6 Months Old

Connor is 6 Months Old!!

He is:

15 pounds, 2 ounces (9th percentile)

25 inches (11th percentile)

He started solids a few weeks back to try to gain some weight so, his favorites foods are:

Sweet Potatoes

Squash

Favorite Activities:

Rolling over

Sitting with Mommy

Chewing on toys

Smiling ("Smiling's my favorite" -Buddy the Elf. Ha! I think of that quote so often when I see him smiling!) :)

Fun Facts:

Has 2 teeth

Loves to interact with his siblings

Obsessed with Mommy's teething necklace

Such a happy, fun little baby!

Sociable and is entertained easily by others

Happy 6 Months (a few days late!), Connor! We love you!

Winter Wonderland

Yesterday we woke up to a fresh coat of snow on the ground. It was breathtaking to walk in our winter wonderland and see the snow lightly dusting the trees. God's creation is SO beautiful!!

Project #4: Laundry Room

I've been trying my best to organize my house but it's been going SLOWLY!! It's been hard keeping up with the day to day chores and I'm trying to figure out my kids' schedules that seem to keep changing! However, today I managed to get my laundry room done. While the picture shows some of the organization, the big project was organizing under the counter in the middle (I forgot to take a before picture!) and finding places for clothes which led me to organize closets! I started last week and then pink eye hit so I finally finished it up today!

Before:

Just kind of a mess, needed some structure

 

 After:

A little better! I'm still not convinced I like the white shelf in the middle but it holds a basket for our hats and gloves and the lower basket holds our mail to go through so it works for the moment :)

Even With Pink Eye...

....this girl is in good spirits!!

Pink eye has hit our family...it was bound to happen since it's that time of year but it's still not fun!! We've stayed home and tried to clean everything in sight so hopefully it will be gone soon :)

 

Last week, we did some picture taking with Aubrey as well. She's 2 1/2 now and I felt like she needed some updated pictures. So, here's Aubrey with her little personality shining through BEFORE she had pink eye :)



Tristen-4 Years Old

A few weeks ago, Tristen turned 4!!

His Favorite Things:

1) Favorite Food: Ice Cream

2) Favorite Color: Blue

3) Favorite Outfit: Anything Blue

4) Favorite Toy: Animals and Superheroes

5) Favorite thing to do Outside: Climb trees

 

6) What does he want to be when he grows up: Zookeeper or Superhero

7)  Favorite holiday: Christmas

 

8)Favorite Book: Animal Search and Find, Anything Animal related (when we go to the library, he says, "I'm ONLY getting animal books. No people books!")

9)Favorite Animal: Toucan, Orangutan, Cheetah

 

 10) Favorite Game: Fishing and Monkeying Around

11) Favorite thing to do with his siblings: Play Superheroes

Being Creative

Today was COLD and with a forecast of cold temps and blizzard like conditions to come, we're trying to be a little creative around here (can I just say how AMAZING it is to have more space this winter!?! Still so grateful for extra square footage!)

My kiddos have used so many of their new toys from Christmas so THAT has been pretty fantastic! Some snippets from our day:

Only one way into the castle!

Washing their toys...this entertained for quite a while

Playing with one of Aubrey's Christmas gift-sorry for the blurry pic...it was a quick one from my phone

 

Organization: Project #3-My Closet

Today I worked on closets and didn't get TOO far but it's progress. I'm going through pre-pregnancy clothes, maternity clothes, and in between clothes to decide what to keep/donate What I failed to mention is that I'm trying to organize and get rid of things from 5 years ago when we moved from Iowa....things that have been in storage that long (and obviously we don't need!) This is all the stuff that still needs a place in our home (or else it gets donated/tossed). It's going to be quite the project...*whew*

Our basement storage-can't wait to get this cleared out

Our Snowy Day

Today's organization:

Day 2:

Taking down my Christmas decorations and packing away until next year!

My kids were a HUGE help! Today has been a snowy Minnesota day and temperatures have dropped. I usually dread January but if today is any indication of the rest of January, it won't be too bad...I have a project, my kids have room to run in the house, and I love the snow!

 

A snapshot from the other day (when it was warmer!)

Home preschool was back in action today and it was red day (can you tell!?!) I love this relaxed learning....we do a short lesson (letters and sounds) and then do a small activity to start our morning off-nothing fancy but it seems to help our days not get too long!

My Goals

I need to reboot this blog. This blog started as a place to keep family updated when we lived in Iowa. Then it morphed into a full fledged mommy blog but it's been a little quiet around here the last 2 years. I want to do something about that!

I've been inspired by http://moneysavingmom.com/ and the goal setting she does. This year I'm setting some realistic goals and hoping to blog about my goals. I want to challenge myself more and give people a window into our life more. Expect shorter posts but hopefully more frequent ones about the ins and outs of our household.

My first goal? Get this house mucho organized! Now that I feel better, I am challenging myself to find a place for everything in my house. My plan is to get things organized by the last day of January.

DAY 1: Organize my Pantry

Before

This pantry was costing me money! I kept forgetting I had things so I would buy another package of it. I have 6 packages of spaghetti...I think I'm good on pasta for a while :)

After

Snacks on bottom, breakfast/lunch on 2nd shelf, dinner food above, and extra baking/condiments on top. SOOO much better!! Goodbye unorganized pantry!



The House Story

I promised a house story so I need to deliver. I'll try to keep it short and keep to the main details! I just think it's pretty cool how it all worked out!!

Our dream has been to live out in the country. Both of us grew up on acreages/hobby farms so it is in our blood. We had such interesting criteria though so we really doubted that we would ever find what we were looking for!

Realtor.com quickly became my good friend over the last year as I searched for the "must haves" that we were looking for. At least 1 acre of land, a house that wasn't falling over (in at least decent shape but we weren't afraid of a fixer upper), and somewhat close to my husband's job and our church (we were hoping for no longer than a 20 minute drive). Our acre of land was the biggest "must have" that we wanted to wait for but we quickly found out how hard acreages were to come by!

Our first day home with Connor was chaos so we started getting serious about looking and trimmed back our small must have list. We decided to rule out acreages since they were so hard to find. That same week, our new home was put on the market.

We looked at 1-2 houses and had tentatively decided to build in a new development and wait another 5 years for land when I spotted this house on Realtor.com. When Connor was a week old, I went on my first outing to drive by this house. It.was.perfect. The land and proximity to town was seriously even better than what we were hoping for. It was 2.5 acres and only 3 miles out of town. We had always dreamed of having a ravine and woods in our backyard and this place had it all. It was above and beyond our "must have" list!

We scheduled the earliest possible showing and decided that if the house was even halfway decent, we would act on this house right away. To make a long story short, we acted on it right away and made an offer within the hour.

BUT, there was another offer the same day! The beginning of our long journey of buying and selling started that day as we eagerly waited to see if the sellers would accept our offer instead of the other offer. They accepted ours but we had to get our house sold ASAP since it was a popular house and any other offer would be entertained until we sold our house.

We had our offer accepted but they told us we needed to have our old house on the market the next day. Scrambling, we moved furniture, purged our basement that was filled to the brim with storage, and SOMEHOW got our house sell ready by the next day.

The next 7 weeks were SO stressful...we had a new baby, I started getting really sick at least once a week, we were all adjusting to life with 5 of us, and we tried to keep our house spotless through 17 home showings. It was hard and there were many times that we wanted to forget the acreage and stay put because it didn't seem worth it.

Our new house had multiple showings and no other offers. It is so cool how God worked it all. Our contract for the offer was going to be up on September 30th so we needed to sell our house before then. With no offers in sight and my sickness becoming increasingly more intense, I scheduled my surgery and gave up on the house. It was September 24th and I had gotten to the point that I didn't care about the house...I just wanted to get better and have something be "normal" once again.

The next day, we got an offer. Our one and only offer and we jumped on that offer!! The papers were signed by the night and we decided on a closing date-October 29th. Until this point, I hadn't let myself be excited about actually owning an acreage. It seemed so out of reach! Every week that our house didn't sell, I doubted that it would work out...and yet it did. I'm so grateful.

I still remember the first night we stayed here. The quietness, the stillness, the peace that we hadn't experienced in 3+ months. It WAS worth it but I don't know how we got through it at moments. I hope we don't have to move for a very long time :)

Having a bigger yard means needing some snow removal equipment :)

We have wildlife ALL the time now. This was the day before Thanksgiving so we were tempted to just grab one of these turkeys

Moving Day...this is Tristen and Aubrey's room. It's slowly starting to get organized!

Back of our house but you get an idea of what it looks like!

Our backyard

Our Front Yard on Halloween

 

There you have it!



2014 Recap

2015. A fresh start. Ahhh, I'm excited. Interesting that 2014 started with a day full of sickness and that happened to be the theme throughout the year. To finally get caught up, here's a quick rundown of our year:

January

Sharing with the world Baby #3 was coming!

Exploring new places to go during the cold Minnesota winter

 

February

So much snow time!! My kids loved building a huge snowman!

The start of movie nights!

March   

Finding out Baby #3 was a boy!

Waterpark fun since we decided to not drive to the closest beach (which is about 19 hours away) when we were getting sick of winter:)

 

April

Meeting our new niece, Adrah

30th Birthday!

Easter

 

May

Getting outside to the local parks

Picnics out with daddy

Spending time with grandparents

 

June

Water fun

Getting SO close to meeting Baby #3!

 Cousin Time at Reunions!

 

July

Aubrey turns 2!!

Connor was born!!

 

August

Connor meeting all his family

The start of craziness as we decided to put our house on the market to move into something bigger

Lots of traveling since we needed to be away from home so much during showings!

 

September

SOOOO many home showings and sickness for Erika. Spending most days at parks to give the kids something to do! (This picture shows the stress of September! :)

 October

Surgery, Trying to pack up our house, Moving to the Country!

 Halloween Superheroes

Enjoying the last few moments at our old house :)

 

November

Realizing how CRAZY it was to move with 3 little kids and a very sick wife but SOOO thankful for this piece of land we call ours now. Unpacking, decorating for Christmas, getting sick with kidney stones, celebrating Aaron's birthday....

December

Walking around a light display that has become an annual tradition

December was the light at the end of the tunnel as a new schedule change has dramatically changed our life for the better and allows us more family time. It was a very busy December but this week's new pace of life has been so worth it. It was also the light at the end of the tunnel with my sicknesses and all the moving details that needed to be worked out.

First Christmas as a family of 5 and in our new home!



*whew* What a year. I was definitely ready for this one to be done and I'm so excited about our 2015. My husband's job hours have changed in the last week and already it has been SO good. He was working overnight shifts and it was draining on us as a family. Now he works during the day and has more days/holidays/and weekends off. I don't ever want to take this schedule for granted (because we've come a LONG way to get a schedule like this!) and have learned a great deal this year about being content in any situation. Happy New Year!