Free Range Family

I did this last year and really enjoyed it, so I figured that I would do this again this year in place of December's Month in Review post. Its like a Year in Review post lol. Sound good? Here we go!!! #10 Nature v.s. Nuture: Which One Do You Believe? I enjoyed writting this post. It is a very interesting topic I had a great time researching and exploring each different philosophy. And then forming my own opinion. I hope others also enjoyed it! #9 Our Baby Girl's Name This post is also very dear to my heart. We thought long and hard about a boy name but when we found out she was going to be a girl, I was at a lost. How sweet of Lon to think up her PERFECT name all by himself! Melts my heart so. Just another way he's shown us how much he loves her. #8 One Year Ago... We celebrated our one year anniversary this year. That was very special to me, because I was also expecting Anna at the time. We did not do too much for it but we spent it togther and that is th

I took this picture last weekend and after looking at it, I am amazed at just HOW MUCH  Anna has grown since she came home from the hospital! I mean, look at this... I mean, her head has passed that little colored line and her feet hang WAAAAAAAAAAAY  past the bottom part of the bouncer now! I think in total she has grown maybe... five six inches since birth??? Wow! Big girl!

I do not have a lot of time to write a long post, but we had a wonderful Christmas. It was Anna's first Christmas and Alan's first Christmas that he was really into it. We saw sooooooooo many loved ones, and found out some AWESOME  family news that I have to wait to share on here lol. Awwww man! Here is our Christmas through photos this year: Christmas Eve.... Christmas Day...   What a wonderful Christmas with beloved family and friends! My kids were spoiled and so was my heart, I am still feeling extreme love for everyone! Hope everyone else had as good of a Christmas as we did! It was the best one so far! Even better than last year's, when we told everyone about Anna! Merry Christmas everyone!

Today is Christmas Eve. We have so much planned for today. We have hors d'oeuvres with my family at my parent's house and dinner with Lon's family at the Village Inn. It is a tradition with Lon's family to have Christmas Eve dinner at the Village Inn, we have been doing it for five years now. I love Christmas Eve dinner with his family, love watching the kids run around the empty Village Inn, LOVE   everything about it! Tomorrow we will be going to Lon's parent's house for Christmas breakfast and present opening. Then Great Aunt Carolyn is having Christmas dinner at Great Grandma Carol's house. Hopefully Alan will get to play with his cousins Sophie and Fayth. I hope to see Baby Joshua and Baby James too! Oh it should be so much fun! I just love Christmas and everything about it! I am so very happy that it is finally here! I cannot wait to spend it with my loved ones! I do not have much more to say. I am just so full of love today! Merry Christm

At the turn of the century, cod fish was really popular in China. The only problem was, cod fish primarily came from Alaska and when shipped to China, the cod fish would become lazy and "mushy" from the long trip. Merchants finally discovered that if the cod fish's natural enemy, the catfish, was put in the vats with the fish, the cod fish would stay agile over the long trip. This is the reason why Nev believes that some people are put on this earth. To keep us agile, like the cod fish. They are known as catfish. Have you seen this movie or television series? Oh my goodness, I may be obsessed with it! I finally decided to watch the television series one night only because I was able to find anything else to watch after Teen Mom 2. Then I watched the movie because I was darn interested in the host's experience with online dating. But yes, go ahead and laugh at me for that last one, I watch Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2. I am into that whole fad lol. :) But this is not ab

If you remember my post from last year about Santa, I was quite worried about Alan's reactions around Santa. Thankfully, he was not afraid and was willing to sit on Santa for pictures. I was so proud of him. This year, I was not too terribly worried about it because he was super excited. He would not stop talking about him. We took the kids to see him last Monday, without Daddy. Originally, I wanted to go with Lon but he was too busy with work and everything. So I took the kids alone. Thankfully, it was pretty much dead. There were only three people in front of us, making our wait just long enough for us to enjoy the Christmas decorations and the Norman Rockwell statues. Then it was our turn to talk to Santa. Santa telling Alan a secret I did not get the picture package because I knew that Anna would not want to sit with Santa. I did not want to fight her without Lon or my mom lol. Maybe when we go with Aunt April and Uncle Kalvin. Alan did tell Santa that he wanted a car a

We had our family pictures taken this weekend. My good friend Kelsie, pregnant with her second child, was so kind to take them, even come to our house to do them! I think that they turned out just wonderful! Not alot of talking in this post, but here's a photo dump! I love them so much! What a great turn out for the pictures! Merry Christmas!

Once again, I am late on this post. We cannot currently afford internet at our house, so it has been considerably hard trying to update this blog. I am doing my best to though. :) Anna is growing up so much, it amazes me all the new things she learns each day. She is so smart already! And so determined. Oh, we are so lucky to have her in our life! At five months, Anna Ariel: *Weighs 12 pounds and 7 ounces and is 26 inches long. *Has light grayish blue eyes and red hair. Her long hair goes past her shoulder in the back and on the top right now. But she has an Elle Goulding type hair style with her hair off the sides. Can you see the similarity? I can! *Eats solid foods now. She has tried rice, oatmeal and mixed grain cereal. Daddy also slipped her a gingerbread man the other day. *Can almost army crawl by herself. She wants to crawl for real SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO badly, I bet she will be by next month. She is so determined. *Can almost sit up by herself. She loves being pro

I have yet to write a post about this, but this year for Lon's Christmas present I made him a 25 Days of Christmas Love thing. I found it on Pinterest, of course. :) Basically there is a card for every day with  either with a coupon, 10 Things I Love About You card, family Christmas activity or a date night. This last Saturday was our first date night. The night before Lon had been in an extreme amount of pain from his eye. Some of you may know about his blood pressure issues in his eye, they can sometimes cause him extreme pain. Well, it was so bad Friday night that he had to go into the emergency room. Thankfully, he was released after a few hours feeling much better. However, I was not sure if he would be up to our date the next night. But the day came and he was feeling much better. He watched the kids for me while I was at work and even took Alan outside to play some. So I took the kids over to Grandma's house to watch Christmas movies and have hot chocolate. Then I to