Random Facts

I hate onions. I never cook with them. If a recipe calls for onions, I skip that ingredient. But, I like Burger King onion rings.

My toenails are always painted. Not always perfect, but always painted.

Haylee loves to eat cereal without milk. She would eat it breakfast, lunch and dinner if I let her.

Josh snores.....really loud. Sometimes I can hear him from downstairs.

Haylee has been to Disneyland 3 times. This year will make 4. I grew up going to Disneyland often and never get sick of it.

Jackson has a "baby" he sucks on like a pacifier until he falls asleep. Is current babies are a monkey and a frog.

Natalee only drinks plain milk or water. Occasionally she has V8 juice, but rarely.

Haylee's favorite drink is chocolate milk. She also drinks juice and water, but we never give the kids soda.

Haylee sleeps about 11 hours at night. She doesn't take a nap, hasn't for over a year.

Natalee sleeps about 11 1/2- 12 hours. She takes 1 nap a day, usually 2-3 hours.

And that's about all the random facts I can come up with. I am at a loss for blog topics these days. We've been spending time at the park and celebrated 2 birthdays this past weekend and that is about it. I did complete my blog makeover which I think turned out nice. I love that picture of my girls. It is so hard to get a picture of both of them and I think it turned out perfect.

We leave for Vegas very soon. I booked the hotel last night. Yippee for a vacation!

January

How the heck is it already the 23rd of January? I think I've only posted like 4 times this month...oops! There hasn't been much going on around here. Just me and the girls chilling at home all day every day. We seem to have a little "schedule" that works well for us so it's not too bad. My favorite time of the day is right after the girls wake up and we all snuggle in my bed and watch cartoons. Yes, even Natalee snuggles with us and holds still! It's wonderful.

We started the month out with sickness. Josh was sick and then he passed it to Natalee and I got it too. No fun. Luckily it passed rather quickly and little Haylee girl stayed healthy.

I signed Haylee up for soccer this spring. It was only $30 and she'll get a shirt, soccer ball, team photo and a trophy. She has one practice a week and a game every Saturday for 6 weeks. She is excited and so are we.

Natalee is still getting into everything and spends some time in timeout. She is getting better in some areas, yet remains the same in others. She still loves to climb on Daddy's desk and now even tries to scale the kitchen cabinets. She's a nut.

 

We took the girls to the park a couple days last week and they had fun running around and going down the slides. Well Natalee ran around and Haylee went down the slides I should say. It scares me when Natalee plays on the equipment because I can see her falling off at the open places and getting hurt.

Natalee's hair is so curly, I love it. She has a head full of ringlets when she gets out of the bath. I have been trying to decide whether I want to continue cutting bangs for her or let them grow out. I hate her little cowlick. Poor girl.

Haylee's hair grows so fast! I got it cut before she started school in August and it's already down to her butt again. 

My hair is still falling out. It is so thin these days, makes me sad.

I am officially addicted to Pinterest. Well searching the site itself anyways, I haven't "pinned" anything from misc. sites yet. I tried my first recipe from Pinterest last night, the buffalo chicken ring. It turned out pretty good but next time I'm gonna make a few changes to make it even better!

I've started brainstorming for the girls birthdays. Haylee wants a Hello Kitty party and I'm thinking Minnie for Natalee since she loves her "mimi". She loves "melmo" too though so maybe Elmo.

Josh has been doing events at Lifetime Fitness on the weekends and hired his first "successful" salesman recently.

There are 2 movies coming out that I just can't wait to see. The first one is "The Vow" with Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum. I love Rachel McAdams and Channing was great in Dear John. The other movie is the Nicholas Sparks movie "The Lucky One" with Zac Efron. Although I'm a Nicholas Sparks fan, I was never a Zac Efron fan until I say the trailer for this movie. Enough said.

We bought Turbo Tax this weekend and have received almost all of our documents needed to start taxes. Let the stress for Shelley begin! The result is very well worth it as long as we get back around what we got last year. I have to do all of Josh's business stuff this year so that should be fun :/

I've been able to spend time on my favorite hobby, photography, this month. I took cheer pictures for my niece Danielle and also took pictures of her and her boyfriend Aj before they went to Winter Formal. Brings back memories of when I was her age and went to the school dances. I can't believe it's been 11 years. I'm getting old.

Speaking of old, Josh will be 30 this year. He turns 30 the day we celebrate our 9th Anniversary. Yep, we got married on his Birthday. This year he will be out of town for both so I guess I'm celebrating my Anniversary alone. Boo hoo.

I'm trying to figure out our vacations for the year. We are definitely making a trip to Las Vegas, taking the girls to Disneyland and then Josh and I are taking a weekend trip somewhere without the girlies. Just trying to figure out when to do it all. Oh, and I think my Mom and I are taking a trip to Six Flags this year too. We love roller coasters! So let the vacation planning begin!

I've been designing a new layout for my blog, just need to tie up some loose ends and get it all switched out.

My other niece Samantha turns 18 this week. That is just crazy. We had dinner at Serrano's this past weekend and they sang Happy Birthday to her and brought her out fried ice cream. How time flies.

I guess that about sums up what we have been up to this month. I'm hoping it warms up just a tad so I can take the girls to the zoo soon. Time for some exercise.

Speaking of exercise, still haven't started 30 day shred again. In fact, I've just about bombed all of my NY resolutions. I don't know why I even bother making any. I've been doing great making dinner more often and eating out less. That's a plus!

I have a sleeping turtle next to me. Charlotte loves her turtle time but it also wears her out. She is getting big. We love her!

And I'm done :)

Danielle & AJ

I was honored to take Danielle's cheer pictures this year. Even though it ended up being a rainy day things turned out perfect! These were my 7 favorite!

And while I was at it, I snapped some pictures of her and her boyfriend.

Natalee's Latest "Talents"

This is what it's come down to.

Latches on the doors.

Now if only I could figure out how to keep her off Josh's desk......

13 years

How can it be that 13 years have passed without my Dad in my life?

His absence has been felt for sure. The hardest times for me have been when he wasn't there when I graduated, he wasn't there to walk me down the aisle and he wasn't there to hold my sweet little girls when they were born. The most important times in my life. I know he would have been there given the choice but He obviously had other plans for my Dad.

I miss him more than words can express. I get through hard times like today just remembering all the fun times I had with him and all of the funny memories I have. The times we went camping, our trips to Disneyland and our fun summers in Iowa fishing in the creek when I caught my 10 lb flathead and he jumped in the creek with a net to make sure it didn't get away. The time he was picking apples from the apple tree and fell off the latter, riding his lawn mower pass the window, shopping at Peaceful Fool, his cats Willy & Wally, letting off awesome real fireworks back at the point, our numerous parties with our friends, the gummy worm on the fridge, the "Coke" on the table, eating at Dairy Mart, the pig placemats from Millie's, riding bikes on the trail in Washington, detassling corn as a summer job, Adventureland, riding quads at my Uncle's house, playing in the snow and spending our last Christmas with him just a couple weeks before he died. I remember the excitement of seeing him at the airport waiting for us and the sadness and tears of saying goodbye when it was time to go back home.

I am thankful for the 15 1/2 years I had my Dad in my life but I wish I had 60 more. At least I have the pictures and memories and the promise of seeing him again someday.

New Years Resolutions

My goals for the New Year are as follows-

-Continuing to budget. I did so much better last year than ever before so I'm going to continue to make improvements this year and try to cut back as much as possible.

-I signed up to receive emails from Productive Parenting with activities to do with the girls each day. I wanna start doing more with them and getting out of this house. It drives us all nuts to be here all day every day.

-Our worse habit is eating out. I made a monthly dinner menu and I'm gonna try my hardest to make dinner almost every night. So far so good!

-Exercise. It is now obvious this baby fat isn't coming off on it's own. I'm starting 30 Day Shred as soon as I get over this cold, and I'm gonna make some changes in my diet.

Sadly our new year has started out with sickness. Josh woke up sick on the 1st and then passed it on to me and Natalee. I'm sure Haylee will be next. I hate being sick.