Free Range Family

Alan's and Uncle Kalvin's gymnastics studio recently moved to the west end side of town. They purchased a much larger space then they originally had at their old studio, where they can have more classes running at once. We did not have gymnastics last week due to the actual moving, so Alan was quite excited to have class this week and to see the new studio. I was pretty excited too actually, being a gymnastics teacher myself. And let me tell you, they did a nice job picking it out! This space is perfect for them! Alan (in black and brown) at circle time in class The space is soooooo big! They now have room for a bigger tumble track, a long vault system built into the middle of the gymnasium, two beam stations, a floor routine station, a separate bar station for the boys and the girls, their zip line, and they STILL have room for the Gym Kids (Alan's age group) to have several classes set up with different gymnastics obstacles at each! Oh I love it so much now! ...

Happy 24th birthday Uncle Aaron!   Alan and Anna love you so much! We all miss you, buddy! Hope you and Aunt Nikki can come home soon. Have a fantastic birthday! We will try to give you a phone call later so the kids can sing to you and owe you two dinner next time you're back in town. :) Love you dude! Uncle Aaron and Boba Fett It has been raining all day, since pretty early actually, like 3 or 4 in the morning. I only know this of course because Alan woke all three of us up this morning, throwing up everywhere in the bed we share. It was definitely not fun. Definitely a long night. But I remember laying down on the family room's couch after cleaning everything up and getting both kids back to bed and hearing light pattering all over the house. It was raining. Its still raining out and the radio said it was supposed to start snowing here at noon. But I have yet to see anything but rain out. A perfect setting for a sick day for the kiddos. This morning I subbed the...

Yay! I am finally able to post about another one of the BEST days of my life! Oh I have waited all week to share with you readers about this great day, but with our crazy life right now I have yet to have the chance. But before I start on my wonderful happy post, I have to update everyone on our family. We are officially moved out of that horrid house and away from that awful man, fully moved out by yesterday at 3:45 pm. Only an hour and fifteen minutes before we were supposed to, I was quite proud of us! It rained heavy all day yesterday too, so we moved most of our possessions in the storm. I had to bag every box we had packed so that things would not get ruined, it was SOOOOOOOOOOO much work lol! Wow... As if winning the case and removing us from his property wasn't enough for him, our landlord also felt the need to harass us all day yesterday by stalking us and driving around the house over and over again until we called the police on him. :( What a creep! I am so glad that w...

I cannot post about Color me Rad today, I have something much more important to post about. I apologize for anyone who was looking forward to it. The Color me Rad post will be on Thursday most likely. Keep an eye for it! Yesterday, we had court with our landlord. Since it is mostly said and done, I will share the basics with you all. I still do not want to share all the horrid details with you because I try so hard to keep this blog a positive forum for my family and my readers. But I am compelled to share the basics with you. We lost the case, our landlord had a lawyer and a good one too, probably very expensive. Even the judge wasn't pleased with outcome. We have to be completely out of the house by tomorrow at 5 pm. We also owe him a good sum of money apparently, which I don't agree with the most. This landlord, this man, put a young family of four out on the streets because he is stubborn and money greedy. We have no place to live now and have struggled almost all day y...

Life has been good lately. This weekend is Color me Rad and I also plan on going to Wrecking Clown's Swagger Saturday workshop afterwards. I am so excited for both! Tonight I am working a birthday party for one of my former student's and their one year old brother. We should have some fun. :) Yay! The kids and I are finally getting over that creeping crud we have had all week long. And next week, I am chaperoning Alan's Preschool field trip to Zoo Montana! Things are going very well around here. However, as we approach this court date with our landlord and things are getting more apprehensive and hectic, but I just need to remind myself of all the GOOD in our life: our amazing children are healthy and happy, we have stable jobs where people love us, our friends and family are here to support us. Things may feel like they are about to be turned upside down for us, but during the hard times we need to rememeber our family's foundation. We love each other and will alway...

I did not anticipate it being so hard to move out of our old place, but it was. We had previously lived there for two years, moved in when Alan was still a baby. I had picked it out, it was my baby. I loved the bay windows, the fireplace, the whole house. It was 105 years old but full of life and character in my opinion. It was our third apartment to live in as a couple but our first to move into with two bedrooms. Alan pretty much grew up in that house. It was the first and only house he remembers living in. A lot of memories were made in those several rooms. I discovered how truly hard it was to move while moving. I was packing up various things in Alan's room, when I remembered all the nights I spent with Alan in his room: dressing him, rocking him to sleep, playing with him and comforting him when he woke up scared at night. Alan took his first bath in this bathtub. He learned how to use the potty with that toilet. This was MY child's childhood home and we were getting...

October was a good month for my family. We participated in several fall activities, found a new place to move into, celebrated my two year blogiversary, I worked Color me Rad and we even had some Halloween fun! What a busy month! Here's what we did: This month we celebrated Lon's birthday and Uncle Aaron's birthday. Alan and I made Lon a birthday card and birthday cupcakes, and we got him some new clothes for his birthday. Anna's friend Cordelia also celebrated her first birthday, she had a fun costume party at her house for it. Mama Heather made so much cool food, it was so awesome! I also celebrated my two year blogiversary, along with it came some new changes to my blog. Hope everyone likes it! Its not a big anniversary but Lon and I also celebrated our year and a half wedding anniversary. We are pretty excited to have made it a year and a half! :D We hope for at least sixty more years! We also celebrated Halloween this year. Alan is old enough to enjoy Hallowee...

Friday, I said that I would post about all of our current moving challenges and obstacles we have faced this past month with our dream house. Well if irony would not have it, we had even MORE challenges and obstacles presented to us this whole weekend. Thus making it near to impossible for me to even have a chance to write this post, let alone actually proof and post it. Ugh life is so difficult lately. I remind myself daily that we are in soooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better of shape than a lot of those living on the East Coast, but I still find myself occasionally slipping and complaining. Its frustrating, really. To prevent myself from just completely sounding like a cry baby whiner, I have been with holding information from you, my readers, again. I am sorry, I seem to keep doing that. What I am realizing is that this is not really whining, this blog is a form of a venting system for me as well as a chronicle of my life. Looking back on my life so far, I enjoy remembering the h...

Happy Friday everyone! I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo very delighted to say that today is one of our last days in this old house! We only have beds in our living room right now, from our co-sleeping adventure last night (for another post lol) and we will be moving them out Monday! We just need the MDU gas man to give us the okay on our house. We have had a lot of problems with this house we are moving into (I will write a post about this today) so I am very glad that we have finally gotten everything fixed and can move in! Hooray! Not much else going on today or this weekend, just a ton of unpacking and cleaning the old apartment. I might try and take a break to visit my friend Jessica, who had her second baby last Monday, or take Alan to a park but other than that, just unpacking! With all of this moving we are doing, I am reminded how lucky my family is to have possessions to move right now. In some places arcoss the states, there are people who do not have anything r...

I noticed today that I have barely posted any pictures of the family this week. We have been so busy packing and preparing for this move next week that I have only been posting back up posts and not really posting too much about our happenings. Not too much is going on but here is a week's worth of my cell phone photos! Been dancing in these gaucho pants for at least ten years now! I forgot to bring him a coat but redeemed myself by giving him mine lol. Anna playing as her buddies watch her :D I look kinda creepy lol! How I found my wild man watching tv this morning Rolling the biggest pumpkin he could find lol! Gray is the new brown for my girl! I just love her in shades of gray! The last tree in our lot that turned! Its such a pretty yellow now! Loving Member Appreciation Week at our bank!

We are still currently living in our old apartment. Spoke with our new landlord on Friday and he is just waiting on a furnace part before we can start moving in. He said Monday, but I have yet to talk with him today. Keep your fingers crossed for us, we may get our keys and such tonight! How awesome would that be???? This weekend was a nice and easy weekend for us. No crazy moving, although I would have been okay with that. Maddie's baby shower was Saturday afternoon. Sunday, we stayed home and did some more packing. We are now down to having only the necessities unpacked and alot of our belongings have been gone through. I have four big boxes full to the brim with stuff we are donating to Good Will, we have developed so much clutter in these past two years of living here. I thought we had gotten rid of most of it over Memorial weekend before Anna was born, but this weekend I have found the most random things (I think I may do a post on it later this week). I have become the new ...

I am pretty excited for this weekend. We should hopefully get a call from our new landlord, sign the lease to the new place, and start moving in tomorrow or Sunday!! Yay, so very excited!! Saturday is also Maddie's baby shower at my aunt's house. I am excited for this too. I made her little boy (they are going to name him James, so sweet) several cupcake onesies to go with the diaper cake my mother had made for her. And Anna has a onesie to wear that goes with the theme of the party! Winnie the Pooh! It should be a lot of fun for everyone. As for today, there's not too much going on here. Just packing the last of the stuff we do not need on a daily basis and some more cleaning. But tonight we might go over to my parent's to see everyone off. My father, April and Kalvin are going to visit Natalie in Missoula. They are going to her homecoming football game with her. Oh so fun! I want to do that with the kids one year! We always wear maroon that day but it would be so co...

I know I did not do yesterday's Toddler Talk Tuesday but we are very busy now, as to be expected. :) I did, however, feel quite compelled to do today's blog hop simply because I have so much to love and be thankful for today. Not too much is going on for us today, just packing and then I have hiphop class. We will just be reviewing the 5 step for breakdancing and maybe learning a new freeze, I have not decided yet. But I am still a very happy little mama! All is definitely good in this neck of the woods! Here is this week's What I'm Loving Wednesday! I'm loving that we got the okay on our house yesterday! We will be moving in hopefully this weekend! I'm loving that this weekend is also my cousin in law Maddie's baby shower. I am doing a Pinterest project for her present! Onesie cupcakes to go with the diaper cake my mom is having made for her! I'm loving that Anna already has her baby shower outfit picked out! It goes perfectly with the th...