TGIF!

It has been a long, colddddd, week and I am so thankful it is Friday! We don't have a super packed weekend which is great. Tonight we are going to go watch Fireproof (a movie) at church (provided our sitter still wants to come over (Grandma) who is, along with the rest of us, sick with colds.) It is supposed to be a great movie about marriage. And it's free! One of my friends from college has also been going to LifeHouse and she and her Mom are going to go too.

I guess it's supposed to be warming up today (going to 35, and 41 tomorrow!) but I am not feeling it as I sit here with my coffee! (Selfless Mother that I am I have the space heater oscillating where the kids are playing, and not near the computer.)

Ryan is becoming a toddler, it's official! He is learning where things go. I put his mittens on (why I even do this, I don't know. I feel like a better Mother if I at least try. That way when an elderly woman stops me and chastizes me for the baby not having mittens on I can tell her it was his choice.) Anyways, he takes them off with his teeth and puts them back into the designated mitten/hat draw in the coat closet. Yesterday he brought Alex her coat and her princess tiara and I just saw him take Alex's Nutrigrain bar wrapper and put it into the trash. He now has 12 teeth and is working on the cuspids (which are by far the worst ones in my experience.) I thought Alex teethed quickly (she did) but Ryan has surpassed that. The 3 babies I know that are around his age only have 2 teeth on the bottom! After these cuspids hopefully we will have a break and then only have the 2 yr molars. YEAH BABY!

Alex got Candy-Land and another game called LadyBugs for Christmas so we have been playing a lot of games, it is a ton of fun! She is very good and them and of course usually beats us. She is starting to get back into wanting to color/draw/trace letters/do art at the kitchen table instead of playing with toys. (This website has a ton of tracing activities even a section where you can print out a page with their name to trace. http://www.printactivities.com/Tracing.html)

We are in the 2nd semester of MOPS which is going great! (I am the MOPS Hospitality person.) Last week we learned Self Defense from a local teacher which was a lot of fun! I will serve on the MOPS Steering Team next year in a different position. It will be nice to switch it up and not have to worry about the kitchen/clean up so much! Another leader and I are in the midst of planning a Valentines Dinner Party and I have a luncheon I have to start planning as well!

Nik has been working his tail off. After Christmas he thankfully got a nice break from both jobs and was home for quite a while, but is back at it full force! He's driving an in town route this week, which is a nice change I think (the route he has driven since starting is rural.) It's a hard job...especially in the cold, but Nik has always been a very hard worker.

So there is an update from us! We are all ready for nice spring weather. As you all know it has been a long haul for us illness-wise. Cold after cold and antibiotics for the kids when the colds have not gone away. With this one the kids were nice enough to bring the germs home, apparently not really *get* the cold (oh my, do you think they finally have built up some resistance???) but Nik, my Mom and I all have it!

Prayer...

"And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."
James 5:15-16 (NIV)


Lord, watch with us over your child Alex, and grant that she may be restored to that perfect health which it is yours alone to give. Only You know what is going on inside her body, and only through you may she be healed. Please help her body to fight this and guide us as her parents and also her doctor to know what she needs at this time. Thank you for your continued protection and that the illnesses have not gotten serious. I cast my anxieties and trust that you are in control. Amen.

What is this world coming to...

Last night driving home from my parents I was listening to Hits 106. (Local radio station here.) A lot of times they will have this thing where you can call in to say Goodnight over the radio to someone. Well last night they had something where you could call in to trash someone! People were calling in saying "I'm so and so from City, State and I want to trash..." sounded like the majority of them were teenage girls trashing other teenage girls (you know how that can be in middle and high school.) Why in the world do they need to do this. There is already enough hate in the world people! I can't imagine sitting at home listening to the radio as a teenager and then hearing someone talk about me on it. :( This is why we listen to K-LOVE or country at home!

In other news, Christmas was great and I will eventually post photos! Nik is still home this week on vacation and we have had a really nice family week going to the Children's Museum, playing Candyland and Ladybug (our first boardgames and we are finding it a great family activity!) Ryan is getting a lot of teeth right so the nights have been rough.

Yesterday at MOPS we had a lesson in self defense from a local instructor, so I now have in my arsenal a number of small things I could do if I ever found myself in a situation like that. We will hope that never happens! If it does I'll probably just break their collar bone, since I can do that now. ;) Oh oh oh! I made homemade dinner rolls for the first time this week, they were so, so, so good. I was just saying how anything with yeast in it is just a big disaster for me but these turned out so well. No more Pillsbury Refrigerated Cans for this Mama!

Ryan's First Words!

I know, sorry, I don't have any video but I'm going to try to use our new camera to take some. Anyways---Ryan gets told "No" and "Don't" a lot and yesterday when I told him "Don't!" because he was taking his mittens off *again* while we were running errands and he responded "don't!" and laughed at me! At first it didn't occur to me what he was doing, but he kept saying it I then I realized what he was doing. Then today I was saying "No!" (I think this was directed at Alex though) and he again starts saying "nah!" "nah!" and laughing! So we made it a little game and he was just laughing his head off. Now, I don't just walk around telling my kids No and Don't all the time, but he has learned these two!

My sister is coming over and we are going to bake Peanut Butter Blossoms with the kids. It is her birthday today! Tomorrow we are headed to both of my Grandparents' homes and then Christmas morning after the kids open gifts we will go to North Platte and come home late that night. Unfortunately Nik probably won't be with us much of Christmas Eve night which is a bummer because it's definately my favorite night and my most-loved tradition of going to Grandma's. He should arrive right in time to help us haul gifts to the car though-haha.

I do have some pictures to post, Alex and I made a gingerbread house last week, it turned out great and it was so easy to do. (Kit by Wilton sold at Wal-mart for $10.)



We opened gifts at my Parent's house on Sunday and I forgot my camera, but here is one with some of the gifts-Ryan got a plush chair to match Alex's (which she also got for her 2nd Christmas) and they both got these awesome, soft blankets that light-up.

Merry Christmas to everyone and a Happy New Year! (We are hoping it is a HEALTHY New Year...Alex is now on round 3 of antibiotics for bronchitis again. We just can't keep that girl healthy this winter!)

Playing in the snow

in the house! I took a great tip from Wendy @ TheGwennap4 (a MOPS friend of mine) and brought some snow in to play. Alex loved it, and thought the texture and sparkle to the snow was so fascinating. All Ryan wanted to do was shove it in his mouth! This made a minimal mess and kept Alex busy for about 1/2 hour (so what if 10 of those minutes were spent feeding it to Ryan while I was tweezing my eyebrows?)

Dang it's COLD out!!!

Finally freezing here in good ol Nebraska!I wonder if Nik is freezing yet. I feel bad for him having to be in and out of the truck in this frigid cold weather!

The kids have colds, yet again...starting to think this is just normal for us! It seems as though everyone has been having this type of winter though, so I am trying to not let it get me down so much.

I can NOT believe Christmas is next week and I am definitely not ready. The kids' gifts have been slowly drifting in from UPS and I still have some people to buy for. Unfortunately Christmas cards are just not going to happen this year. Maybe I will do New Years Cards! Well Alex just pulled out a puzzle and that's no good with Ryan crawlingwalking around so I must go interfere!

Happy Birthday sweet boy!

Wanted to make this a separate post for my baby boy!

We always knew that we wanted our kiddos to be close in age and we didn't waste much time! I was SOOO happy when I got that positive pregnancy test. I was ready to give Alex a sibling and I was so ready to cuddle a sweet little newborn again. Throughout my pregnancy we asked Alex if it was a boy or a girl and she always said "boy!" Myself, I just knew it was a boy just like I knew Alex was a girl. They say it's so much easier the 2nd time around, and it really really is. (Despite the fact that you have a toddler AND a newborn, it's still easier!) Ryan is a TRUE BOY! Anybody that has been around him can attest to that fact, he is constantly going somewhere, trying to escape, getting hurt, climbing onto things and pushing things around. I was just thinking this morning, we never used our pack n play with Alex because we never needed to contain her, but I still can't take it down because I have to have a cage for Ryan! (Only kidding of course!) He is such a cuddler and is now giving us "loves" on command and of course still nursing. I fell in love with this sweet little boy the moment I laid my eyes on him and he is my BABY! I love his strong will and desire to find out how things work or where I hid the remote!