Vince's Birthday

Happy Birthday Mr Vince!

Vince turned 4 on Jan 2nd. I can really see the transition of him being a big boy now and not being a baby anymore. He's so smart and observant. He's like a sponge and just soaks everything up. He is so sweet and kind and a wonderful big brother. Jake and him are best friends and spend pretty much every min or everyday together. I dont know what it's going to be like when Vince starts preschool in the fall. He's a happy go lucky boy who like to have fun and be silly but sensitive and calm as well. He loves his sunbeam class at church and learning lots of his Primary songs. He loves to sing and dance, bounce on the trampoline, work in the garage with dad, play with his tools, go to the park and the indoor gymnastics (basically heaven for kids where there's trampolines to jump on, foam pits, lots of fun equipment to run around a play on). He loves to read, play the game memory, his favorite TV show is Wild Kratts and he's a great eater. He loves fruits and vegetables and not very picky. Vince is such an amazing boy and I feel honored to be his mother! 

This is the last night everyone was together on New Years Day. It was so great having so much family together!

I made "Wild Kratt" colored cupcakes for his bday while everyone was here so we could all celebrate.

Vince and Jake got matching outfits for Christmas from grandma Kelle! I love this picture of them

Ryan made Vince a soccer goal for his bday so we had to go test in out right away.

For Vince's big day we went bowling as a family and then went to Red Robin for dinner. We all had a blast! It's so fun that the boys are getting older and can do more and more activities.

Craziness of going to a restaurant, hence it's a rare occasion to bring the boys! haha

Christmas and Famliy

Christmas 2016 was great!

We had tons of family come and visit! My uncle Tom, his wife Yasmin and son Everett came out from North Carolina. We got to have dinner and a early Christmas celebration with them at my grandpa and bestemors.

Then Ryan's parents and 2 youngest siblings came up to visit. It was Mike's, Ryans dads, 60th birthday on the 18th and 6 out of the 9 kids got to celebrate with him. We went out to Claim Jumper. It was neat being all together, especially with the kids too!

Christmas morning we opened some presents, went to church then came back and finished opening present. We then went to my grandmas and continued on partying! It was cool having church on Sunday. It seemed to bring a deeper meaning to the sacrament for me and there was a beautiful musical program. I love Christmas music!!

The next 2 days after Christmas we took his parents, 2 younger sibling and his oldest brother and family up to the beach house. That was fun, a little cold and wet, but nevertheless still fun :)

Tons of snow geese! Like thousands

Boys playing with their Legos from Christmas

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

I love December! It's such a wonderful month celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ! Our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) made this 25 Days of Christ Advent Calendar that was awesome! Everyday it had a different small act of service you could do to be more like Christ and it helped you to remember the true meaning of Christmas. It was great!

We did lots of fun things!

Here's a picture from our playgroup. We did gingerbread houses at Angies and it was awesome as you can see on the kids faces.

I love this picture because it's just a normal morning. Boys in the jammies playing with their "things." Jake has a toy hammer, empty toilet paper tube and piece of rope and Vince has his pliers, hammer, Elmo spoon (which he pretends to be a knife), old fan remote and something else that I can't make out! haha They are so creative and love playing together and having fun. Oh and of coarse they have Elmo and George :)

My birthday was December 2nd and I turned 29!!! This is the age everyone wants to stay at, right?! I really can't believe I'm in the last year of my 20s!!!! It's been a great ride thus far and I can't wait for all the years to come with my best friend Ryan and my boys!!

We went out to Icon Grill for dessert to get the BEST ICE CREAM HOT FUDGE SUNDAE EVER!! As you can see in the picture, it was heavenly. Then we went and walked around Seattle. 

It was great!

We got snow!! Haha Washington is hit or miss with getting snow in the lowlands. Mt Rainier holds the record for most snowfall in the USA. So when we get any snow we're out there playing!!

This was crazy. Vince, Jake, my mom and I were having a snack at the kitchen table when we look up and there's a coyote in our backyard. He was about 15 feet from our house!! By the time I got the camera and snapped the picture he was leaving. It was weird though because I dont know where he came from and have never seen one near our house.

We went and saw Santa at a local farmers market. The boys were still a little apprehensive about him but had fun.

Ryan and the boys went to see the "reindeer." It was a calf with fake antlers on haha

Ryan and I went to a fun favorite things Christmas party and came home with some nerf guns. We've had a lot of fun with them.

For the past few years we've made Christmas cookies and delivered them to family and friends. This year was the most we've ever done with over 300!! It was all day and some of baking but fun to do. The best part is definitely delivering them and seeing their smiling faces!! Who doesnt love Christmas cookies

November

It's hard to remember all the details of the past months since I got behind on my blog but there is one event that I specifically remember. 

Ryan had to go to Canada for work for week and we had been having a mouse issue a few weeks prior. I had first noticed some little holes in the fruit out on the counter and figured it was fruit flies. Then a few days later there was this big hole eaten out of one of the bananas and knew we had a mouse problem!!

So right away we set up traps, laid out those block poisons and did everything to get rid of the little beast. The next morning we noticed blood on the ground and looked on the glue trap, and there was part of his tail stuck on it!!! He must've gotten stuck and chewed part of his tail off to get away!! So we did more traps and mouse poison and figured we got him because we didn't see anymore signs of him for a while...

So back to Ryan leaving a few weeks later. He left on a Monday and was going to get back Friday night. I go to bed Wednesday night around 10 and wake up around midnight hearing this rustling in my room. Like rustling loud enough where I thought Vince had come into my room and was trying to get into bed with me. So I turn on the light and no one is in there. I check on the boys and they're both asleep. I thought I had heard Jake call out my name and then thought maybe I dreamed it all because I was sleeping pretty good. But before I turned my light back off I noticed a fiber one bar lying on the floor by the closet. I thought that was weird because we don't eat snacks in our room, and couldn't remember if that had been there when I went to bed. After about a minute of not being able to remember I turned off the light and went back into bed.

5 minutes later

I hear rustling sound again and rip off my covers and turn on the light. Nothing...except the fiber one bar was now in the hall!!!!!

Aghhhhhhhh!

I immediately knew it had to be the mouse and as i got closer I saw a little hole in the corner where he was trying to get in! So now it's about 12:30 at night and Im excited and freaking out at the same time. Ryans not here to set the trap and frankly I don't even know how to set up the mouse trap. He's always done it before but I knew if I didnt set the trap that dumb mouse would run all over the house and probably crawl on our faces and I couldn't handle that. So I grabbed one of the traps that was behind the stove and set it out in the hall with a little fiber one bar to bait him. Like I said I didnt really know how to set the trap so I was messing with it for a couple minutes and of coarse set it off and caught my finger! That hurt like a mother and left a nice fat bruise on my knuckle.

So I set the trap, turned off the lights and got back in bed. By this time sleep had completely fled my eyes and I couldnt fall asleep for about an hour. Just as I was starting to drift off I hear

SNAP!!

I ripped off the covers again but now was super excited but super scared because I wanted to kill the pest but I didnt want to see it!!! I mustered up the courage and peeked my head around the corner into the hall and I caught him!!!! Ewww it was so gross seeing his squirming body caught in the trap. He was really trying to get out and I DID NOT want him to get away so I ran and grabbed my mop bucket and put it on top of him til he stopped moving. Then I was like, now what. I honestly considered leaving him til morning because I didnt want to deal with it but then the thought of a dead mouse in my hall til morning and Vince possibly touching it grossed me out and I knew I had to finish the job. So I found some disposable gloves, took the whole contraption outside dropped him in the garbage and left it all outside. Then Lysoled the heck out of my mop bucket and the carpet where he was.

Of coarse I couldnt fall asleep for another hour but I didnt care!

I killed the mouse!!

Ryan was shocked and proud of me and I couldnt quite believe it myself but we haven't had any issues since!!

Haha so beside the mouse fiasco here's some other fun things we did in November.

This is our second year doing our thankful tree and we really like it. It's fun putting something we're thankful for everyday and really fun to see at the end of the month.

We had a really warm day in November and it got so warm the boys wanted their shirts off. They were so cute!

I got a perm!! I wanted to do something different with my hair. I have fine hair so there's not much body to it and it's pretty straight. Its been really fun being able to have it curly, wavy and more volume.

The boys were so handsome and this was the best picture I could get. Always on the go!

The boys love playing "tools" We all get our own toolbox with tools and go around to different rooms fixing things. I love their imaginations!

This was from our playgroup. I had them make turkey hats which turned out really cute on the kids. It's been awesome having a playgroup for the kids and doing different things and hanging out with friends.

Vince and Jake love their daddy!

Here's the end result!! We missed some days but we have so much to be grateful for and have been truly blessed by our Heavenly Father.

I love sewing and crafts and I wanted to make this turkey for a decoration. I used a bunch of scraps I had and really liked how it turned out. It got finished the day after Thanksgiving, haha. I'm excited to hang it up next year!

ER Nurse

I've been a nurse for 9 years this July!!! I love being a nurse, not only working with people, but getting to help them. I've been able to help people at their lowest lows and they're highest highs. There's always ups and downs but the ups far outreach the downs.

I've been working in the Covington ER for a year now and I love it!! I had never done ER before so for the first 6 months I was working twice a week and since Sept I cut back to per diem and work about once a week or every other week. It's a great balance of being home with my boys most of the time and then working enough to keep up with my skills. I love the variety and diversity of the ER. I've learned A TON and I'm still learning everytime I work. I'm grateful that I can be a nurse and all that it's taught me.

It's Spooky to be Hungry

I love October. It starts out with General Conference then dives right into Halloween and everything pumpkin!!

 I love pumpkin anything, except ironically pumpkin pie. Weird, I know. Some of my favs are pumpkin oatmeal, punpkin waffles, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, my friend made pumpkin curry and is was delish!! The possibilities are endless. I usually will buy the big 30oz cans of pumpkin that come in a 3 pack from Costco because they are about $2/can which is really good. I was at Costco probably in Nov and they had a 3 pack on sale for like $2!! I went a little crazy and bought 4 of them! Haha so I had 12 huge cans of pumpkin but I will eat pumpkin all year round!

Anyways... I have to explain the title of my post. When Ryan worked for John Deere during October they did a food drive which is awesome. The theme was: It's spooky to be hungry. We both thought it was funny and it became an inside joke so whenever there's a food drive or October we'll say that.

Haha ok back to the post after my 2 tangents. October is so much fun because it's the start of the holiday season, you get the fun fall weather, the beauty of the leaves and lots of fun activities, especially for the kids.

We go to my grandpa and bestemor's house for dinner close to twice a month which we love. They have a neighbor that LOVES to decorate for the holidays, She puts of thousands of lights for Christmas and lots of fun ones for Halloween. She always has this big yellow blow up spider and the boys like it but are kinda scared of it at the same time. Vince isn't so much this year but Jake was cautious. It's so cute!

Lots of playing outside while the weather was still pretty good. 

We went on a fun date to a local haunted house with some friends.

This is our second year of going to Thomasson Farm. It's a local pumpkin patch with a tractor ride, corn box, animals and fun outside toys. The corn box is the favorite, Ryan and I were even playing in it too!

After going to the Pumpkin Patch we made carmel apples!

The boys got to dress up like 5 times for Halloween and multiple times around the house. They actually did again today and its February! The costumes are special because they are the same costumes that Ryan and his siblings wore when they were little! They were the cutest clown and lion.