Free Range Family

I love my job, for sooooooooo many reasons! One of them is my Y family! The people that I work with aren't just coworkers, we are a community, we are our own family. Our children grow up together, we celebrate holidays and birthdays together, we support those who need it and praise those who have succeeded. I wouldn't want my little family to grow up anywhere else! :D Speaking of Y family members, one of Alan's best buddies had his fifth birthday this weekend. He just happened to have it at the Y (as do most staff kids, our birthday parties are so popular!) and he invited Alan. We all had such a wonderful time! The party was football themed and there were several of Alan's classmates there as well. Anna tagged along for the party, she did pretty good too, considering she was the youngest in the whole group! :) She hung out with Tucker's teenage sisters almost the whole time lol. Already such a diva… Thanks for inviting us Tucker! We had a wonderful...

Alan has his winter break from school until next Monday. With the snow finally falling in MT (after almost having a brown Christmas here, yuck) it makes planning activities to keep the kids from going crazy a bit more of a challenge. We have yet to be able to do a Snow Day, because temps have been just barely in the double digits at their highest. But I never said that I didn't like a challenge! :) So here are some things we have done to keep busy! Saturday we went to Chuck E Cheese to play some games. I had a few bucks leftover on a Mastercard gift card from Christmas and we thought that we would take a quick trip to burn off some energy. It was a bit busy, but still tons of fun! Alan and Anna played that snow mobile game probably a million times! Maybe my little snow puppies were hinting at something? ;) We had a great time though! Sunday brought even more snow! We wanted to go sledding with Grandpa and Uncle Kal but the weather got wild and blizzard-y so we couldn'...

Happy holidays from the Andersen family! I hope that your Christmas season is going well so far! The kids and I are ready excited for Christmas! I say excited, because I am totally NOT ready this year lol! With the Nutcracker finishing up just last Friday, I have only had a few days to really prepare for Christmas. I still haven't wrapped anything or sent out the Christmas cards. Who am I kidding? I haven't even written the Christmas cards yet. However, we did decorate sugar cookies the other night. And Alan had his last class of the year today, which happened to be his Christmas party. ;) There were a ton of festivities at Alan's Preschool Christmas party. Santa came for a visit and delivered his stocking gifts to all of the students. Alan was so excited to see him, he told Santa that they were best friends. He is so sweet! After visiting with Santa, we went caroling around the Y.  We went caroling at Child Watch, then to the Administration Office, and finally...

We have been so busy this week preparing for that boy's birthday party on Friday, that I have yet to even post about his first day of school! Wow! So we are in need of some MAJOR catching up!  This past weekend, Aunt Natalie and her family came into town to host their wedding reception in Billings. They stayed the whole weekend and we even went to one of Aunt April's first football games as a varsity cheerleader. We had a wonderful time! Benton even started walking while he was here! We all were able to see a major milestone for him! I was so happy! Auntie loves you so much BB! Gotta love my weird siblings and I. Trying so hard to take a family photo at Aunt Natalie and Uncle Jake's reception, it took probably five times to get a nice picture! And Uncle Jake's thumb is even in it! Lol, we are so crazy! We also celebrated Alan's birthday early because Aunt Natalie and Uncle Jake wouldn't be able to come back next weekend. They took us to Chu...

I have had a lot of people asking me this over the summer and even more so now that Alan's birthday is coming up (4 more days). So I figured rather then repeat myself a billion and two times (like I have done thus far), I would just write about it on here. If you have been a follower of this blog for years, you probably already know why but this is for those new-comers who have just joined us! Why are we not putting Alan in Kindergarten this year?????? Well, for several reasons actually… #1- Our school district's cutoff is September 10th, just five short days before Alan's birthday. By all technicality he could attend Kindergarten this year but personally I feel that is too close for him to succeed in school. He would be four years old for the first week and a half of school, and that scares me. I feel that the district cutoff date should be on the day that school starts but I do understand that doing so would mean that the district would have to change the cutoff da...

My summer classes are officially over! Yay! It was a wonderful summer, I loved all of my classes and my camps. But it is nice to have this upcoming week off of dance and gymnastics, so that I can prepare Alan for his last year of Preschool and get in some fun family time before he off and leaves us three days a week. He starts school September 3, so we have the whole week off next week to get in some summer fun! I plan on taking Alan and Anna to go swimming, to the library, to as many parks as we can fit in and somewhere else fun too, maybe the zoo or the art museum? Not sure yet! Saturday was my last showcase for the summer, it was my lovely hip hoppers performance! We performed three dances: a breakdancing dance to one of my favorite Incubus songs, a "follow the lyrics" type dance called Born to Move, and of course the YMCA for our finale dance. It was a wonderful performance, we had a decent turnout and all of my kids danced really well! Alan came along to watch his ...

I figured after yesterday's post that today I would post about our summertime happenings so far. Because we have been BUSY!!!! Lol, so I will share each big event with you all. So far this summer we have: Alan's T-Ball Game We were asked by my boss to join in on the last T-Ball game of the season. They were short one player and Alan was the man to help out! :) Alan was a bit upset at first that he didn't come prepared with a mitt like the other children, but after a friend lent him one, he was all better. He was pretty good at being an Outfielder, he loved running after the ball and throwing it to the next kid. He just forgot to always stay in his area lol. Alan also did a good job batting but struggled with the concept of running from one base to the next lol. Kids… :) He still did a wonderful job trying though! Go Team Orange!!!! The Renaissance Faire Aunt April and I took the kids to the Renaissance Faire at Zoo Montana for the first time ever. Th...