Looking back on the year...

At the beginning of 2011 I had no idea where we would be at the end of this year, and now that we are here I can hardly believe how much has changed. We have had many ups and downs, and while it would be easy to focus on the downs, I want to remember the ups from this year:

-We survived one of Syracuse's snowiest winters on record! Syracuse winters are dark and a really hard time of year, but we came through it in one piece and now we have bragging rights! :)

-Greg was accepted for an internship with the DIA in Washington, DC! This internship eventually turned into a full time job that has been a huge blessing for our family. Greg works so hard at what he does, and it is so wonderful to see him enjoying what he does.

-We have had the chance to explore the sights that DC has to offer, and I find myself in awe of this area. There is so much history here! While there are many things that I do not prefer about this area, the age and history of this place fascinates me.

-We have made some great friends since moving here. When you live so far from family, friends almost become family and I am grateful for that.

-Greg was offered a chance to deploy to Afghanistan for 6 months this Spring/Summer. It will be a tough time for our family, but it will put us in a place financially where we don't have to stress so much, and that will be a wonderful thing.

-I became a certified personal trainer! I am still in the learning curve process, and I suspect I will be for a while, but it's good. Sometimes I doubt my abilities and knowledge but that's when I have to stop and ask God for help in this endeavor. I want to do something that will allow me to help out a bit financially for our family, so I can't give up even though it's been a challenge. With time I am sure things will get easier.

-We experienced several of Mother Nature's wonders through earthquakes, floods, tornado's, and heat waves. The positive spin I am taking on this is that we now can empathize with others who experience these things. We can be a support to others now!

-We have had the chance to have a couple visitors out here, and that is always so fun. That's a hint for more of you to come!! :)

When I look back on the year, I feel like this has been a real growing year for our family. There has been a lot of growing pains in that process, but we made it through the year. At times, it is so hard to understand why God has chosen to give us the challenges that he has, but those are the times when I have to stop and remember to stop questioning and start learning how to grow from them. I am slowly learning that.

I have so many things I want to change for the new year, as most people do, so I am looking forward to this year! I am looking forward to the chance to become a better daughter of God, a better wife, a better mom, a better daughter, sister, and friend.

Here is to a wonderful 2012!

A beautiful December day

It's December 14th and it is in the 50's. That is just crazy to me. It has yet to snow here and it is still bearable to be outside longer than 10 minutes. The summers here may be awful, but the falls are simply amazing.

The kids are pretty bundled in these pictures since it was before 9 when they were outside and it was a bit chilly, but they both were tearing their hats and gloves off though a few minutes into running and playing outside.

I tend to be a bit of a hermit in the winter, but I was reading a list of things to do with busy toddlers and one of the things was to get outside at least once a day regardless of the weather. This is something I am really going to work on this winter because fresh air really does a body good. :)

The Grinch

Deagan has a love/hate relationship with the Grinch. He has been slightly obsessed with him for a couple of years now. So much so that he started praying about the Grinch when he first started saying prayers out loud :).

But Deagan is also terrified of him. We have been watching "The 25 Days of Christmas" on ABC family this past month and when a preview came on for the "real" Grinch he freaked out and could not sleep that night. I guess he can handle the cartoon grinch a lot more than the real one!

The fascination continues despite his fear, and he pretends to be him at least once a day. It might just be his way to deal with his fear?

This is Deagan from today pretending to be the Grinch. He's just so funny sometimes. :)

Lights at the DC Temple

Christmas season is in full bloom, and we have been taking advantage of as many Holiday things as we can. Last night we drove through horrible rush our traffic to go see the Christmas lights turn on at the DC Temple. The temple may not be that far away in miles, but it is always quite the trip to get there when you hit traffic. It was worth the headache in my opinion though.

They really go all out on the temple grounds, so it is so beautiful. I love this time of year!

Its hard taking a picture of yourself with a phone camera; hence the blurriness. But I like both of our smiles in this one :)

The temple glows doesn't it??

They had a tree for every stake in the Temple district.  Here is our stake's tree!

"Cheese!"

Love this view!

Family Pictures 2011

We have a friend who is a fabulous photographer who offered to take our pictures this year.  It is so great to have friends who have these talents :)

It is crazy to look at past family pictures and to see how fast our family is changing.  

I love this little family God has blessed me with :)

Thanksgiving Eve

It's Thanksgiving Eve, and my little family and I are in Virginia celebrating by ourselves this year.  It was just not in the cards to fly out West this year.  Hopefully next year! I can't help but feel a little homesick knowing that both of our families are getting together right now. Have fun without us you guys! :)

November has brought a few changes for our family that I want to document for posterity sake.  We currently are camerless because of a broken lense, but hopefully Santa will bring us one so we can get some recent pictures of our family! Sorry for the lame picture-less post!

-We found out the Greg will be deploying to Afghanistan mid-March for work for 6 months.  We knew that he would be going, but he wasn't suppose to be leaving until September of next year. His office was having trouble filling a certain deployment position, so they asked Greg to deploy earlier.  It will be a hard  transition for our family, but we felt that it was a good thing to do, so we are moving forward with faith that all will be well.  The boys and I will be living with my family in Wyoming while he is gone.  I am really excited to spend so much time with my family, especially for my boys.  There is no way I could stay out in Virginia by myself for 6 months while Greg is gone, so I am grateful that my parents are opening their home to us for a short time.

I have thought a lot about the fact that we will not see Greg for 6 months, and I can't quite wrap my head around it.  We were a part summer before last for a month while Greg was in Israel for a school trip, and I thought that was hard.  Six months is a long time! I plan on flying out a few days before Greg leaves, and I can tell right now that will be one hard goodbye.  Saying goodbye for 6 months at an airport sounds really depressing to me. :( We will survive though!

-Experiencing a Virginia Fall is so weird to me.  Its almost December and we are still in the 50's and 60's. I have so many memories of Thanksgiving back home where it was FREEZING.  The local news station put out their Winter Weather Forecast a couple of weeks ago and they are predicting we will have a snowy winter.  Meaning, we will get 7-12 inches of snow! Having lived in Wyoming, Rexburg, and then Syracuse, this is pretty much a joke.  But I will take it! It will be nice having a winter where we don't have to dig our car out of huge drifts.

-Kayden is 20 months old now.  Crazy! He talks like crazy, runs around like crazy, and tortures his brother like crazy.  He is an early bird (meaning he is up before 6:30 and sometimes even 6 most mornings).  I am an early person by nature, but I honestly prefer spending my early mornings working out, so this is not my all time favorite things.  But we manage!  He is a great sleeper though.  He goes down for bed around 7 and will sleep 10-11 straight.  That is one things that I enjoy about this stage; they sleep through the night!  He is such a sweet little boy. Everyday I look at him and think, "Where did my baby go?!" They grow up so fast!

He out of nowhere decided that he was done nursing this week.  Before that, I was only nursing him right before bed, so I knew we were almost done, but he just stopped so quickly that it kind of caught me off guard.  I love nursing.  I am a huge advocate for nursing past 12 months, so it is sad for me to be done.  But he is ready, so this is what we're doing!

-Deagan is your typical 4 year old boy! He loves to run and play, and he finds potty talk quite hilarious. :) He says 90% of the prayers around our house, and it is just so sweet to listen to a 4 year old prayer.  They are so sincere and cute.  Tonight at evening prayer he prayed that I will be nice. :) I obviously need to work on my patience I guess! We have a weekly tradition of having him stay up late one night on the weekend to watch a movie with us.  Its one of his favorite traditions! He also really loves doing Family Home Evening.  He asks almost every night if we can do Home Evening.  He is so smart and his logic to things just blows me away sometimes.  He is a real joy to have in our family!

-Not much has changed for me this month.  I am continuing to work with a friend as her personal trainer, and I love it.  Life tends to feel the same day after day, but life is good so I can't complain.  I have had a few health issues come up this month that have been challenging, but nothing life threatening.  Its just hard to have things not go the way you hope they would! Thats a life lesson that I am sure I will continue to learn the rest of my life.

We truly are grateful this Thanksgiving season for all that we have been blessed with since we moved here.  Life is good!!

Dad's Visit

My dad is the greatest. He took off 4 days of work to come visit us from the 19th through the 24th if October. His main purpose of coming out here was to watch the boys over night so Greg and I could go away for our Anniversary (which was on the 21st; I am so behind on blogging!).

But he did so much for us than that! He bought us groceries, played with the kids non-stop, carved pumpkins with us, took us to the movies, he played at the park with us, and so much more! It was seriously a great visit! My dad is such a good grandpa to our boys. Those little ones are sooooo blessed!

Some of my favorite memories of his trip:

-We rode the metro downtown to see the sights and ended up walking over 5 miles that day. We had so much fun! Every where we went we had people making comments about the color of our boys hair. We were at the Jefferson Memorial and this group of Oriental men were pointing to and talking about our boys. They seemed very amusedly them, so one of them came over and grabbed Deagan to take a picture with him!! I was shocked and scared for a minute but then they went on their way. It was so creepy!
We might have to make our kids wear hats in public so they don't stand out so much!

-My dad watched the boys over night on our anniversary. I wanted to get the boys to bed before we left, but we were running late so it didn't happen. I gave my dad instructions on what to do to get them down and prayed that they would go down ok for him. Deagan informed me when we were leaving that he was not going to go to sleep that night. "Yea right!" I thought. Kayden seemed totally unfazed by us leaving so I was hopeful that things would go well.
We got home the next day and asked my dad how things went. This was his report:
-Kayden started crying for you around 10:30 (10:30?! He goes to bed normally around 7!!). There was nothing I could do for him to help so I just turned on the TV to see if that would distract him.
-Kayden must have fallen asleep because when I woke up at 1:30 he was asleep in my lap, but Deagan was still going strong. (1:30?!?) I told him it was time time to go to sleep finally and we all fell asleep on the (full size) futon couch.
-The next morning Kayden woke up at 5:30 but Deagan slept in. We had fun!

My poor dad. What a trooper!! But he said he had fun. I wish I thought staying up all night with kids was fun!

The trip went by so quick but the time he was here was so great.

Thanks for coming out dad!! You (and anyone else) is welcome anytime!

Halloween 2011

I have to say that even though Halloween is not my favorite holiday I enjoyed celebrating it with my family this year a lot more than I thought I would! There is something about seeing your kids have fun that's makes it worth it.

Our kids played musical costumes this year. Deagan started out as Francesco from Cars 2 but then decided he wanted to wear his batman pj's for our ward trunk or treat. Then yesterday before we went trick or treating he wanted to be Buzz Lightyear from last year. Kayden started out as a dinosaur that Deagan wore a couple of years ago. Then wore Deagan's Buzz Lightyear pj's since Deagan was Buzz. Confusing right? Either way they both had fun and got a ton of candy. That's what matters right? ;)

We carved pumpkin when my dad was visiting a couple of weeks ago. We carved them on a Saturday and by Tuesday they were really moldy and gross. That's what living in a humid climate will do for you! But it was still a fun tradition to do anyway.

Funny Deagan story: after lunch today Deagan was eating a sucker and said that he had had way too much sugar so he went and threw it away. Smart kid :)

Life sure has been crazy around here, so it is nice to sit down and write about our life and realize that we are so blessed. We have our struggles, but life is still so good.

I hope you and your family had a wonderful Halloween!

He is such a boy

Raising boys is an adventure.

I am slowly learning what is so fascinating about sticks, rocks, bugs, etc.

I am beginning to understand the love that my boys have for anything that has wheels or 4 legs.

And I am becoming an expert on why boys love to pee outside.

There is never a dull moment in the life of raising boys! Now I am anxious to know what it is like to raise a little girl! :)

Pumpkin Picking

One thing I loved about living in NY was all their U-Pick farms. It was one of my favorite things to do in the Fall there. Nothing says fall like picking your own apples and pumpkins!

A groups of women from our ward planned a trip to a local pumpkin farm last week, and we had so much fun! It was so refreshing to be in the wide open right outside of the city.

Slowly but surely this place is growing on me :)

Beautiful Fall Weather

Today we enjoyed some lovely fall weather, and the boys had a great time playing! I love it when we have moments like this!

New News

Life is moving faster than I would like and I have had a hard time keeping a record of our life because of that. I can't keep up!

Here are a few updates though:

-Greg will be deploying overseas next Fall for work. He will be gone 6 months. I plan on staying with my family while he is gone. I don't think I could make it through that time without some kind of support system, so I thankful for my family!
Our hope is that we will be able to build/buy a house when he gets home! How cool would that be!

-I am doing a home preschool with Deagan at home which is going ok. I am sticking at it though because it makes me feel like a better mom when I am proactive like this. Trying to time it when both kids will cooperate has proven to be my biggest struggle. Someone is always whining and crying it seems!

-Kayden has been cutting his molars for a few weeks now so he has been super grumpy lately. One has poked through so I am hoping he will return to his normal happy self soon!

-Kayden is 18 months old now! I still need to find a pediatrician in the area so I am not sure what his stats are, but he is doing well! He is a good eater and sleeper. He is starting to talk like crazy which is really fun! His favorite thing to say is "all done!" as he waves his hands in the air. When he wakes up from a nap he says this. When he is done eating he says this. When he does not want me to do something he will say that. It is cute :)

-I am doing some personal training which is going well. I have 3 clients now. I love doing this stuff!
I have a job interview at a local gym this Friday and I am hoping that will help me to find some more personal training work!
I am slowly figuring out life here but it has been hard.

We are blessed despite having some really hard times lately. We may not have a lot, but we seem to have enough.

Look Who's Four!

On September 9th, our sweet little Deagan turned 4!!

It doesn't seem like that long ago that we were not parents on the one hand, but on the other I feel like I have always been a parent. It is just crazy how fast these past 4 years have gone!

We got him a bike with training wheels for his birthday this year, and to be honest he doesn't like it. What kid doesn't like a bike?? But I literally have to bride him to ride it.  I even got the point where I said we would just have to take it back to the store if he didn't want to ride it, and he said, "Thats fine. I don't want it anyway." I am going to have to try a different angle I think.

He is such a joy to have around, and every day he says something new that blows me away.  He may only be 4, but his understanding of the world around him seems so much older.

A few cute Deagan stories:

-He got $4 for his birthday from one of my aunts.  When he saw how much money he had, he decided that he was going to save $1 to buy some candy, and then save the rest to get a Cars toy.  The fact that he was going to "save" it for something else just blew me away.  It might not seem like that big of a deal, but I was impressed!

-We went to buy a car with his money today, and it turned into this big ordeal.  They did not have the specific Car that he wanted, so we spent 20 minutes walking down the toy aisles so I could show him what he could afford. I was in a hurry and had a few things that I needed to get done, so I was not the most patient parent. (I need to do better!) At one point, he stopped and said, "Mom, this is really going to disturb you, but I want to surprise you with the toy that I want to get." That is disturbing don't you think? :)

-Even though he is 100% potty trained during the day, he wears a pull up at night because he is a pretty deep sleeper and just does not have that "get up and go to the bathroom when you have to in the middle of the night" down yet.  We ran out of pull-ups, and I totally spaced picking some up at the store yesterday.  He ended up having to wear a diaper to bed.  His reaction to this, "You mean, I can pee in this?" (With a mischievous smile on his face.) He knows he is not suppose to pee in diapers, so he thought this was a really cool thing! He woke up early this morning though to go potty, (which surprised me!) and I took the diaper off. (not sure why I did that since he was going back to sleep)  When he woke up this morning, he came running to me and said, "Mom! My diaper is missing! I went to bed with one on, and now its gone!" He totally did not remember going potty in the morning, and I thought it was so funny how he reacted to that!

-Deagan is a really good big brother to Kayden, and is really a very obedient child.  Of course he throws tantrums, whines like crazy, and puts up a fight when he doesn't get his way, but really he does what we ask of him.  He is a very social little guy, so it has been hard moving here and not having that  many friends close by.  He misses his friends from NY so much! One day we were playing at a local park, and he made a few friend.  He came running by at one point to me and said, "See Mom! I told you I would make friend here!" I so wish we could put him in preschool or something here because I know he would love that social interaction, but because of money we just can't make that work.  He doesn't seem to complain too much about this though, and I really think he does enjoy just being with our little family.


We sure love our Deagan, and I am so glad that we were blessed to have him come to our family!!

I am tired of writing natural disaster posts

I know that who ever reads this is probably tired of reading posts about natural disasters on my blog, but since this is a record of what happens in our day to day life, please bear with me one more time!!

Last week it rained here for about 4 days straight.  Remnants of tropical storm Lee hung around here all week, and the worst of the storm hit with full force on Thursday night.  

I was home by myself with the boys that night.  We ate dinner around 5:30, and it was raining.  By 6, it was raining so hard that water started to pool up around our back porch and in the parking lot.  I was concerned a little since I had not seen water flood like this in our place like that.  But then it kept getting worse! Between 6 and 6:30, there was water on our back porch that was reaching our back doors (we live on ground level) and the water in the parking lot was starting to turn into a raging river! Even the breeze way between the apartments in our complex was starting to turn into a stream! 

You can tell I was a little freaked out:

At this point, I was really scared and did not know what to do.  I called Greg at one point to see where he was and to warn him about the flooding.  He was getting some work done on his car, so he really couldn't come home right then but promised he would be home soon. About 20 minutes later, he was still not home and he was not answering his phone.  I started to think that maybe his car got swept away by the flood water or something awful like that.  

Between being scared of the water getting into our apartment and not knowing where Greg was, I was not thinking clearly.  At one point I thought it would be a good idea to take the kids up a level just in case the water got too high.  We got to the balcony of the 2nd floor, and Deagan tells me, "Mom, we don't have any pants or shoes on."  Sure enough, both kids had shirts and jackets on but no pants or shoes.  I decided to race back down to get some more clothes on them because I was thinking we might be forced to leave or something, and when we got inside I felt so strongly that we should pray for Greg.  So we knelt down in our living room floor and we prayed.  I prayed that if it was God's will, that it would stop raining so hard and that the water would not get any higher.  I prayed that we would be safe and I would know what I needed to do to protect my children.  And most of all, I prayed that Greg would come home safe to us. 

Not more than 2 minutes later Greg walked in the door, soaking wet.  Our prayer worked! He said that he had to park a few block away from our complex because most of the roads by our place were blocked at that point because of the flash flood, and he ran from the car to our apartment through this raging river! Where he ran, the water was above his knees, but we heard later from some friends that live near us that it was above their waist!  There were reports of SUV's being completely buried in water! Flash floods are so dangerous, and a few times Greg thought he was going to get pulled down by the current of the water.  I am so grateful that our prayer worked and brought him safely to us because the outcome could have been so awful!

Having him home really helped to calm me down, but I was still nervous.  We had finalized out 72 hour kits in preparation for Hurricane Irene a few weeks ago, but a few days before this storm I took out a few of the food items so I could use them in a few meals.  I also took out some of the clothes with the intention of putting clothes in that would actually fit the boys.  We gathered a few items and packed the most random 72 hour kits ever.  I ended up with like 5 pairs of pants and Greg had a shirt.  Clearly I was not thinking straight.  I also threw our important papers in a plastic grocery bag just in case. 

As the night went on, the rain was still coming down hard but the water was receding at out door.  Our prayer was answered again.  We felt at that point, that we were safe to stay in our apartment.  

Greg took this video that night:

We woke up the next morning, and the water had gone down considerably, but there was mud everywhere!! 

Unfortunately, water did seep into our car; both of our cars.  We are not really sure how high it got or if it got into our engine.  We checked the oil and the tail pipe and did not see any water, but who knows.  Greg also shampooed our carpets and cleaned the car as well as he could.  To make matters worse, I  found out today that the water that came through here is considered to be category 3 flood water; meaning that on a scale of 1 to 3 of water contamination, the water that got in our car was the most contaminated water.

To be honest, our car is stressing me out so much right now. I didn't realize just how stressed I was until my mom called today and asked me about it.  Sorry for the tears moms!  We have a very high deductible, and no way to pay for repairs with that deductible being so high.  We have an insurance agent coming by soon to look at it, so I am praying so hard that some how something will work out.  I don't know why I am so stressed about a car, but I am.  Having a car in this area symbolizes freedom for me in a way.  The first 2 weeks here, I did not have a car, and I felt so trapped and hated it here.  Every time I don't have the car now, those feeling come back and I don't want to go back there.

Right now, I feel like we are getting hit back to back with no time to recover, and I feel worn down.  Life is super stressful right now, so I have to remind myself to stop and count my blessings because those definitely out weight the trials.

I am hoping that this is my last natural disaster post for awhile now for all our sakes. :)

He Hate Haircuts!

This past Friday, as I was getting us ready to leave town that afternoon, I decided to cut Deagan's hair.  I'm not sure what possessed me to try and cut this little man's hair while I was in the middle of frantically packing and cleaning, but for some reason I HAD to do it.  

Deagan's hair is very curly, and when it is longer his curls stick up all over.  It is cute up to a point, and then it just looks like I don't take care of him.  His hair was at this point, and we were going to be seeing friends that we haven't seen in a while.  I had to at least LOOK like I was doing ok! :)

He screamed the whole time I was cutting it.  I used a razor so it was pretty quick, but it was pure torture to him! I put a towel around his neck to keep hair from getting on his back.  He HATES having hair on his back.  I put cotton balls in his ears to keep hair out.  He HATES hair in his ears.  He then covered his whole face with the towel.  He HATES hair in his face.  

It was quite the sight, and to be honest I was laughing the whole time.  It was just comical how upset he was and the lengths that I went to to keep him as happy as possible.  I even resorted to bribery to finish! Yes, I am THAT kind of mom and I am ok with it!

Despite the tears, I think he looks great don't you think??

The Final Chapter of Hurricane Irene

I am sorry for keeping you hanging for what has happened since the storm left us, but we had kind of a hard week and I fell into a blogging slump.  I had planned on being very dramatic in my end, but since it is a week late (and it has kind of become old news already!) and I just want to get this up for future reference, I am going to let the pictures do most of the talking!

We woke up the next morning and had power.  Our clocks were blinking which  meant at some point we lost power.  But the next morning we were just fine! I slept though the whole storm as well! Lame! I thought I would have heard the wind howling or something.

Church was still on since the church we attend still had power.  But towards the end of the first meeting, the power went off.  Church was canceled, and as much as I love church, I also love a "snow day" now and then! :)

After we got home, we went walking to explore the damage around us.

 A few signs were very unfortunate during the storm.

 Along with a few flag posts and signs.

 A pond with by our house has a trail that goes around it that we like to walk a long.  There were trees down all around the path.

 A few of the trees fell, leaving some space to walk past, but others covered the entire path.  I like to run around this path with the boys, but it wasn't until Friday of last week that I was able to do that again.

 Log jumping!

 This is hard to tell in this picture, but there did not use to be that much water off the side of the trail. (The side opposite of the pond.) After the storm, there was a mini stream running by the path.  That is what 24 hours of constant rain will do!

 Another sign that fell victim to the storm!

 Kayden got really tired towards the end of the walk and refused to walk another step!

 Deagan to the rescue! He really is such a great big brother when he wants to be! :)

We were very blessed and fortunate that the storm did not hit us as bad as it could have.  We were prepared for the worst though.  We had all the supplies that we might need, and we came out ok!

I think I am over natural disasters for the time being though! An earthquake and hurricane in one week is enough for me!