Free Range Family

Happy Friday everyone! It has been raining pretty much all day. I believe it started sometime late last night, or should I say early this morning lol. But luckily, Alan and I got the car so we were still able to run the few errands that we needed to. Tonight is also my friend Jessica's Bachelorette party, I will be stopping by to hang out and dance with the girls some. Here is this week's Five Question Friday! Do you make your kids finish all the food on their plates? Well my kiddo is still only a toddler, so no I don't force him to eat everything on his plate. I do however, make a point to encourage him to try and eat a little bit of everything I give him. I have been pretty successful with this too. :) Do you give an allowance? Lol once again my little guy is only a toddler, so no. But as for when he is older? Meh, probably not. My husband and I both came from families who did not give allowances, instead rewarded us with special treats and events. I thi

Our Earth Day this year was lots of fun! After speaking with my mother, my plans changed slightly but that only made it easier for us to spend more time at each place rather than rush through everything. We woke up relatively early and had a small breakfast of waffles, donuts and fruit. Then Lon and I packed my tiny little car full of all of our recyclables and we headed to the recycling center. If you remember, I had called ahead to see if someone would do a little impromptu tour for us so that Alan could learn some as well. Well the tour was pretty cool, they showed us the whole recycling process that they do on a daily basis. They asked that I didn't take any pictures but we had a great learning experience! Alan's favorite part was dumping all the recyclables on the moving track to be weighed and processed. We recycled so much too! If I remember right, we recycled over four pounds of plastic materials, ten pounds of glass materials and seven pounds of aluminum cans. That

Happy Thursday everyone! Today wasn't as warm out as yesterday was, but since its my only day off in a while I figured Alan and I would still take our little walk over to my parent's house. We did and though it looked like it wanted to storm on us the whole time, we had a really good time! This time on our walk, we saw a rollie pollie on the sidewalk. I told Alan to scare it so that it would roll up, and he bent down close to it and yelled as loud as he could lol! :D Needless to say, the rollie pollie wasn't scared at all and continued on its way to the grass. It had me laughing for blocks though lol! He is too funny sometimes! Tomorrow night is my friend Jessica's Bachelorette Party. I was invited before I was pregnant lol, so I think I will still be going, for a little bit. They even bought me a matching shirt and nicknamed me Sexy Hippie Mama or something silly like that lol. Pretty close to the right name! :P We will be doing dinner and then going out the bars af

I am officially in my third trimester! Wow this is crazy, I can't believe it is less than three months now til we get to meet our beautiful Anna! I am feeling very unprepared right now lol, but I keep reminding myself this was how prepared we were with Alan at this time. Today was a nice 70 degree day, so Alan and I took another walk to my parent's house. We both put on shorts and headed out for some fun. Once we got outside, we discovered that it was closer to 80 degrees out lol. It was so hot! We loved the sunshine regardless. :) Alan found little pine cones today and had to bring two with him to give to Grandma and Daddy lol. I got a picture of him too. I still can't get over this haircut lol! Here's this week's Pregnancy Post! How far along:  28 weeks and 3 days Size of Baby:  2 1/2 pounds and 14.8 inches long or the size of a Chinese cabbage (???) Developments of Baby:  Baby girl's survival rate outside of the womb gets bet

I didn't want to darken my wonderful anniversary day yesterday, but a tragedy has struck my family and many others in my town. Monday morning, my aunt's training barn burnt down with 19 horses inside. None survived. Seven of the horses in there my aunt trained with on a regular basis and one of the horses was her beloved show horse. For more information, here is the link to the newspaper article. My aunt and her family are absolutely devastated, as well as many other students of this training facility. We just continue to remind ourselves that those beautiful creatures are no longer in pain and are in a better place. Now the process of rebuilding begins... To put some light on a sad time (and to change the subject), Lon got me the sweetest card for our anniversary! Its one of those musical cards and it plays "You're my Best Friend" by Queen. Love that song! :D The front of the card, the bicycle rocks back and forth when the music plays! The inside of t

I said the two best words I could say to the one person who is the love of my life.  I said "I do" to a life of endless happiness and love. To all those wonderful kisses, to all the laughter we will share, to all those silly adventures we will take together. To long nights taking care of him when he is up sick and to all of those amazing foot and back rubs. To all those dinner failures and invention successes and to all the beautiful children we will have. A year ago, today, I married my beloved husband Lon. We had a beautiful wedding at the Veteran's Park with all of the important people in our life present. I still look back on that day fondly, flipping through our gorgeous pictures taken by the great Jeff Bryson. It was so perfect for us! Our goofy wedding party In this past year, we have been through a lot of ups and some downs. Financial issues, loss of jobs, our trip to Canyon Ferry, Lon getting a job, an unexpected pregnancy, morning sickness, ER vi

Thursday, I watched a documentary on PBS called Nature's Child. It was about nature and how it affects and benefits childhood development. Of course being the hippie that I am, I already knew this lol. But it was still a very interesting show to watch and I learned quite a bit from it. In this day and age, most children spend their time indoors either on the computer or at the television. Gradually, less and less children are spending quality time outside. If they do get outside, it is either at school during recess or for an organized sport. While these are also good development teachers, they are not enough. Children need to play outside in their neighborhoods, like we all did as kids. But this is happening less and less. Why is this, you ask? Well there is one theory that I have found to be pretty feasible. Some believe that modern day parents are being conditioned by the media to be afraid to let their children play outside in the neighbor, whether by themselves or with other

Earth Day is this Sunday and though we don't have too much planned for that day, I have a couple fun activities for us to partake in. First, I will be posting a blog post on here about children and the benefits nature has on their development that day. It is based off of a PBS show I watched yesterday and my own hippie naturalist opinions lol. I encourage you to stop by and read it! :) For Alan and I, I have developed a nature scavenger hunt that we will be doing at hopefully several different parks. It asks for fun things like pine cones, seeds, beetles (we have little containers to catch them) and mushrooms. I hope that we can go to Zimmerman Park, Pioneer Park and Riverfront Park at least. Maybe even Phipp's Park if we have the time. :) Then I plan on taking Alan and all of our recyclable stuff down to Pacific Recycling to teach Alan a lesson about recycling. We have been recycling aluminum cans, plastic and glass for almost a year now but its been a few months sinc

Happy Friday everyone! Today Alan and I plan on cleaning up the house some more and then possibly taking a walk to my parent's house again. If it stays nice outside that is lol! :) Here is this week's Five Question Friday! Groceries are high right now what is easiest way you have found to cut back? We have been doing some light couponing and shopping with our Preferred Card at Albertsons. I say light couponing because I have several friends of mine who have recently REALLY got into couponing. Like use multiple newspapers, have an online coupon group, save $100 or more each trip kind of getting into it lol. And though I think its awesome how much they are saving, I don't think I could spend the time (or concentration for that matter lol) on couponing like they do. But still, major kudos to them! :) What are the top 3 things on your "bucket list"? I've never really written a formal bucket list, is that something people do now lol? Um, I would hav

I cannot believe that I am days away from being in the third trimester! This is crazy, it seems like just days ago it was Thanksgiving and I had just found out I was pregnant again. And now? Its like less than three months away that we will be meeting her! I cannot wait, I am ready to meet her now. Today since the weather looked nice out, Alan and I took a walk to my parent's house to do some laundry. Well it may have looked nice out lol but it was super windy and we were not prepared for it! Poor Alan looked like he was gonna be blown away and the mean wind was making little tears form in the corners of his eyes. :( He still managed to have a great time regardless, he kept picking dandelions and throwing them into the wind to watch them fly away lol. I found those "helicopter" seeds (the ones that spin when you throw them up in the air?) and showed him how to play with those, he loved it! We also had a conversation with a worm, a bird and several puppy dogs lol. And we

Its been almost two weeks since I had my photo shoot and after posting on several Traveling Red Dress forums for another worthy woman who would be willing to share their journey with my blog and I, I have found the perfect woman! She is a beautiful woman named Meghan who lives in Pennsylvania. She has three children, one of whom is physically disabled and also a set of twins. Needless to say, this woman is very deserving of her Red Dress moment and I believe that my dress is the one for her. This is what she sent me, a quick summary of her adult life. I plan on having her write a more in depth story that I will share with you later but for now, meet Miss Meghan: "I am the women that would love to wear your red dress. Here is my story. Shortly after my husband and I were married we decided to have a child. For 1 1/2 years we tried and was told by a really bad doctor that there was nothing wrong and to "Go home have some wine and have fun". We decided to stop trying a

This morning I had my last four week check up with my midwives, which included the 28 week Gestational Diabetes Glucose test. *Shudders* It was actually a lot better than I thought it was going to be, but I will post more on that further down. For now, here is this week's Pregnancy Post!! How far along: 27 weeks and 3 days Size of Baby: 2 pounds and 14 1/2 inches long or the size of a head of cauliflower Developments of Baby: Baby girl will start to get hiccups this week. Her brain and lungs continue to grow and develop as well. Added layers of fat are continuing to form on her body. These layers will help her regulate her temperature once outside the womb and help keep her warm. Weight Gain: Still only at eleven pounds. My midwife and I also had the weight gain talk again today. Ugh... The only plus to this is the extra ultrasound she mentioned giving me towards the end of my pregnancy. Yay! Belly Button In or Out: Still in but its getting closer and closer to p

This time last year, we were attempting to potty train Alan. At the time we had estimated that Alan would be potty trained by May or June, but that was not the case. Right after we had our wedding, he regressed and started refusing to potty train anymore. I didn't want to push him because I don't think that learning to use the toilet should be stressful, so we took a break. We stopped having him use the potty every half hour and started just letting him use it when he wanted to at home. Fast forward a year, we are pregnant with Anna and due in July. Alan was using the potty every now and then, but we were no longer in underwear or even pull ups. And I was consistently changing his diapers on a daily basis. I have never wanted to be a mom of two in diapers, unless they were multiples. So Lon and I decided that our goal would be to have Alan mostly trained by the time Anna was born. This week was our first week of really trying to potty train. I cleverly named it Operation A

This Saturday, Lon and I went out on our wedding anniversary date. Our anniversary is actually a week away from today but as its on a Monday this year, we thought this weekend would be best for us. Plus we had plans to go support my two cousins in their roller derby bout! My mom watched Alan so we could go alone. Thanks mama! :) Ready for our date! The Billings Roller Derby Dames played the Bisman Bombshellz and boy was it one crazy adventure going! Let me tell you, roller derby is intense! It took me a while to figure out exactly what is going and how you score points but once I got that figured out, I got really into it! Those girls kick some major butt! I wasn't able to take any good action photos with my camera, so I am borrowing some from the wonderful photographer Tim Mazzaferro. Look at this insanity! My cousin Katie (her derby name is KO Katie lol) skated like a champ the first half but after a bad collision with some other girls, she was exhausted and somewhat si

Ahhh, its Friday the thirteenth! Billings has already had their share of bad luck today, around eleven this morning there was a mass power outage that covered most of the city (our house, my parent's house, and both of our works lost power), all due to a squirrel lol. Wow can you say bad luck???? :) I am still optimistic at the day lol. This afternoon, Alan and I took that half hour walk to my parent's house that I sooooooooo badly wanted to do yesterday, and we had a great time! Alan found a pretty flower (it was a dandelion lol) and spoke to almost every dog that barked at us as we passed. He thought they were talking to him, so he held a conversation with each of them lol. Pretty sure they were just barking at us because they wanted to be out walking like we were. :) Smelling his preeeety flower lol! Tomorrow night, Lon and I are going out on our date for our one year wedding anniversary. We are going to my cousins' roller derby for our date lol. Not your average d

***Warning to all non-mothers: This is a post ALL about breastfeeding. It may be viewed as TMI to some, this is why I am not sharing this post on my Facebook. Please do not read if you do not want to hear about all the pretty little details of breastfeeding lol. You have been warned!!*** I breastfed Alan until he was almost nine months old, but struggled with it the whole nine months. There was no, "It gets better as they get older" which was what I was told with Alan. He had the same issues with latching and nursing comfortably on day one as he did when I stopped. But I was stubborn and determined. I didn't just want to give up and go completely to formula only because it was hard. I credit that to what made me able to breastfeed for that long. There were several reasons why breastfeeding was so difficult for Alan and I. First off, I have a large chest lol and that made it hard to line everything up for breastfeeding. Then there was the issue with my milk. For most

Happy Thursday everyone! Today we were going to walk over to my parent's house (they only live a few blocks away from us) but when I woke up this morning, it was raining! Lol I'm not complaining too much though, because it looks just gorgeous outside! The trees, flowers and grass are all bright green and happily singing in the rain! They sure are enjoying all this water, you can see it in their color! :) Lol, I'm done with my hippie moment for now. Here's this week's Toddler Talk Thursday!! This week's topic: Toddlers and Sports! I have written about this before, sometime last year. Coming from a sporty family (my sisters and I have been in dance and swimming since a very young age and Kalvin is into baseball and football), I definitely recognize the importance of sports. Its another form of early discipline and guidance for children, as well as physical exercise. I also understand the importance of starting children early, maybe not in team sports, but

Easter was fantastic this year! Alan, Lon and I had such a wonderful time with our beloved family. What a great way to celebrate love and rebirth. :) Oddly different from Christmas morning, Alan let us sleep in Easter morning. He didn't wake up to do his first Easter egg hunt until about ten! Which was just AWESOME because we had spent that night up until one or two just preparing the house for the hunt lol. :) We had filled forty eggs for him total, twelve with Cars 2 Squinkies and the remaining with various candies. We had also filled his basket with a Fireman Sam DVD, a giggler toy, a Star Wars light saber candy and a M&M sucker. We hid the eggs starting in his bedroom and making their way to the living room. Alan did a great job finding all of his eggs! Lon and I just followed him, snapping pictures, while he found egg after egg. Even the ones we actually tried to hide from him lol! He is a regular egg hunting champ! :) He kept stopping and opening each egg after he f