full heart

what a wonderful Christmas holiday it has been! how i love spending this wondrous time of the year with my very favoritest people....my family:) i am especially thankful for the opportunity to attend my new niece anne's baby blessing. how touched i was to see my big brother with his first little baby - and to hear the tender love and affection he has for his daughter, anne, as he blessed her. my heart was filled with feelings of appreciation for my wonderful family. little anne is named after our grandmother, anne louise cooper. i too am named after this amazing woman - anne louise is my middle name. i love my gran!! and i appreciate her for the love and kindness she has given me throughout my life. it was so great to be with my gran, papa, mom, dad, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunt, uncle, and nieces this past week. i love them all so very much and hope i do a good job of letting them know just how much they all mean to me! i will post pictures of our Christmas holiday as soon as i get them all uploaded!

2 for 1

Christmas gives our family 2 reasons to celebrate. first, we join in the celebration of our Savior's birth - the miracle of Christ's birth, the joy and peace of the season. second, we celebrate the birth of our second son, burton. burton was born on Christmas Day 6 years ago. how we loved our little blonde haired baby! and how burton continues to be a source of joy in our home today. never a dull moment with burton. he is so lively and rambunctious. burton gets so excited about everything and gives 100% to all that he does. he amazes me with his desire to learn and the excitement he has for school. every day he comes home from school full of things to tell me about what he did and what they are learning at school. burton never gives up and approaches life with a contagious attitude of fun. we love our burty-burt....and with that, i will end this post as paigey is demanding my attention:)

oh, one more thing - yesterday at Christmas dinner, my uncle bob asked burton if he felt any older now that he is 6. burton looked at him and said, "no, not really. but my back is sore because i am getting older."

girls girls girls

my older brother steve and his wife andrea just had their first baby early this morning - a little girl. they named her anne louise after our grandma. i too am named after my grandma - my middle name is anne louise. for this reason i feel like this new baby anne is a kindred spirit:) and i am excited to tell her that we are both named after the same wonderful woman when she is older. baby anne is the third girl born in to our family in just over a year - marion's grace was born last august (so she is almost 15 months old), our paige in april, and now anne today. i can just imagine these little girls - cousins! - in 15 or so years from now. and it makes me smile:) a lot.

with the birth of anne, i have found myself thinking back 6 and 1/2 months ago to the arrival of our little paige jacqueline. oh how happy i was to hold our new baby in my arms - our first little GIRL!!! i am so grateful to have a daughter to love and to nurture. i often find myself picturing the future as i look at her sleeping face lying in my arms - the girls' nights, the chick flicks, manicures and pedicures, talking about her latest crushes (GASP!! i hope she doesn't grow up too fast!!). as a leader in our church's young women's program, i am sometimes overwhelmed when i see and hear the testimonies of the girls i associate with and think of paige being their age, as strong and firm in the gospel as they are, with her light shining as brightly. i know it will because it already does! it is difficult to put in to words the love i have for my little girl.

how special and precious is my paigey. i only hope she loves me as much as i love her!!!

i feel humbled and blessed to be the mother to such a wonderful and adorable little girl - and to 3 compassionate, sensitive, kind, caring, and thoughtful young boys who have such a desire to do what is right and to follow the example of our Savior. my heart is so full of love for my children. i pray that i can deserve them and teach them as much as they teach me!! truly there is nothing that brings me more joy than being the wife of a noble man and the mother of amazing children.

i am so blessed.

dinner conversation

so, here is a clip of a very interesting conversation we had with evan at dinner tonight. it is actually me trying to get him to repeat what he originally said just a few minutes prior to my filming - it was so darn cute i wanted to try and catch it on video....and it ended up being even funnier for entirely different reasons! pay special attention around the 58-59 second mark.

you may need to turn it up:)

know it all

a conversation that evan and i have been having a lot lately goes something like this:

evan - did you know mom that.....fill in the blank.

me - well, evan, that isn't quite right.

evan - actually mom, i'm a scientist.

which has led me to believe that being a scientist means that evan knows everything and that he can claim that he knows everything. and he does....claim to, i mean.

for example, the other day our conversation went like this:

evan - mom i heard a stomp in your room and i think it was a monster.

me - monsters aren't real evan. don't worry, they are just pretend.

evan - actually mom, i am a scientist, remember? it was a monster.

(he actually does say the word actually...and i love it!)

maybe evan really does know everything. must be genetic.

halloween

i really enjoy halloween. i love helping my kids make their costumes. i grew up making costumes with my mom each year. she would ask us what we wanted to be and we would think of something and make it together. she was the master makeup applier and i find myself now taking on that role. and i love it!! especially since my boys have such great imaginations. for this year, jensen was a rainbow rabbit, burton was an iguana, and evan was an orca. jensen pretty much made his costume all by himself - even told me exactly what to do with his makeup. i managed to make pretty awesome costumes for burton and evan with some extra material i had from other projects. here they are:

my mom picked up this costume for paigey:

isn't she the cutest little pink bunny ever??

for a more detailed look at the boys' costumes and other fun halloween pictures, click here.

10 minutes

as i have just a few minutes to spare before putting the kids to bed, i thought i would sit and share just how blessed i feel to have such a wonderful family. we were able to travel to red deer last weekend for thanksgiving and had a great time at my mom and dad's house with my parents, siblings, and their families. one of my favorite quotes is by thomas jefferson:

"The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family."

truly, this is so! i always love going home and spending time with my family - visiting, playing games, laughing, watching movies, and just being together. and now that i am wife and mother, i can honestly say that nothing brings me more happiness than my amazing husband and our wonderful children.

how i love them all! so so much.

can't get enough of our pj

"A child fills a place in your heart that you never knew was empty."

author unknown.

is my heart ever full.

click here for more pictures of our beautiful baby girl.

another school year

so, another summer gone and a new school year has started. what a fun summer we had!!! jensen and burton have been in school for 2 weeks now and so far so good:) jensen, the seasoned veteran, is in grade 2 and burton is in grade one. 2 kids on school, 2 at home. it has been an adjustment having burton join his older brother in all day school. things are much quieter and calmer around the house - and if you know burton at all, you know just how much quieter and calmer i mean! as much as i love having my kids at home, i must say that a return to the daily routine of school has been quite enjoyable. i now know the mixed emotions of excitement and slight sadness of sending the kids off to school:)

i have enjoyed the time that i get to spend with evan during the day when jensen and burton are at school. the place evan occupies on the bottom of the totem pole of boys in our family disappears when his brothers are at school. there is no getting lost in the shuffle, no getting talked over, no being told what to do - as great as jensen and burton are to their little brother, being the littlest boy comes with it's own territory of being peed on, so to speak! i just hope evan enjoys spending all this time together as much as i do!

paige is now 4 and 1/2 months old and is still as beautiful as ever. she melts my heart!! i sure hope she isn't a bratty little girl as she grows up as i think i will have a hard time disciplining her if she is! she definitely has me wrapped around her little finger...and her dad too! i just wish she wasn't growing up so fast!

just thought i would post a picture of me just because it is a good one. not too often i get one of those! and evan took it:)

home and gone

just thought i would post a quick link to our tofino photos while i am home for a few days! we got home from our west coast trip last sunday. we were home for 2 days then we went down to spokane to visit brent's family. we are home until friday when the kids and i head to red deer for one last hoorah before school starts.

what a whirlwind august it has been. but i'm not complaining! i love summer!!!!


LOVE this picture of paige!

quick update from the west coast

what a GREAT time we have been having here at the pacific rim park on vancouver island - we are staying at a really awesome beach resort just south of a small town called tofino....one of my absolutely favorite places ON THE WHOLE EARTH!!!!! i love the sand, the smell, the cool ocean breeze, the sunny days, and even the rainy ones here. what a fabulous place. our boys have had so much fun poking sea anemones, touching starfish, finding crabs, collecting shells, jumping waves, climbing rocks, and just running amok on the beach. what a wonderful holiday it has been. after a major bump getting here (see the ps) we have been having a fantastic vacation....can you tell i

love, Love, LOVE it here!!!

pictures to follow when we get home and i can sort through and organize the hundreds of pictures i have taken!!

p.s. THE BUMP - because the drive from nanaimo (the ferry drop off) to tofino on the island is so windy and pretty, brent thought it would be really fun to bring his motorbike on a trailer behind the van and unload and ride it to tofino after we took the ferry from vancouver to the island. SO, we drove off the ferry together in the van and then unloaded brent and his bike later in port alberni, on the way to tofino. after unloading his bike, the kids and i drove off in the van, leaving brent to put on his helmet, etc. and follow shortly behind us. after about half an hour, brent hadn't caught up to us yet and i started to wonder in the back of my mind how far behind he might have been. then my cell phone started to ring. because there was intermittent reception on the drive, i would answer my phone and then lose the signal and the call would be lost. this happened several times. finally, i got a text form an unknown number saying this:

"hello. please turn around. i am with your husband. he was in an accident. please turn around. he's ok."

talk about my heart stopping. immediately i started looking for a place to turn around while thinking, "is brent really ok? what does ok mean? is somebody telling me that just so i don't freak out while i am driving????" and other similar thoughts. my brother, rob, was in the car with me and he kept trying to text the stranger back to ask him where he was and what was going on. but, as before mentioned, bad cell phone service!! anyways, after turning around and driving for about 15 minutes, i finally come around the corner and see backed up traffic and several emergency vehicles with lights flashing, etc. up ahead. immediately i start thinking the worst. i pulled the car over, left the kids with rob, and started running on the shoulder up the road. of course, the faster i ran, the more panicked i got. the more panicked i felt, the faster i ran. i could see my mom and dad, brother and his wife, and my uncle standing on the side of the road. when i was finally within hearing distance, i just yelled to my mom and she assured me the brent was ok.

relief.

as i got closer, brent came into view. he was sitting up on the road with paramedics around him. he saw me and waved. again, relief. one of the paramedics then came over and reassured me that brent was ok - banged and bruised but ok.

so, here is what happened. according to several witnesses and from what brent can recall, he came around the corner on his motorbike and saw a young woman standing on the side of the road. there were also a couple of cars stopped in the turning lane to turn left, off of the highway. the girl looked both ways, apparently looked right at brent (brent says it looked like she looked right at him), and then decided to run across the road, right in to brent's way. he immediately laid down his bike to try and avoid the girl. he doesn't really know what happened next - whether he or the bike hit the girl - he just remembers tumbling along the pavement and then coming to a stop. he got up right away to see if the girl was ok. apparently this young woman had just been dropped off by someone after hitch hiking to this point. the man who dropped her off saw the accident and came to help right away. next on the scene was my uncle, brother, and sister in law and then my mom and dad. brent started seeing stars and had to sit down too. after checking the girl out and talking to the man who dropped her off, turns out the girl

was drunk or high or both.

stupid girl.....i can say that because she is fine. she hurt her leg and banged her head on the road but we were told she would be just fine.

lucky for us, brent is fine too. he gouged a big chunk out of the middle knuckle of his ring finger on his left hand, pretty much right to the bone. i saw it, gross!! he had some pretty good road rash on his ribs, hip, and knee, and was bruised in other places.

how grateful i am that he is ok!! i had a pretty good moment of "what if!!!???" after it happened. how blessed i feel that brent is ok - that he wasn't more seriously hurt as a result of someone else's poor decisions. how blessed i feel that our prayers for safe travel were answered.

how i love my brent!!!

a moment of bragging

sorry everyone - i can't help myself! look. at. this. baby.

of course i think she is the most beautiful baby i have ever seen. of course i think her blue eyes are fabulous. of course i think she has the cutest little grin. of course i think her hair is fantastic.

of course i think -

she. is. perfect.

and she is mine! i adore her! i can't get enough of her! she is my baby girl! my beautiful, wonderful, adorable, perfect baby girl.

i love my paige. my daughter.

summer so far

we spent the first week of our summer holidays down in montana, white water rafting for the lee family reunion. the lee's are brent's mom's family. needless to say, we had a great time!! HOT weather, TONS of kids running around, camp fires, games, visiting, and smores - we love camping!!

just a few thoughts - we spent both canada day and independence day in montana, rafting with family. how blessed i feel to live in such a beautiful and wonderful country as canada - to enjoy so many freedoms and have a great quality of life. i feel grateful that my kids can grow up in such a great country, full of boundless opportunity! how grateful i am for two great countries - and for the family i have in both.

hooray for canada and the usa!!

click here for the latest pictures!

ewwwww - be warned

so this our latest family adventure - or mishap rather.


this is a picture of burton's mashed finger. 10 days ago, we were hiking along a little river and throwing rocks in to it. so of course burton had to pick up the biggest, heaviest rock possible to try and make the biggest splash. but the rock didn't quite make it in to the water. burton dropped it and it fell....right....on....his....finger. blood everywhere. big gash. burton screaming. not fun.

burton basically "degloved" the tip of his finger - meaning that the cut was big enough and deep enough that the skin around the tip of his finger almost came off. gross. in the brief glimpse that i had of burton's finger, i thought the cut was between the bottom of his fingernail and his first knuckle. as you can see from the picture, the cut is actually right through the nail bed - it just looked like it was by his first knuckle because his skin, along with his fingernail, had been pulled that far forward by the weight of the rock.

poor burty! it has been quite traumatic for him! surgery to fix the whole thing, needles, stitches, bandage changing, doctor visits.......not fun as a parent to have to hold burton in my arms as he is screaming for the doctor to stop because he needs a "break."
the stitches came out today. it should heal just fine - maybe be a bit deformed but that's fine with burton. as long as he doesn't have to have anymore stitches or anything that hurts, he is happy.

i love you burton! you are so brave!

picture this

so, after the boys were done soccer last night, we stopped to get them slurpees on our way to cheer on brent in the last bit of his men's league soccer game. it was a beautiful night and the boys were hot so they took off their shirts. as we were sitting on the blanket, watching brent play soccer, and drinking our slurpees, evan says, "look at me mom." he had 2 of the lids from the slurpees - you know the big, bulbous ones - held up to his chest. he smiled and said,

"now i can feed the baby too."

picture it and tell me you're not laughing!

the passage of time

lots of things have happened lately that have had me thinking about time passing. here they are, in no particular order:

-i graduated from high school 10 years ago.

-my dad just celebrated his 50th birthday.

-my youngest siblings are graduating from high school and turning 18 this month.

-my youngest sister graduated from college in may.

-my older brother graduated from med school last week.

-brent has been a dentist for a full year. it has been 1 year since we moved to cranbrook.

-brent and i are celebrating our 9th anniversary in a few weeks.

-i gave birth to my 4th child 6 weeks ago.

wow - life happens!

do you ever look at your life and think, "is this really my life?" i have found myself doing that lately - do i really have a 7 year old? am i really old enough to have 4 kids? am i really married to a real dentist and live in my own house, one that we have bought and aren't renting?

are these rugrats really mine?

is this handsome man really my wonderful husband??

how did i luck out so much to have such wonderful blessings in my life?

whatever the reason, and even if it means i am getting older, how glad i am to have the life that i have!

click here for our latest pictures:)

footprints on my heart

Two little feet, ten little toes,

Leave their impressions today.

Soon they will wear two little shoes,

And be running and jumping at play.

Two little feet, too little time,

Before they are walking to school,

Kicking a rock, or skipping a rope,

Wading a puddle or jumping a pool.

Two little feet, One little child,

Will soon go their own way,

But footprints in my mind recall,

They stood here yesterday.

*ammendment to original post - i did NOT write this! the author is "unknown." if only i were that clever...you all should know better:)

3 week update

our little paige is 3 weeks old today! seems like she has been here forever already. she is such a little sweetheart and has joined our family effortlessly:) the boys adore her and are proving to be such great helpers - which i knew they would!

paige is an angel baby...truly:)

just look at her!

really - we are so in love with our baby girl!

besides doing the baby thing, we have travelled to red deer for rob and andrew's high school graduation, been visited by marion and her grace for a week (good times even though the weather was crappy!!!) and had the fam come out to cranbrook for may long when we blessed paige in church. we have had a fun but BUSY couple of weeks. it has been great to see most of our family and introduce our sweetie paige to them.

now we have a few weeks of relative quiet and normalcy before the fun and crazy summer holidays begin! for a look at what we have been doing, click on this link.

TTFN!

neglectful mother

evan celebrated his birthday a week ago - april 25th - and i didn't even put up a post! lest i be accused of favoring my other children over evan, here is his birthday post:)

i say it with all our kids and i will say it again - where does the time go?? i remember like yesterday when evan was born. our biggest baby with all that dark hair! our 3rd little boy. what a sweet and adorable little baby he was - and what a sweet and adorable little boy he is! evan is still so cute and cuddly. he never forgets to tell me how beautiful i am and what a good mom i am - i hope he never outgrows those feelings:) - even when i'm not! he loves his older brothers and wants to be big just like them. we can't tell evan he isn't able to do something - he is too stubborn and independent to listen.

we love our evan!!

hooray for girls!

after 39 weeks and 5 days, our little girl is here!! born 2 days early (yippee!!), we welcomed paige jacqueline in to our family on april 30th at 2:57........in the afternoon! yes, one of our children arrived at a reasonable hour. i was able to recover from having a baby (which was fast and furious - can't believe i did that again!) before bed time and actually slept the night she was born. poor burton is still the odd one out - paige seems to favor jensen and evan in the looks department (atleast at this stage) - and is our only child that doesn't have an april birthday. funny how that worked out! burton was quick to remind me when i pointed this out that he was the only one born on christmas day which makes him extra special.

we are all enamored with little paige (paigey-face as evan has decided to call her) already and are so very thankful that our little girl made it safe and sound in to our home. we love her to pieces already!!

another evanism

i was just tucking the boys in, saying goodnight, giving kisses, letting them know how much i love them. after helping evan say his prayers, i gave him a hug and a kiss and told him what a good boy he is.

he smiled, looked at me and said, "thanks mom. and you're a good mommy too."

thanks evan - you just made my day

just so i can show off my handsome and adorable boys, click here.

am i really a bad mom??

that question has been running through my mind a lot in the last few days. here are my reasons why:
1. evan and jensen both look like they have been beat up. evan started it with a huge fall at a preschool drop in gym time at jensen and burton's school. he fell in to the edge of a bench in the gym and has got a black eye and skinned nose. jensen followed later that day with a head first tumble down the 4 cement stairs in our garage. yes, i said head first...or more accurately face first. he now has a huge goose egg on his forehead and several large scrapes on the side of his face. isn't the standard excuse for physical abuse, "i fell down the stairs?????" i hope jensen's teacher believed him when he told her what happened the next day!
2. yesterday we rode bikes to the park after school to play. well, the kids rode their bikes while i struggled to keep up, waddling as fast as i could. jensen and burton were well ahead of evan and i when burton had a huge wipe out on his bike. jensen, who was right behind him, proceeded to drive over burton's arm with his bike as he could not stop in time. a very kind young man, walking by, stopped to see if burton was ok and stayed with him until i made it down the hill with evan. i'm hoping he noticed my very large pregnant belly (really, how could he not??) and didn't think i wasn't running to my child's aid for some unkind and uncaring reason!!
3. also yesterday, i was taking burton and evan to the library to story time...what good moms do, right? we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things for supper on the way. because i only needed 2 or 3 things and i am very hugely pregnant, taking the effort to unload the kids out of the car and in to a cart just for a few items required much too much energy. SO, i "smartly" told burton and evan to stay in their seatbelts and i woul be super quick. after being in the store for maybe 4 or 5 minutes, i was on my way to get the last thing i needed and then pay when i heard over the PA system the following announcement:

"excuse me shoppers. there is a van in the parking lot with 2 small children in it and the alarm is going off. could you please go take care of your children."

as i made my way to the parking lot, i noticed a lady looking in the front window of my van. as i approached, she turned my way. i smiled, trying to be friendly. she looked at me without smiling and said, "your children are getting panicky in there," rolled her eyes and walked away. as the smile disappeared from my face, all i could think of was "well i would be getting panicky too if i saw you looking in at me!!" and i'm sure she was thinking, "and she's having another one??" i opened the door and evan said, "mom, i couldn't find you!" burton just giggled, thinking it was funny.

does anyone else have days or weeks like this?? hurt kids, errors in judgement, simple mistakes that all come crashing down, making me want to say that i really am a good mom...really!

i just hope our little girl doesn't change her mind about joining our family in the next 3 weeks:)

happy happy birthday

happy birthday jensen! yesterday was jensen's 7th birthday. wow - 7! he is growing up....which means i am getting older too!!!

jensen is such a joy in our family. he is kind and thoughtful and sensitive to others. his imagination has impressed brent and i since he was just little. he is always thinking and planning and coming up with something. jensen is learning so much at school and loves to read! he still really loves butterflies and all animals and still wants to be a zookeeper when he grows up. we had a rainforest themed birthday party this year and jensen helped decorate his rainforest butterfly cake.

jensen is growing up way too fast! it is exciting to see but also a bit sad:) we love our not so little boy so much!!!

smarty pants

evan and i were at the doctor's office yesterday. i had to go around the corner to get weighed (oh joy!) and evan stayed in the waiting room. when i came back in the room, evan said, "hi mom." i replied, "hi evan." he again said hi and so did i.

back and forth a few more times with evan getting increasingly irritated with my copying him. finally evan said to me, "mom, you're annoying me." clear as a bell. there was no mistaking his choice of words.

i laughed, of course. then i asked him if he even knew what that meant.

he said, "that means you need to stop it."

i barely suppressed my laughter this time as he was quite serious. yes, my almost 3 year old does know exactly what "annoying" means.

smarty pants.

home sweet home

brent and i just got home today from a 4 day stay in vancouver. brent was attending a dental convention there and i went along for the ride. we had a great time - not too long of a trip but long enough to relax, decompress, rejuvenate, and revive ourselves without our boys. it was fun to see some of the "old gang" from saskatoon - christy, sharon, jacquelyn and heidi - and do some girl stuff. LOTS of walking around and shopping, chatting, and even hitting the spa. did you know you can get a massage in your third trimester of pregnancy!!?? what a revelation!!!!!!! and how heavenly it was:) i really enjoyed all the girl time and being with such great friends. i didn't even miss my boys....too much:) needless to say it was good to see them this morning and give them all big hugs.

a BIG thanks to my brother, steve, who did a fabulous job of holding down the fort and entertaining 3 energetic boys for the days we were gone. burton's new favorite thing to say is, "steve rocks! steve rules! steve rocks! steve rules......" you get the picture. i am grateful my boys love their uncle steve as much as i do:)

evan just came out of his room, saw me, and came running with his arms open and a big smile on his face. he is supposed to be asleep but how can i resist when he is so adorable!!?? i guess he will be hanging out with brent and i for a bit:)

could you resist this?

appreciated

so, burton has been sick with a cold the last few days and has stayed home from school. this morning jensen and evan started coughing. i told them that we would all probably get burton's cold because we all live together and share germs. then jensen asked what would happen if he got sick. i said that he would have to stay home from school. then burton asked what would happen if dad got sick. i said that he would have to stay home from work. and then jensen said,

"what about you mom? what happens if you get sick?"

burton's reply was quick and to the point, "nothing. cause you don't do anything mom."

nice:)

gratitude

this picture is of me with my baby jensen. he is about 2 1/2 months old and i am 21. it is one of my most favorite pictures.


i feel so blessed to be a mother - to have the ability to bear and give birth to children. i love feeling this little girl move around inside me. i wonder what she will look like. i wonder what she will be like. i can hardly wait to meet her! to hold her for the first time. to see her look up at me with her newborn eyes, seeing everything for the first time. to have her precious spirit join our family.





i am humbled by the trust my Father in Heaven has placed in me to watch over His special children - to call them my own and love them. jensen, burton, and evan bring me so much joy. at times i feel like my cup is overflowing with love for my little boys.





i am excited to be having a girl. i am thrilled to be having a girl! i hope that i can be the kind of mom to her that my mom was, and is, to me - that she will look to me for guidance and reassurance and comfort - that we will be friends as she grows up.





i am having a girl. i will have a daughter.





i can't wait to meet her.

Christmas Pictures

here are the links to the before mentioned Christmas pictures - just click here and here. our computer crashed and had to go in for repairs for a few days.

just wanted to shout out (oh, look at hip i am!) a big thank you to our families! we had such a great time seeing everyone (well, almost everyone!) over the holidays. thanks for the beds, the food, and putting up with 5 extra people.

we love you all!!

back in the new year

so, we are back from our Christmas adventures. we were able to spend quality time with both families this holiday which was very fun and rewarding. after spending Christmas in spokane (and almost getting snowed in! they had crazy snow there and it is still coming!!!), we traveled to the farm in red deer to spend new year's with my family. a few high lights:
-rollerskating in spokane (jensen's new fave thing to do)
-bowling in spokane and red deer
-making a snow cave in spokane
-playing lots of games and building puzzles
-sledding, of course
-sitting by the fire, visiting
-reliving old memories and making new ones
-eating all the good holiday treats
-gaining a few extra pounds, i am sure (but it's all baby, right!?)
i will post some holiday pictures in the next few days. i have been "suffering" with the cold the kids had over the holidays but thought i better sign in for any who may be reading this blog and wanting to know if we are still alive and well:).

happy new year everyone!