Free Range Family

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

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

Merry Christmas!!! I hope that everyone's past two days were just wonderful! Ours definitely were special, even despite receiving bad news about a potential house the day before Christmas Eve. There were still so many things to be thankful for and so many reasons to feel blessed. We did not do too much for Christmas, we stayed in town and visited Lon's family as well as mine. Christmas Eve was spent with Lon's family and Uncle Aaron! It was so great to see him! Uncle Cameron was also supposed to come down, but something came up unfortunately. Regardless, it was still a blessing seeing the kids with Uncle Aaron. Uncle Aaron is currently stationed in New York with the Army, the last time he saw Alan and Anna was at the Montana Fair in 2012. Anna literally was only a month old then! Uncle Aaron was in complete awe with how much older she was. Christmas Day started with Grandma Melanie, Grandpa Kevin, Uncle Kalvin and Aunt April. We opened our presents from them and had or

Happy holidays from the Andersen family! I hope that your Christmas season is going well so far! The kids and I are ready excited for Christmas! I say excited, because I am totally NOT ready this year lol! With the Nutcracker finishing up just last Friday, I have only had a few days to really prepare for Christmas. I still haven't wrapped anything or sent out the Christmas cards. Who am I kidding? I haven't even written the Christmas cards yet. However, we did decorate sugar cookies the other night. And Alan had his last class of the year today, which happened to be his Christmas party. ;) There were a ton of festivities at Alan's Preschool Christmas party. Santa came for a visit and delivered his stocking gifts to all of the students. Alan was so excited to see him, he told Santa that they were best friends. He is so sweet! After visiting with Santa, we went caroling around the Y.  We went caroling at Child Watch, then to the Administration Office, and finally

We had our annual winter gymnastics showcase this week, among other crazy things. I also had my first ever fully run show, The Nutcracker, this Friday. Both performances (I should actually say ALL the performances, there were five gymnastics showcases total) went very well. I am so proud of all of my students for working so hard preparing for this performance. I know that it was difficult keeping focused at times, especially with Christmas coming up. But you all did wonderful! Great job! Now that I am done with all of my performances, it is time to actually prepare for Christmas! I am a bit panicked, I still have so much to prepare for! I have to finish getting my presents for Lon, wrap the kiddos' presents, send out Christmas cards and make sure we are all set for Santa. Gah!! I don't really have a lot of time to write this post, so I will be sharing all the lovely skills photos with y'all. Thanks for  always being so understanding! :P Tumble One 5:30 class

Happy Holidays!  I am so excited that I can finally say that! I love December and the holiday season! I have been waiting for this all year! We have been applying for houses like crazy too, in hopes that we will have a place by Christmas. Wouldn't that be perfect? Its honestly all that I want for Christmas this year.   Pray for us to get lucky! :) I hope that everyone is having a great Christmas season, I know that we are! We went to the Festival of Trees last night with Grandma Melanie and Grandpa Kevin. Aunt April was performing with her dance studio. She did so awesome, as usual! They even did their new dances, like their Spice Girl song choreographed by Ade! Oh my goodness, it was all so awesome! Great job April! I could go on and on about how wonderful their performance was! Seriously! She even inspired one of my own dance students who was their with family! :D Aunt April and her crew after their performance <via>   After Diversity was done with their PHENOMENAL p

We had a pretty mellow Thanksgiving this year, it was surprisingly wonderful! My parents and siblings all went to Townsend to see family for Thanksgiving, so we spent it with Lon's family and my father's relatives in the Heights. We were hoping to go up to Townsend to see my mother's relatives this year but as that sounded good in the summer, we just didn't have the funds to actually be able to make it happen. With my car breaking down in August, we spent more money then we had originally planned and couldn't afford to save up for a trip. I am sad about it, but hopeful. Lon reminded me that it only meant that we would have to postpone the trip, not cancel it entirely. We can probably save up for it again after Christmas is over and go in the spring, maybe for our anniversary. That would be cool because we would be able to see everyone AND it would kind of be like a "surprise" or "spontaneous" trip for my family. We usually only try to go up to T

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my wonderful readers! <Via> I am very thankful for all of you! You are all so wonderful! I hope that your Thanksgiving is full of happiness, love, laughter and family. No matter who you are, where you live, or what your situation is, everyone has something to be thankful for. My family has a list so long, it keeps growing the more I think about it! We have had a rough year and some months, but we are getting back on our feet again. That is one thing to be thankful for right there! All of the support we have received from family and friends is another thing. There are many, many more! We are about to head out for our Thanksgiving festivities, so I will have to drop back in tomorrow and share my "Thankful List" with all of you. But I do hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and that everyone is able to spend it with someone they love and care about. That is all Thanksgiving is really about… Being thankful and being with tho

This weekend was a weekend for my sisters lol. Saturday was the annual Griz and Cat game (an important Montana rivalry, if you haven't ever heard of it). Since both my sister and her hubby go to University of Montana, we are totally supportive of the Griz! So we had to wear our maroon AND totally harassed anyone that I saw in Navy Blue lol! I mean, I had to! Its a Montana tradition! And of course, the wonderful Grizzlies won!  That same night, was Aunt April's first formal dance of the year, Twirp. I remember when they called it Sadie Hawkins, but apparently they think that "Twirp" is a much more attractive name for a semi-formal where the girls ask the boys. In that case, we should rename Prom "Dork" in my opinion. But I digress… Aunt April had asked me to come take pictures for her, since Aunt Natalie (the only other person in our family with any photography skills) was still in Missoula. So Anna and I made a little trip to the Yellowstone Country