Snapshots

I love series photos...here is a silly series of Halli

Sick

Luckily it's not me that is sick, knock on wood! Carson, Bentley, and now Halli have all been sick in the past two weeks. Hopefully the sick bug will stay away for a while again. Halli always gets the worst of it though. We just have the cold/cough being passed around, but Halli always gets a horrible sounding cough when she gets one. It's not croup, but it's close. Anyway, I think today was the worst of it (I hope today was the worst of it!). The poor girl just feels awful.
We are looking forward to a really warm week this coming week-we've got 80's in our forecast!!! I am excited to get outside and play some more!

Warm weather outings

We have had some warmer weather this week so we headed out to a couple different parks. We all really enjoyed being outside and having some fun! I am so ready for winter to be over!!! Let's hope we see lots of sun this spring, and all those scary tornadoes stay far away from here! Here are my 3 little cuties.Carson getting ready to swing. I love how blue the sky is!This is about as far as Halli got attempting to do the rings.Conquering the rings...well kinda. He didn't make it to the next one :)This is my new favorite photo of Bentley! I just love the shot!Love her goofy little smile.He doesn't know what's coming!

7 months

Our little man is 7 months old already! He is such a fun baby to have around. We love our baby vroom vroom.
Bentley has 1 tooth-the bottom left one (you can see it in this photo)He is sitting up on his own
He is eating all sorts of baby foods, and loves the fruit. I have to hide veggies by mixing them with fruit.At his six month Dr. appointment he was 29 inches and 18 pounds 10 ounces...so he is a big healthy baby.
He is a screamer!!! When he isn't happy he lets you KNOW.It seems like he is learning new things everyday. Just this week he started eating cheerios and gerber puffs. He is also getting close to being mobile. I know he'll be all over the place pretty soon!

Crafty

So I have been feeling that creative itch lately. I have been wanting to make it down to my craft room more than I have, but I did get down there and whip up this little lovely the other day (not to boy-the bib). I think it is my favorite bib I have made so far. The other side is red polka dots with a solid brown star.

For Valentines Day I wanted to surprise Carson and Halli with a few things so I set this up for them to wake up to Tuesday morning. I was most excited to make the Valentine cookie-which turned out amazing. Mrs. Fields has nothing on my Valentine cookie! I also made them pink heart pancakes for breakfast which they just loved.They were happy and excited to find goodies from us and both sets of grandparents the morning! Thanks to our great families for sending goodies!

Other exciting news for us-Bentley got his first tooth last Monday, after a week of crankiness, and he is sitting up on his own now! I'll be taking some 7 month photos in just a couple days so I'll have lots of cute shots to share.

My Soda-Can Stove (A Post by Ryan)

So since Christmas I have started collecting some emergency essential items and items that I can use for hiking and camping trips. I have joked that depending on how the economy is in the next little bit, I will just buy some land in the middle of nowhere and go "Off the Grid". Well, i'm not seriously considering that, but i have purchased a number things that i have wanted for a while. Since Christmas i have purchased an internal frame backpack, hiking stove, Leatherman, mummy bag, water filter, and few other little things. Also, I created a wish list on Amazon that is getting a little out of control.

During my search for some of these items i ran across a design for a hiking stove made of soda cans. I decided to make one of my own. Here it is:

Last night i finally got around to trying it out and it worked great! i was able to boil 2 cups of water with about 1 oz of denatured alcohol. There are a couple more designs i am planning on trying, so hopefully they will work just as well.

I'm pretty sure Tiffani thinks i'm nuts for getting into this kind of stuff, but it has been a fun little project. Hopefully i can continue to make a dent in my wish list so i can be all prepared for my next trip.

Happy Birthday to ME!

So this past Tuesday I turned 28 years old. It doesn't seem so old now, but I remember being a kid thinking 30 was super old. I wonder how my children view me being 28??? I'll have to ask and maybe record those answers on here. I'll have to do it tomorrow-that seems like a fun Sunday activity. Well for my birthday this year I got the best present from my wonderful husband. I got this...


And this to me equals happiness and freedom! What more could I want for my birthday??? We have been a one-car-family for 2 and a half years, and it is nice to have two cars again. I love being able to go somewhere if I need to, any time (except during nap time!) I want! We got the car a week ago, and I am enjoying it. Thanks for the AWESOME and amazing birthday gifts Ryan, I LOVE YOU! (On top of the car he also gave me a gift card to Panera :), a sweet water bottle, and some car fresheners. )

Confessions

I am the worst at keeping a journal. I think I finally figured out why though. So much time passes, and so many things happen that the task of trying to remember it all and find the time to then type it all out is overwhelming. I have decided this year to let the past be the past and start new with journal keeping. I've set myself a goal to write/type in my journal once a week. I want to set the same goal for blogging. I want to make a post at least once a week. And I'm going to just let the past be the past and move forward with blogging too. I want to be better and just making fun posts about the things we do, and not using it as an avenue to just report big items in our life. So here is to a new year or journal keeping and blogging! Wish me luck cause I'm gonna need it!

Poppin Wheelies

It has been a busy couple of months for us, and I want to be able to post about everything we have been doing. So this week will be a busy posting week. Instead of posting about the most recent things that have happened with us, I'm going to go back and post things from November first. So to start off I'll highlight Carson.
The day after Thanksgiving I went shopping-of COURSE! When I came home from shopping Carson said he had something he wanted to show me. So he and Ryan take me outside where he hops on his bike. The training wheels are off so I anticipate what is to come. I imagined Ryan would run along beside Carson as he wobbly pedals the bike. Much to my surprise Carson hops right on and takes off...no Ryan trailing alongside. I guess they started working on it together, and Carson didn't need Ryan for long. Carson isn't exactly popping wheelies yet, but he isn't far off. He is so happy about his new accomplishments, and asks every day to go for a bike ride. We have been meaning to do this for a long time, I think he really could have got the hang of it back in the summer but we were so busy with our new baby that we didn't do it then. Congratulations to Carson!

Mr. Bentley

Mr. B is FOUR months old as of yesterday. I know the last post was about him, but he is just so cute. I took some four month old photos yesterday, and here are my favorite two. We are so happy he is in our family. I promise I'll post about the rest of us soon!

Playtime

He was simply irresistible yesterday! I just want to eat those big red cheeks.

HELP!

It's been a rough couple of days with Bentley.  He does not sleep during the day-which, in case you didn't know, makes for a very cranky baby...uhhhhhh.  I want so bad for him to sleep.  He is tired, and will fall asleep fine but then he only sleeps for a half hour.  Every Single Time.  Does anyone have any suggestions out there?  I lay him down tired, he falls asleep, but then wakes up a half our later.  I have tried to just let him cry himself back to sleep, but that doesn't work.  I have also gone in and put him back to sleep by rocking him then lay him down and he wakes up 2 minutes later.  It just seems like some alarm goes off in his head and he won't go back to sleep.  He sleeps great at night-there is no problems at night, this is all just during the day.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
After 2 rough days in a row I am pretty tired tonight.  I had a meeting this evening, and when I came home the kids were all in bed.  Halli was the only one still awake, and I went in to say goodnight to her.  While I was in there she asked me to tickle her arm, so I said ok and did for a minute.  Then I said it was time for her to sleep.  So I gave her a hug, kissed her, said I love you, and went to walk away.  Then she reached out for another hug-which is normal-so I gave her another hug and she held me tight and said "I really do love you".  It was a good day after all.

Halloween

The 1, 2, 3's of our Halloween

1 Baby who was having nothing to do with being put in a costume

2 adorable kids walked around for 2 hours trick or treating

3 kids I saw with the same costume as Carson

4 pumpkins our family carved this year

5 ideas Halli has already given me of what she wants to be for Halloween next year

6 streets we walked to collect candy

7  pieces of candy left in our bowl when the trick-or-treating was over.  I bought the perfect amount!

8 :30 is the time we got home from trick-or-treating

9 times I thought about cooking/roasting our pumpkin seeds, but I never ended up actually doing it...bummer, I love eating them.

10 pounds of candy (at least) I had to start carrying both Carson and Halli's bags because they were too heavy for them...that is when you know it is definitely time to go home!

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!

Three Months Old!!

Sweet Site

I recently found an awesome website that give tips on sweet deals in stores and online. It is a site that I check a couple times a day now! Here is a link to the site-go check in out if you are into saving some big moolah! Thanks to this amazing girl I have purchased so many great deals. I bought a family members Christmas present just the other day thanks to some information posted (I'm not telling what it was or for whom because they read my blog and I don't want to give it away!).

Bentley's 1 month

Well time sure does fly by. Bentley is actually almost 6 weeks now. My sister took some really cute one month photos so I thought I would post about his 1 month information.length 23.5 (he's grown 2 inches!!!)
weight about 11 lbs (this is measured from me stepping on the scale with him...so it's approximate)He likes being swaddled to sleep
He doesn't like his binki much
He started smiling at us on his one month birthday
He is eating 4 ounces every 3-4 hours typically
He is letting us get a pretty good night's sleep. He sleeps about 4 hours at a time, wakes to eat, then goes right back to sleep.I feel like I am watching him grown and change before my eyes. With Carson and Halli I didnt' notice the change as much. I felt like I was looking at them all day, and I didn't notice how much they were growing and changing. With Bentley I literally feel like he changes as I am watching and looking at him. He has already grown so much! I feel like he is getting so big. I know he is still just a small baby, but he has changed so much in the past 5 weeks he has been with us.

Halli and Carson are really enjoying him almost as much as we are. They are such great helpers. They love to hold him and feed him. Just yesterday Carson held Bentley for about 45 minutes while I made dinner. He just held him and sang him songs-it was so sweet. Halli asks to help feed him almost every time I make him a bottle-which helps me out to be able to get things done. I feel so blessed to have such great kids! I love them all so much.