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 ...

We have a pretty easy going weekend, thankfully!! I have been waiting for one of those for some time now! Saturday I teach my second hip hop class and then we plan on going to Uncle Kalvin's football game at Stewart Park fields. Sunday we have family pictures with my good buddy and our family photographer Miss Kels. I am very excited to get family pictures taken, but I am a little nervous about what we will all wear lol! It may get chilly again this weekend, I hope it doesn't snow! She said that she would love to take photos in the snow lol! Disclaimer: Mom and Dad potty training talk coming up ahead. Don't say I didn't warn you, go to the next blog post if you don't want to read! You've been officially warned! Miss Anna has officially been potty training for about four months now. She has been doing pretty good lately, so we have finally reached the underwear milestone! I am so excited for her! We bought her first pair of undies this week. She couldn't ...

I know I have already posted several book reviews this month, but I just keep checking out more and more books at the library, devouring them and then needing to post about them lol. Up until this post, I had about four different books I was either reading or had finished reading that I had yet to post a review for them. Lon suggested that I stop reading the other two books until I have caught up on the reviews on my blog, so I started posting like mad. And here we are! I still have one book to finish and post, and another to start! But I will post this review and then I can continue reading lol! Without further ado, here's Parentology by Dalton Conley! Parentology by Dalton Conley This book was amazing! Finally the book gods have blessed me with a wonderful book! I had read so many terrible ones! Oh I am so excited that I finally got a "good one" I was starting to lose faith in my process! Along with the title of this book it says "Everything you wan...

Today my handsome, amazing, super sweet, very smart, wonderful, loving son is turning five years old. I cannot believe that he is five now! I remember being pregnant with him, I remember the labor, I remember having him and I remember him as a itty bitty baby. Now he is big, entirely his own person with his own opinions and personality. He is so stinking smart, always wanting to learn about new things. He loves everyone and everything! He loves to take care of his baby sister and his cousin Benton. He wants to be friends with everyone, will talk to anyone he meets on the street and tell them to "Have a great day." I have never met such a wonderful young man before! We are so lucky to call ourselves his parents, he is just amazing! We are having his birthday party tonight. First, we will be making the trip to Bricks and MiniFigs for some Lego fun and shopping. Alan cannot wait, he has been talking about the Lego store all month long lol! After our Lego exploration, w...

I know, I like never write on the weekends! What has gotten into me??????? Well, for those of you who know me personally know that I only don't write most weekends, because that is my family time. It is the time where all four members of our family are available, so we spend as much time as possible together, doing fun things. I am usually too busy to post during the weekend, I just recap everything from the weekend that following Monday. In fact, the year I started this blog, that was one of my personal rules: No posting on weekends.  But today, I woke up early before the children and I thought I would go online for a bit. Started checking my FB and then my blog and I decided, hey why not post today? If I have something to write, why shouldn't I write? So here I am, typing up a post for today. It will mostly be filled with random thoughts and musings from the weekend. I still want to save my Dirty Dash post for Monday. :) But I have like a billion and two little things I ...

Before we start "potty talking" I figured I would share this with you. I forgot to post it earlier lol! Oops! Anyways, it was Teacher Appreciation Week last week and well, Alan has two pretty amazing preschool teachers. :) I planned on getting them both maybe a card and some candy? But my best mom friend Kelsie texted me with her Teacher Appreciation plans. She invited me over to do some adorable chalk art with the boys! :) So cute, thanks Kelsie for the wonderful idea! We played in their new backyard too, while Kelsie set up her new flower garden. It was so darn nice out and they have a HUGE backyard! Oh I cannot wait for homeownership! :D Anna chased the boys around some and did some exploring on her own. Her buddy, Karter, was napping for the day but she did get a chance to play with all of his toys lol! She loved playing in their watertable. I loved that it was nice enough out to let her! The boys watching the garden's progress from above :) Alan...

Happy Mother's Day to all of my mama readers and bloggers! I love you all and am so thankful for all of you! Being a mother can be a blessing at times, but other times it is very hard... having other mothers there to support you and share with your struggles, is a blessing in disguise. Hope all of your days are amazing! We are pretty broke trying to get this new place and living seperatley right now, so we didn't do anything special for Mother's Day. I only really needed to spend the day with my beautiful family and that's exactly what I got! I spent the whole day with my kids and most of the day with Lon, it was wonderful! :) I love you Alan, Anna and Lon! Both kids made me gifts from their schools and daycare. It was so sweet! Especially to get something from the little miss! I expected Alan's preschool to make something (they always do holiday projects there), but Anna's two gifts from daycare were a pleasant surprise! Alan made me a basket of flowers that...

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...

I missed it yesterday, but our beautiful little girl turned 16 months old. She has been growing like a little weed this month and has had so many milestones. We are so proud of her!   She have gone through so much this past month, she has been such a strong little fighter the whole time! It is also Montana's 124th birthday today! 124 years ago, our great state became an official state! Yay! We love you too Montana! Happy birthday! At 16 months, Anna Ariel: *Is 22 pounds and 8 ounces and is 32 inches long. She gained two pounds in one month, you go girl! Doctor Yontz will be so proud of you! *Is officially in size 18M only for shirts, pants and skirts. She is still in size 3 for diapers though, although there may be a change next month. :) *Has auburn colored hair, just like her mama. :) She has some red streaks that run through the top layer of hair, but its mostly all auburn now. Her eyes look more like her daddy's now though, a hazel color with some blue in it too. S...

Today is a somewhat stressful day for my family and I. Miss Anna has to get her stitches out at the hospital, her doctor said that it would probably be as hard and as traumatizing for her as when they were put in. He was just trying to prepare me but I think he made me more apprehensive about the whole ordeal then I was in the first place. It will just be Anna and I. Lon has work and cannot get it off. At least Alan will be in preschool, so he will not have to witness it. I am just nervous about how much I will be able to help and handle it all. Prayers and good thoughts please! We need to be uplifted with positive energy today most of all! Especially Miss Anna, who doesn't understand any of this. I will update how everything went tomorrow or Thursday. Alan had two separate showcases last week, they were kind of overshadowed by Anna's injury though. However, I want to take the time to share now with you since he did so great at both of them! We are so proud of how far he has...

Has anyone else been having issues with their Blogger? All of my sidebar stuff will only show up underneath my posts, completely defeating the purpose of a sidebar lol! I tried everything I could think of to fix it, without luck. Anyone else in the same boat? I am hoping so and that it will get fixed soon! Because it is quite annoying! :P I figured that I would just go ahead and post today, even though I don't normally post on Saturdays and Sundays because they are reserved for the family! :) But I have so many darn things to post about, I will be so backed up if I don't start posting soon lol! Today we played outside for a good hour and a half, then later we will meet up with Daddy and go to Anna's friend's first birthday party at Kid's Klubhouse! Oh the kids just love it there, if I was rich and we lived closer, they would probably go to school there lol! Its great! After the party, I have two meetings for work. On a Sunday, blah!!! Oh well, I will have spent mo...