Free Range Family

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...

Our Christmas was a blessed one this year. There are so many things to be thankful for, so many people who have supported and helped us. Thank you all! To the YMCA ladies that donated a ton of gifts to my family: bless you. To the WTE mamas who also sent our kids gifts, sometimes even from across the country: bless you too. To the friends and family who gave us presents, gave us money, helped us out with food, sent us a Christmas card, helped us find a place to stay for Christmas morning: bless you all so much. I can't even begin to put into words how endlessly grateful we are for all of you, you are just amazing people. You are who made our Christmas special this year. Not the gifts, the money or the food, but YOU. I don't know what our Christmas would have been like if we didn't have our loved ones. We are so lucky to have them! We spent our Christmas Eve with my family at my parent's house and with the in-law's at the Village Inn, as per tradition. Uncle Camer...

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!

I am not at all feeling good today. Last night was spent with me tossing and turning all night, nauseous and all that fun stuff. Ugggggh I want it to already be night time, so I can crawl back into bed... Okay stop thinking about it lol, you're only gonna make yourself more miserable at work. :P Let's distract myself by writing about Christmas Day (Oh I think I have lost it officially, cos its not like I wasn't already planning on doing that today. Oh well). Christmas Day was magical for us and especially Alan. :) Lon and I woke up around eight and set up the Christmas tree with all of the presents and his stocking. Then we made a little bed on the floor for him to sleep on. I found a cute Christmas kids music channel on the tv, so we played that quietly in the background. We brought him out, still asleep, and hid in our bedroom until we heard his little voice. We waited for almost an hour before he woke up! :D But close to nine, we heard his little voice...

Only three more days until Christmas! I am so excited to get together with my family and spend some quality time together, since we haven't had the chance to do that in so long! :) Our Christmas Eve plans are pretty simple this year. Lon and I both have all day off, so we will get the chance to sleep in! Yes! After a much needed rest, Alan and I will be heading over to my parent's house to help my siblings make Christmas cookies. Via Oh we go all out for Christmas cookies lol. It is a full on production for my family lol. Aunt Natalie and I do the cookie cutting (with help from Alan lol) and the baking. Aunt April is in charge of frosting the cookies. Uncle Kalvin and Alan get the important job of adding sprinkles and candy and decorating the the rest of the way. We normally make about 6 dozen cookies each year, and this year might be more around 8 dozen lol. I know I have 5 dozen just for myself and my family. :) I will have to post about how it goes, hopefully with pic...

This post is not to offend anyone, to the contrary I want to explain my family's situation beforehand to make sure no one is confused or offended by it. I wish to never go through the discrimination my son and I experienced last year at an Easter egg hunt... But that story is for another day, another post. I figured I might as well post about this topic today though, as Easter is on Sunday. My family and I will be participating in Easter activities, as we traditionally do, even though we are not of the Christian religion. As most of my readers know, I am Buddhist but my husband and son do not belong to any religion. My husband has his own scientific theories about our creation and our fate. We have not decided if we will raise Alan as a Buddhist or just raise him without a religion. The latter seems more appropriate to me, as even though I am a Buddhist I do not practice with a church. I do not believe in organized religion (I actually believe your relationship with your spiritua...

Christmas was wonderful. I would have posted last night, but after everything we had done yesterday, I got home and laid down and passed out lol. At least I got farther than Alan, he fell asleep on the ride home from Great Aunt Carolyn's house! :P We were so busy all day and it exhausted us! :) But there was snow on the ground and we had a blessed day with our families, I couldn't have asked for a better Christmas! We woke up just in time to watch the Disney Christmas Parade on tv. Alan really had fun dancing and singing and clapping with all of his favorite Disney characters and he always would get excited whenever he saw Mickey Mouse lol. :) We opened our Christmas presents from each other, and I was pleased to see that Lon did not get me a Shake Weight lol. I do not like those, and wasn't happy when he told me that he "might have bought" one for me. Jerk! :D He instead got me a Yoda alarm clock and a Fushigui ball. He also enjoyed all the toys Alan and I had ...