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...

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 the...

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...

I hope that everyone had a wonderful and safe Halloween night! I know that we did! It was the perfect way to end one crazy week for me, I wouldn't have had it any other way! We never ended up going to the pumpkin patch or corn maze, we just didn't have the time. But Grandpa Kevin picked out two good pumpkins for Alan and Anna to carve up! Thanks Grandpa! Alan carved a "half Ninjago, half Captain America" pumpkin and Anna carved a silly pumpkin face. They both turned out pretty cute, even though we messed up on the top part of Anna's pumpkin lol! Tuesday morning, Anna had her Halloween party for her dance class. She wore her costume but was the only kid in her class that did for some reason. They still got a chance to dress up at the end of class, which Anna always loves. They also played with pompoms and did the obstacle course. Miss Rachel loves how good Anna is already at her gymnastics skills. I always have to remind her its only because I also teach dance a...

Alan is quite excited to be going on his field trip to the zoo with his preschool class today. Anna and I hope that we will be able to get off in time to join him, if not though I hope he has a wonderful time with all of his friends! We had a pretty low key weekend, I taught my hip hop class and then we went to Uncle Kalvin's football game on Saturday. I also went through all of Miss Anna and Mister Alan's summer clothes and put out their fall/winter clothes. Anna was pretty short on clothes (she wore 18M clothes last winter and now is in 3T) so we went to the second hand store to buy her some new clothes. We got her seven pairs of pants, five shirts, two pairs of pajamas and a pack of big girl underwear! For only twenty bucks! What a great deal! Sunday we hung out with Lon and took family pictures on the Rims. Nice and easy weekend, just the way I like them lol! We really enjoyed going to Uncle Kalvin's football game. It was the second one of the season, he was playing a...

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...

Alan had his last dance performance tonight. He was quite nervous at the beginning but overall he did very well. I am so proud of him and my other students! They have worked very hard these past few months, and tonight they shined like the amazing stars that they are! Great job kiddos!  Rather then jabber and be all sentimental mom-like, I will just leave you with the videos of the three dances and some photos. They aren't the greatest quality, my father didn't know exactly how to use my phone. But he did a good job! The first one has a little bit of me doing the introduction, I sound so weird lol! Enjoy! "Christmas Wrapping" They kids did so great with this dance! This was our only fully choreographed piece and all of my students remembered all the steps! Alan took a break halfway through to drum on his present a bit lol, but even he did most of the dance! "Santa Gangnam Style" This was our interpretation of Psy's "Oppa Gangnam S...

Did you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and/or a great first day of Hanukkah? We did, that's for sure! Oh, our families are all so good to us, they love us no matter what. I get so sentimental around the holidays (or maybe I am all the time lol) and I remember all my fond memories with my family members. We are so lucky to have such a great group of people who love my children and surround us with security, happiness, hope and love. They help us with so much and we are endlessly grateful for them! Love you guys! We started out our Thanksgiving morning with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on the tv. We had toasted bagels with strawberry cream cheese and cereal for breakfast. Alan and Anna both enjoyed watching the parade. Alan really liked the Power Rangers, Finn and Jake, the Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles and Spongebob. He was also quite excited to see Santa at the end. Anna enjoyed watching all the marching band performances with the dance teams, the Mad Hatter dance gro...