05, 2015

Alan has his winter break from school until next Monday. With the snow finally falling in MT (after almost having a brown Christmas here, yuck) it makes planning activities to keep the kids from going crazy a bit more of a challenge. We have yet to be able to do a Snow Day, because temps have been just barely in the double digits at their highest. But I never said that I didn't like a challenge! :) So here are some things we have done to keep busy! Saturday we went to Chuck E Cheese to play some games. I had a few bucks leftover on a Mastercard gift card from Christmas and we thought that we would take a quick trip to burn off some energy. It was a bit busy, but still tons of fun! Alan and Anna played that snow mobile game probably a million times! Maybe my little snow puppies were hinting at something? ;) We had a great time though! Sunday brought even more snow! We wanted to go sledding with Grandpa and Uncle Kal but the weather got wild and blizzard-y so we couldn'

2014 in Review

December 31, 2014

Happy New Year's Eve everyone! I hope that everyone is safe in their New Year celebrations tonight! Lon and I will be staying in and spending some family time with the kids, before turning in early for the night. Make sure that if you are planning on drinking, that you have a designated driver to get you home safely. With that being said, have a wonderful time tonight! We had a decent year this past year. Unfortunately, a new home for us was not in the cards but we did get a new car. Alan and Anna participated in many different activities, from basketball to gymnastics to soccer to dance to t-ball. They are very active kiddos! Lon and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary, as well as Anna's second birthday and Alan's fifth birthday. Even though we are still living apart, we managed to have a good year with our amazing children. I cannot wait to see what 2015 has in store for us! I hope that a new home is one of those things! Keep your fingers crossed! Here is

Santa Over the Years

December 29, 2014

So last year I did Christmas through the years, and I thought that this year I would do something different. Here is Sant over the years with my family! :D As you can see, Santa has never changed. We love our mall Santa! He has been "in the family" since Natalie and I were children! We love him! He has several different Santa outfits (so if you see him multiple times in the year, the kids don't think Santa has only one stinky Santa outfit lmao). I mean, each picture he has a new shirt on! He has also perfected his Santa voice, and is super kind to the children. Alan loves Santa, tells him that they are best friends every chance he gets! :) Even if there were other Santa's to visit in town, which there aren't in this small town, we wouldn't go! I love this Santa so much, he is such a wonderful guy! *2010* *2011* *2012* *2013* *2014* We love our Santa! Here's to many more years of him keeping the Christmas magic alive for childre

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