Here are a few pictures from Austin's Birthday party on May 23rd. I have been so busy, but I am gonna try and get some things posted here today!!

He got a little scared when everyone started singing, he hopped into my lap for protection from the scary choir. (Nevermind the unfinished cake...I got impatient with putting the baseball stitches on.)

Blowing out his candles, we practiced before-hand and I just had to help a little bit.

So happy about eating cake. Yum!

Opening presents....he wasn't as excited as I thought he would be. He kept walking off to do other stuff.

Austin Tyrel is 2

My littlest little one turned 2 on Wednesday, May 20th. I just cannot believe how time flies. We will have his birthday party on Saturday so I will post pictures after that. I wasn't sure what kind of cake to do for him cause he didn't seem to be "into" anything in particular like Logan was into Elmo or excavators. After thinking about it for a while we realized he is very into baseball right now. I should have thought of that since I am having to throw a ball at him all day while he tries to catch it or hit it with whatever he has found to use as a bat. We bought both Logan and Austin their own glove and bats with balls since they both wanted to be like Brandon and Autumn.

He is my little Baby Bug and always has a smile on his face for me. He LOVES riding horses and will often throw a bit of a fit when its someone else's turn. It makes me a tad bit nervous since he thinks those horses love him so much he can just walk up and pat them on their head or butt or leg. They do love him cause he is the one that will bring out 2 or 3 tablespoons of grain at a time when they are being brushed down for riding.

He gives the sweetest kisses. And then wipes them off to see the reaction. Its almost automatic now - kiss, wipe, smile.

I remember the day he was born. We didn't find out if he was going to be a boy or a girl and I told the midwife and nurses present that I didn't want anyone in the room to announce it except for myself or Dave. I wanted us to be able to discover it ourselves. When he was born and plopped up on my stomach, it didn't even occur to me to look. I was just so happy to have him in my arms and to hear him cry. Of course I was sorta wishing for a girl, but at that point it didn't even matter. He was healthy and crying and here. It took me a few minutes to say, "wait, what do we have here?". Of course after discovering he was a boy, I was overjoyed. There was no regrets at all. He was perfect. He was born at 3:27 PM on May 20, 2007 weighing in at 9 lbs 4 oz.

My first baby is 10!

I remember the day I first saw Brandon....it was December 21st, 1999. The social worker brought him to where I worked and set him on a chair in the reception area. He had a blue and grey/silver coat and had a blue blanket sorta wrapped around his little legs. I remember thinking he was such a cute little baby with round cheeks and dark round eyes. I was doing foster care and was only supposed to have him for a few weeks. I grabbed him up from that chair and talked to the Social worker for a few minutes before I had to leave to drop him off at home with my roommate so I could finish out my day at work. He would start at the daycare in my building the next day. When I got home that night he was getting attached to my roommate and I was a tiny bit jealous. I scooped him up and told him, "I am your mommy!!" Little did I know at that point that I would become his mother. It was a maddening rollar coaster of highs and lows on the way to becoming his "legal" mother, but it was all worth it and could not imagine my life without my bubba. (I rarely call him that anymore since he is getting so old and "grown-up", LOL) The adoption was final on April 12, 2002. That was the happiest day of my life when I could finally relax and not worry about him going anywhere else. We had a great ceremony (1st time in Hennepin County that an adoption was done outside of the courtroom) and feast with lots of family and friends present to witness our special day.

We really did have a rough journey and its still a journey of growth and love and I love him so much my heart aches at times. He is growing up to be a fine looking little man and has great qualities that he will share with the world. He is full of life and loves spending time being active with his brothers and sisters or his friends. He is a very social kid. He is athletic and loves baseball and his martial arts practice. He would also like to play hockey and football or basketball. He will play just about anything. He is comical and tries to crack jokes (sometimes gets himself into a bit of trouble with this) at just about anything or anyone for that matter. I sometimes wonder with amazement at the doctors and others that come in contact with him for short spurts of time and say, "Why is he so quiet?? Is he like this all the time?" That is just crazy talk, cause Brandon is very full of life (and noise!) and constantly looking for his new adventure and companion to go along.

He decided to have his birthday party at H2Oasis, an indoor water park in Anchorage. He had 3 friends come along and of course siblings and a couple cousins. Everyone had a blast! Here are a couple pictures of him and 2 of his friends - Bailey and Atillio.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRANDON!

Kristen's 17th Birthday

Kristen turned 17 on February 11th, 2009!

I made a Tiffany Box cake....as best I could.

Kristen and her friend Amanda getting ready to blow out the candles.

Me, being goofy with Hannah on my lap.
Kristen looked forward to turning 17 cause she is that much closer to that magical age of 18 or what she considers "adulthood" or "get-to-do-what-I-want-hood" in her eyes. Boy does she have a rude awakening coming! She also gets to go to rated R movies legally. Her first movie out was not rated R though....maybe she chickened out. Either way, I hope she slows down to enjoy her 17th year of life instead of trying to race through it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KRISTEN!!

Hump Day

Wednesday. Middle of the week. Hump day.

My mom will be here on Friday and we are all very excited. As long as Mt. Redoubt doesn't blow that day, everything should go as planned. Its been pretty quiet.

My birthday is coming up soon too. Monday. I will be 34 years old. I was planning a spa day for all the girls here, but that seems like a lot of planning on my part and I would rather do something with less hassle/stress. Nothing like making your birthday celebration stressful when you don't have too. Instead I think I will do my own spa day, maybe with Kristen and my mom and call it good. I really do need some "work" on my hair and my feet are pretty ugly. Dave's feet are "prettier" than mine. He never ever walks around without socks on.

This time last year I was pregnant and didn't know it. It turned out to be an ectopic pregancy and on February 11th (Kristen's birthday), I found out and had surgery to remove my left fallopian tube where the baby had implanted. It's sad for me. I haven't had too hard a time dealing with it except initially, but now that I think back and it comes around to that time of year again, its sad. I am a girl (duh) and emotional at times (duh!) and we tend to overthink/over-analyze at times. So even though the pregnancy was doomed from the beginning, I sit and wonder what-ifs? I also wonder if I ever get "my tubes tied" if the surgery will be half the time since I only have 1 tube to tie. Should be half the cost too, right?

Ok...time to get going with school stuff.

Miss me?

Its been a while since I've been on here. I suppose I better update.

Things are going very well here. I have been busy trying to lose weight and I am doing very well. I am down about 24 lbs right now and very happy with that progress. Its not easy, but I am sticking with it and hopefully will be at goal someday. I have a workout buddy that I go to the gym with almost everyday. It helps a lot to have someone to workout with and keep me motivated. I am also busy with homeschooling Brandon and that is going well....most days. He just had some testing at the correspondance school and it shows he is right on track. Since this is his first year homeschooling and my first year "teaching", it is a relief to know that he is right where he should be. I am helping get the local La Leche League back running and will become a "leader". I have been attending LLL since Logan was about 5 weeks old and love the support and adult conversations. LLL is a support organization for mothers who breastfeed their babies/toddlers. Since I am a huge pro-breastfeeding person, I like to offer my support to that. We got off track for a few months, but hopefully we will get it back running, especially for those mothers that need that support in their early breastfeeding days.

Dave has been busy working....which is good. He does road maintanence so that means plowing or scraping ice packed roads. It means early mornings and late evenings on occcasion, depending on the weather.

The kids are all doing good...for the most part. Kristen is going through her teenage-trying to be an adult stuff and has had a few struggles. She is really looking forward to the day she gets her "adult" freedoms. (Didn't we all look forward to that?) Its not as easy as it sometimes appears to a teen, but they learn. She has applied at Job Corp and hopes to be able to finish out her high school education there and move on to something else.

The little boys are both getting bigger and bigger everyday it seems. Part of me looks forward to them getting bigger and seeing how they develop into big kids and the other part wishes they would stay little forever. The part that isn't changing a poopie diaper I suppose.

My baby brother Pat just got married while on vacation in Hawaii! I was hounding him a bit before he left if they were actually gonna do it this time, since they had tossed it out about 12 trillion times that they were gonna get married in about 15 different countries/vacation spots over the years that they have been together. I can finally send the congrats card I bought about 5 years ago that was all signed with my name and Brandon's name. I will have to add 5 names to it since I have gotten married and had more kids in the meantime. I am so happy for them though and hope they have a great life. I am wishing for them to have a baby too! (hint, hint!) We could not be more different than in our ways to the alter....it took me 71 days to meet and marry my husband and it took Pat...what....9 years to finally get it done? I believe they meet about 9 years ago. Maybe 10, I dunno.

Now I am just anxiously awaiting the arrival of my good friend Bobbies baby. She is having a beautiful little girl and I can't wait to hear how it all goes and to see the pictures. I just wish I lived closer (or she lived closer, LOL) so that I could be right there to see for myself. She is due in March, but she thinks she will have her in February sometime!

Speaking of February....my birthday is February 9th and Kristen's is the 11th and then there is Valentines day on the 14th. Just thinking about February makes me think of Valentines day and made me change my background of this blog to the hearts and stuff and makes me think of all the people that I love!!! I am so lucky to have everyone in my life and so grateful to love them all, ha ha!! I love my husband with all my heart and I love my kids fiercely!! It's my love for my kids that drives my overwhelming need to try and protect them from everything in the world that could make them hurt. I know I sometimes am a bit overbearing and even hurt my kids on occasion with my limits and words. Its something I am working on actually....to try and do it better. As a parent, you try to do your best but you will screw up here and there and just have to accept that and move on and try to do better next time. There is no handbook to raising kids....well actually there are millions of handbooks by various authors - some with kids, some without. But when it comes down to it, I believe you have to do what is in your heart and try to raise them up as confident humans to go out and enjoy life and participate in society as responsible adults. And hey, if one decides to drift out as a criminal, you at least tried your best. (NONE OF MY KIDS WILL BE CRIMINALS, DAMNIT!)

Anyway, speaking of all the people that I love, since I am in such a loving mood. I love my mom. She is the best of the best in my world. I couldn't have asked for a better mom, there just isn't one out there.

I also love all my family....my brothers, their spouses (hey, now I can say spouses and not spouse and "significant other" or "girlfriend" or "fiancee" or "shack-up", LOL), their kids (my neices and nephew). I love my grandma Ione. I love my aunties and uncles and all my cousins, even the naughty ones. I love my in-laws too. AND, I LOVE all my awesome friends, even the ones I have never met in person!!!

Love, love, love! I just love it!

Logan's Birthday Party

The pictures are sorta in reverse order. Anyway the first one is after he opened presents and we are doing the whole cake and singing thing. The race car helmet was fitting I guess. The last one is of the food. Showcasing the race car sub sandwiches. What an awesome idea my mother-in-law had with that. We had a great time. Logan enjoyed his day and his presents.

Logan's birthday cake

Here is Logan's race car cake. I am pretty proud of how well it turned out. I have been preparing the red and black frosting since Thursday and Fri to get them dark enough. So they sat on my counters in bowls and I just stirred them occasionally. It worked great. I guess that is the trick to the deep colors. If I had not prepared them in advance, they would have been purple and pink, just like what happened with Brandon's last birthday cake....my bad! I will post pictures of Logan at his party soon.

Logan got his birthday presents from Grandma Denise!

Logan's birthday is tomorrow, December 21st., but Grandma Denise sent her package and it got here 2 days early so I just went ahead and let him open it. He yelled out, "TRACTOR!" right when he saw it. He was so excited. He got a John Deere remote control tractor with a little dude that rides along and a pickup truck and trailer, a skidsteer and a backhoe. He LOVES his birthday presents. THANK YOU GRANDMA DENISE, I LOVE YOU!! Love, Logan.

P.S. Nevermind my grubby looking hair, I just got back from the gym and was all sweaty!

Autumn is 14

And she is grounded cause it snowed today. She must have caused it!

We had a great time at the bowling alley. She had about 5 friends show up to bowl and hang out, 3 of them came home with us to spend the night. Us adults got our own lane and had a good time bowling. I wonder if the rest of the old folks are as sore as I am today. We bowled almost 3 full games, the last one being a speed round in the last 15 minutes of time. We tried to get a full game in and the only rule was to bowl FAST! Grab any ball you can and bowl FAST! It was a lot of fun. We finished the 9th frame so we almost made it.

And a few more....

Our canopy to stay out of the blazing hot sun

My brother Pat and his fiancee, Lindsey
My mom's cousin Faith
My uncle Chuck and his wife Gina from Texas

More pictures

Grandma Ione at her 74th birthday party with her brother Joe

The kids having fun with a pinata at Grandma's birthday party
My beautiful cousin Clarissa
A group of people trying to stay in the shade
Pat (my brother), Neil (my cousin) and Tim (my uncle - the midget)
We celebrated my Grandma Ione's 74th birthday on July 5th. We had a beautiful day and some great food and company. The kids had fun in the pools and playing games and swinging at the pinata. The adults caught up with whatever is going on with each others. It was nice to see so many gather with us to celebrate Grandma's birthday.

Grandma's Birthday Invite

I designed the birthday invite for my Grandma Ione's birthday. I didn't take into consideration all the older generations that will be getting it though and made some of the words to small. The pictures are a bit smallish too. Oh well, my mom says once she puts her reading glasses on it is all good.

My grandma really did have a rough year. At one point, she wasn't expected to live and everyone was planning for that. All her kids went to the hospital (1 from Texas flew up). She spent a few months in the hospital with several surgeries and then another month in a nursing home. Then she went to my mom's house for several weeks while she continued to get therapy. She is back in her own home now, doing well. She really has been a HUGE presence in my life all the way from the beginning and I was even living with her, while attending college, before I got married. I hope she has a great birthday and a better year and continues to improve healthwise. I have always known her to be a tough cookie!! That toughness is probably what got her through it all.