Free Range Family

This weekend was quite the crazy one for us. We had two sets of family members surprise us by coming into town, one from Lon's family and one from mine! Uncle Cameron came into town from Seattle and the Glover family came into town from Missoula! It was pretty awesome! We also had Colton's birthday party (but that's for another post)… And we went to the NEW Scheel's! The kids had a blast their and I didn't spend a dime! Yes! :D I failed to get one good picture of Uncle Cameron and the kids, but they had a blast with him over the weekend. We are kinda poor right now lol, so we just stayed at home and watched the new Spiderman and Captain America with Uncle Cameron. And Alan showed him all of his Legos. Anna started saying his name while he was here too! That must've been very cool for Uncle Cameron! :) Ah they loved every minute that he was there! Thanks for coming to visit Uncle Cam! We love you bunches! Have a safe trip back to Washington! Posing with 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...

Just thought I would drop in and say hey, you know update everyone on the events thus far for this weekend. Mostly because I am so excited and proud of myself! I passed my other USAGym certification just last night! This class was a Fundamentals of Gymnastics course so now that I have passed it, I am officially certified to instruct (recreational only) gymnastics! This is my second certification I have received from USAGymnastics, the first was a Risk Management certificate. Both courses took me about five hours for the classes and an hour for the testing each, a total of twelve hours which for a mother of two means about two weeks worth of night classes. Phew! I am exhausted, I feel like I was back in college again, writing notes and having to study for tests. I am proud of myself for completing both courses on time and for now being fully certified to teach the gymnastics classes that I teach at the YMCA. Feels good! We had the hip hop Christmas party tonight, only three other ...

Alan had his last preschool class of 2013 today. It was also their Christmas party, so Anna and I joined in on the festivities. We had a great time! Santa and Mrs. Claus came and gave out gifts, we made cottonball snowmen, Alan went swimming with his buddies and we had Christmas snacks! The perfect way to finish out the year for preschool! The students were so excited to see Santa and Mrs. Claus! Each kid received a stocking of goodies and a book from Santa, even Anna! She was too scared to get a photo with him this time though. Alan wasn't however, he was ready to say hi and get his gifts lol! I love his photo with Santa, so cute! Then the whole class sang "Jingle Bells" with Santa and Mrs. Claus before they left! So cute to hear a whole room of preschoolers singing their own version of the Christmas classic. I love it! They were about to go swimming in these pics, that's why half the class is in their suits lol. I had some friends and family on FB who were conf...

It is snowing again! Alan loves it, although I think he's a little confused lol. He can't decide if today is Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas because of the snow! I told him I hope it isn't either of the last two, we so aren't prepared for Thanksgiving or Christmas here yet! Ah, I get panicky thinking about how we will do Christmas this year... Still trying to figure everything out. :) It is so beautiful out, but I do have to admit that it does make me very anxious because the last time it snowed here and we wrecked the car on the way to the ER. As long as we drive real slow and don't go out much (except to play in the snow lol), we will be good! After all, I've been a Montanan all me life, a little snow never scared or hurt anyone who knew what they were doing. ;) Oh! And speaking of which, we did get our car back on Friday. Just had to replace the wheel and the tires and repair the alignment some. Yay, I am so happy to have my little car back again! Hap...

I can't believe how fast things have been passing by lately. Next week in my hip hop class has their fourth of July Fun Day and the week after that is their Thriller performance. Didn't I just start teaching them yesterday? :) As for Miss Anna, her party is officially a week from Saturday. We are so excited! I have almost every planned out and prepared, I can't wait! As for Aunt Natalie, according to her doctors Baby B could be coming any day now! I won't go into gory details because she's my sister, but she is READY. :) I can't wait to be an Aunt! I will post as soon as he is born! Yay! This week Uncle Cameron came into town from Washington. We haven't seen him since last summer and were so excited to see him! We spent most of the weekend with him, hiking and going to the park and having snowcones, we even watched Cloud Atlas with him. It was great to see him, the last time he saw Anna she was only a few weeks old! She is such a big girl now! Uncle Cam...

Okay I have to be honest with you all for a moment, even though my phone and all its apps are the total coolest... There are still a few things I have yet to figure out how to do lol. Like a linked post. Yep, have no idea how to do one on my phone yet. Oh well, that only means my phone is obsolete like once a month right? :P Anyways, happy Wednesday everyone. Not too much is going on here today, I teach dance tonight and we recently added a second dance to our recital for my class. I am very excited!  I will try to get in a What I'm Loving Wednesday post out sometime later, so keep an eye out for that. But for now, let's go over what happened to the Andersen family this past month. Uncle Cameron turned 29 in the beginning of March, he was of course still in Washington for school though so we were unable to celebrate with him. We still sent him a bunch of texts and pictures for his birthday, which he loved. One of Alan and Anna's friends celebrated his first birthday thi...

Today is Uncle Cameron's 29th birthday.   Alan is sitting right at Uncle Cameron's feet in this pic, looking up at him   Uncle Cameron lives in Washington right now, so unfortunately we will not be able to do anything with him for his birthday. But we are working on getting his present together and will be mailing it along with Alan's famous cards hopefully tomorrow or the next day. We love you Uncle Cameron! Happy birthday!     Uncle Cameron is next to Aunt Natalie in this picture, just off to my right  

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!