Free Range Family

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope everyone has a safe and BOO-tiful Halloween tonight! Via This year for Halloween I am dressed up as a the Wicked Witch of the West, complete with AWESOME stockings! Lon is dressing up as a zombie, hopefully he won't scare the kids. Alan is dressing up as a Green Power Ranger. And Miss Anna will be Elmo. Although I did have a handful of people tell me that she should have gone as a boxer, I love this idea lol, it is embracing the bad situation and making the best of it. Darn, wish we had some baby sized boxing gloves lying around. :P I also heard that she should be a spotted puppy dog, with the spot right over her owie. And a zombie Elmo, which I did not like as much. She is just my beautiful Elmo baby though! Last night was Alan's Thriller performance for Halloween. He did such a great job! I am one proud mama! I did take some photos and should have one of the dance moms text me the video, since I was too busy performing as well. I

I apologize about not posting yesterday like I had originally planned to, I was so looking forward to sharing with everyone our wonderful Family Sunday at the pumpkin patch. But something quite traumatic happened Monday night and though I still am not fully sure if I am ready to share this, I need to for my daughter and my family. It happened how it happened and though I am not happy with the way it all went, there is nothing more I can do about what happened that night. I have made peace with that night and all of its scary events, and I hope that you can too. Please no hurtful comments, they will be removed immediately! Please realize that we are all still recovering from this, I will not tolerate hate towards anyone, including the dog.  It was no one's fault, just an unfortunate event for everyone involved, especially sweet Miss Anna. Disclaimer: This post is quite graphic and traumatic. I do not want to leave any details out, everyone should know exactly what happened. If yo

It snowed today! Well technically it started last night but it has yet to stop today. We are supposed to get another 2 or 3 inches before it gets dark out, and even possibly another 1-2 inches later tonight. For a total of seven possible inches of snow, we will probably have a WHITE Halloween lol! Oh well, I like the snow. I know we have a lot of people in town who hate it, but I am true Montanan. Snow means snow activities! My family sure loves our snow activities too! Plus it is just so gorgeous out! I love how just a little snow can suddenly make everything look so cozy and quaint. Love it! :D However with that being said, I do usually try to stay off the roads during the snowstorms and the first day it snows if I can. Its also nice to enjoy it from inside at home, or out in your backyard too. ;) Please be warned, it is a little crazy to drive in (if you don't know how to) so I want everyone to be careful out there! Even the BPD is asking everyone to drive safely. They h

Okay, I feel like lately with my grandfather's passing this blog has been quite hum and drum, sorta missing its gusto. In fact, that's almost exactly how I would describe myself too. Your blog really does reflect you in many ways, doesn't it? Blah... I like to think that the main reason is because we as a family just haven't been doing too much outside of work and Alan's school, but the REAL true reason is I have just had little motivation to write. I just don't feel like it too much lately, but I know that this is when I really should be blogging the most. I remember once, like around when I first started blogging, I was told by another amazing blogging mama that even on those days that you don't feel like writing, you should push yourself to, because those are the days when you will get your best writing. I need to remember this more often on those hard days. Because honestly, Wednesday was a hard day of writing and so was yesterday. But I still push

The past few weeks Alan has been absent from his gymnastics classes unfortunately. For good reason though, with his great grandfather's passing a week ago and his great grandfather's funeral the following Monday. Both incidents happened on his gymnastics day, there was no way I could force him to go after that. Thankfully with the upcoming gymnastics showcase next week, his school allows make up classes. One of them was scheduled for yesterday morning and one is scheduled for the first week of November. We are used to afternoon classes, so the morning class was quite a change! There was only one other parent/toddler class going on at the same time! It was definitely quiet there lol! Look at how small this class is! And no other classes except for the babies! Alan dancing to warm up Miss Anna was still quite tired, she barely woke up in time for us to leave so I left her in her pjamas. I also ended up bringing breakfast for her with us. Oh well! :) She was als

I have had a busy weekend and an even busier week with birthday parties, family coming into town and a funeral. Before I begin this post, I think I am finally ready to share with you who in my family we lost this past week. It was one of my grandfathers. He had been fighting illness for years and years. He is no longer in pain or hurting anymore. For this I am very glad but as for the rest of us in the family, the "survivors"... Man, I give major kudos to anyone who has ever planned a funeral (or even helped plan one) for your deceased loved one. Its a lot of work, and still being raw with emotion from the passing, can be difficult at times. I have honestly been doing good. But I have my sad points, like when I had to tell my sisters or Alan. Or when I had to make a display with all of his pictures from my childhood. Or at the funeral when all the guests were giving my family their condolences. Thinking about him back then when we were young v.s. now, hurts me a lot still. N

My family just loves fall! Its our favorite season! The colors, the corn mazes, the weather, the pumpkin patches, Halloween, Thanksgiving, we just love it all! I must say this about every season lol, I guess we just like change in our surroundings. :) I love each season really, they all have wonderful aspects that I look forward to each year! I'm sure we will be saying the same thing about the winter season too. I think that maybe we are just Montanans and just really  love Mother Nature lol. :) But we definitely are enjoying THIS season right now! Yesterday, it was rainy and a little bit chilly outside. But the kids were very restless inside, we tried playing games and reading books, doing artwork together. No go! On a whim, we bundled up and went outside to play despite the weather! A little bit of rain never hurt no one lol! :) I need to start remembering to take advantage of certain things while we are staying here, like the big kid friendly backyard my parents have. Its a

I seriously love this hand-me-down sleeper! Aunt Natalie bought it for Alan in Missoula when he was about Anna's age. He wore it so much as a baby! Lol, I remember everyone always saying, "Why do you put him in that? Its soooooo girly!" Um, why do people instantly think "girl" when they see lots of colors??? I saw this and thought "hippie" right away! Anyways, I vowed to always save this sleeper and hand it down to each of my children... And maybe my nephew too, if he wants it! ;) But now, Miss Anna is finally big enough to wear it herself! I was so excited that I just had to take some photos of her on my phone! I apologize about the poopy images, it is stormy and rainy out today.  But just look at that color!  Bonus: Here is Alan in the same sleeper when he was a babe! Love it! I just love the swirl pattern of the tie dye, its so cute! Okay, enough about this clothing item lol. I will post about something more... important t

I do apologize for being absent from the blog all week. On Monday, we lost someone in our family somewhat unexpectedly. I do not think I am ready to share who we lost with you all this week, but know that it was someone very close to us. It was on my side of the family but he was special to everyone, including Lon. We loved him so very much. He will be dearly missed.   I feel bad for not posting almost all week, but I really needed to take some personal family time away. In Buddhism, death is not seen as something bad, its seen as more of a doorway. Thus, I am not upset for the death itself. I know that he was hurting a lot and am glad his is at peace now. He is not gone from our lives, just onto his next great journey. :) However, I was needed to support many of my mourning family members. I was actually put in charge of telling most of my siblings, something I was not necessarily prepared for. I had to do it though, I just thought of how I would feel if I was not told as soon as po

As of today, I have had this blog running for three years. A lot has happened in those three years, both in my real life and in the blogging community.  Lon and I were married, Anna was born, we moved several times, had a few different cars and I became an Aunt. I also befriended many wonderful people in the blogging world, was awarded two blogging awards, have changed my blog's name, have helped raise awareness about many different campaigns and have developed this blog into something more then just a place to keep my memories. The relationships I have made with other bloggers is very special to me, without this blog I may never have met such wonderful people from all around America and the rest of the world. This blog has become something new to me too, as of late.   I have always tried to keep this blog positive but with all of the recent court dates and the loss of our house, this blog has become a sort of a coping tool for me. Especially right after the court date, when I

I don't have much to post about today, just a bunch of random clustered together thoughts lol.  I will try to organize it all as best as I can, but be prepared for a crazy post! I want to give a big shout out to my sister's boyfriend, he is such an amazing father to my nephew and has been still going to college this year too. He is a very hard worker! Well, all of his hard work has finally paid off! The other day Aunt Natalie posted on her Facebook that Uncle Jake was offered a paid internship! We are so proud of him! Most internships you apply for these days are unpaid, but to find a paid one is quite lucky! He will now be able to keep following his dream, while making money for his family. :) Congratulations Uncle Jake! We are so happy for you, Aunt Natalie and Baby Benton! We love and miss you guys so much! Uncle Jake with Benton For my hip hop classes, I always encourage solos with my students. We usually perform them at the end of class, just for the other studen