Free Range Family

 Hello! Hello! Hello! My wonderful readers, I am back!  And not only am I back, but I am bigger than before!  I have moved twice, once to Hamilton and now to Missoula.  Guys, I used to HATE Missoula.  I left my abusive first husband and divorced him officially in July 2019!  I met Aaron and we have two children, Aurora and Artyom.  I am teaching again and back in school.  We have kitties now!  And I am a self-published author and make money on both Facebook and YouTube now!  Oh my lovelies, we have SO much to catch up on! Where do I begin?????? 2015: Lon assaulted a woman and was arrested. Alan started Kindergarten. Anna started preschool at the YMCA. 2016: I became pregnant with Andrea. Lon assaulted me and was arrested. I filed for a TRO and for divorce. I moved out of my parent's house and into my own apartment. 2017: Andrea was born. Lon violated the restraining order and moved in with us. Anna started Kindergarten. My brother-in-la...

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...

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'...

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...