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!

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...

No comments on yesterday's post???? You silly people! :P Well for those of you who didn't get it (and there were surprisingly a few of you who texted me about it lol), Lon and I are pregnant again! :) We just told our family this weekend, and what a happy surprise it was for them! Let me tell you about it. Christmas Eve morning started out like usual, only I was able to sleep in some! Yes! We had a small breakfast of waffles and eggs, before finishing up our last few Christmas cards. Then we had some running around to do, and some more Christmas preparations to do. We went to several friend's houses, Lon's parent's house and the post office. Alan fell asleep on the ride around town, so we took him home to nap. Gave us the time to wrap all of our Christmas presents lol. We are such procrastinators! Once Alan woke up, we tried to make plans to go to Grandma Melanie's house to make sugar cookies but her kitchen was starting to get occupied. Grandma Melanie need...

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...

And all through the Village Inn, there was a ton of commotion because the Andersen family was having there traditional Christmas Eve dinner! Lol, I tried to make it sound like the book... Keyword being Tried. :P Merry Christmas Eve everyone! :D  Now I know it seems odd that I celebrate Christmas, being a Buddhist and my husband having his own scientific theories of creation lol. But let me clarify, my family only celebrates Christmas for the family get together and Santa Claus apsets. Afterall the rest of my family are Christian and Lutheran, and get together every Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Why wouldn't we participate in that??? :) We respect all religions and thus we celebrate Christmas and Easter in the more story, more commercial aspect. My son loves celebrating things and seeing his family, so we want to give him what we had as children. As you can guess, we went to the Village Inn for dinner tonight. As tradition with my family, we spend Christmas Eve with the Ander...