What u talkin' bout Willis?

Vote for our picture

2012-02-09T16:23:00.001-08:00

So, I've never done this before, but I entered a photo into a contest.

It's with Disney Family Fun's I Heart My Family contest. The top 10 vote-getters will win $500.

I entered our coordinating family vacation shirts picture from this past summer.

With photo contests like this, I figure the only way people get votes is by coercing their family and friends to vote for their photo.

You'll have to register at the site to vote.

But you can vote once a day until the contest ends...which is sometime in March, I can't remember.

Here's the link to our photo and to be able to vote for it!

http://family.go.com/i-heart-my-family-contest/favorite-family-photo/i-love-these-people--84860/

If we win, maybe we'll split the prize with everyone who votes. ;)

Domestic Science Experiment

2012-02-01T18:34:00.000-08:00

Science was never a subject I loved. In fact, I never really enjoyed doing elementary school Science Fair Projects. Although, the only projects I remember were usually "domestic" type experiments that my mom helped me with. Which laundry detergent works best? (I don't remember the outcome....I still use whatever I can find for cheapest). What happens when you leave out the baking powder?

Well, here's my grown up version. What can I get to clean off the grime on my stovetop grates and burners?!!?! They were getting quite bad. I just spent quite a bit of time using one of those Mr.Clean Magic Erasers on them which is my go-to for many other jobs. Wasn't budging most of it. (Maybe I should stop letting things run over on the stove? Hmmmmm....)

Well, I heard of another way and thought I'd give it a shot. Ammonia.

I put them each grate in a plastic storage bag and poured about a 1/4 cup of ammonia in the bag. (Watch out for those fumes! Open up a window so you don't inhale too much of that toxic stuff!) You're not trying to soak the stains off. The fumes is what weakens the grime. I put them in my garage in case there was a leak.

I let them soak overnight...Ok, a bit longer than overnight. I didn't get around to cleaning them until after lunchtime. Now, the source I read said that they will wipe off super easy. Not so much. I still felt like I had to do a considerable amount of scrubbing with a scrubby sponge and a washcloth. BUT they did come out looking much, much better.

And there you go. Maybe it'll help you. Maybe you already knew it. Maybe you have an even better way.

Revelation on Revelations

2012-01-31T13:58:00.000-08:00

I just finished up a group Bible study going through the book of Revelation.

I'm not going to lie. When I found out we'd be studying Revelation for several months, I wasn't overly excited. Or excited at all.

I've read it before. Heard sermons on it. I don't get caught up in the details and whether something is symbollic or literal. I know the final outcome and I've always been good with that......Jesus returns, He wins, and I want to be on His team and live with Him forever.

But, as always, when one takes the time to dig into God's word, I came out blessed, just as Revelation 1:3 said I would, "Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near."

I certainly don't have all of the answers...or even very many. In fact, I probably have a lot more questions. But I am more familiar with this important part of Scripture. And there is so much more personal application than what I was expecting. And that's what I love about Scripture anyways.....the part where we apply it to our lives and come to know and understand God more.

As always, a group Bible study does not disappoint. I value my time in our women's Bible study so very much. It's intergenerational (meaning young women all the way up the "wise" women), which I've come to adore. There's something wonderful about getting together with women in the same stage of life as you....but there's something wonderful about being with women who have already been in your shoes. I find incredible amounts of encouragement and challenge from our time together.

Next up is the book of James. I'm easily excited about this one.

Landon is 4!

2012-01-26T18:16:00.000-08:00

Landon turned 4 this week!

We started off the festivities by inviting some friends over after church on Sunday night. We had Landon's requested Monster-Truck-Smoooshing-Cars Cake. It was way more fun to have lots of other people singing "Happy Birthday" besides Adam and I!

We opened some special packages and cards from special people on Wednesday. And Landon even got to take birthday cookies to Preschool to share with his friends there.

Hard to believe that Landon is 4! When I was tucking him in the other night, I told him that he was all done being 3 - and that he'd never be 3 again! He looked at me and said, "Yes. But I'll be 23 someday." Dear goodness. Yes. Yes, you will. Let's not rush it please.

What Landon is like these days:

*Still crazy about cars - really anything with wheels is his passion! He plays with cars most of the day!

*He can identify his letters and makes their sounds. Although, he really has no interest in practicing to write his name. He likes to make the "L" and that's it. And he always wants to make it VERY big.

*He can dress and undress himself (except for those pesky buttons). Although I still lay out what he's going to wear.

*He assures me regularly that he's going to love me forever. :)

*He loves to play games likes Candyland, Hi-Ho Cherry O, and other preschool games.

*He loves to color with markers. He gets very serious about it and colors in very concentrated areas so that it completely bleeds through the paper.

*Every morning he asks if he can eat breakfast in his PJ's.

*He's a bit of a tattletale. At this point, I rather appreciate it since Tate seems to regularly do things he's not supposed to.

*He still usually asks permission to do things. Sometimes he even feels he must ask both Adam and I for permission.

*He likes to show us how fast he can run. Over. And over. And over.

*He seems to like to be given chores. I know I've got to tap into this! He likes to help sort laundry. He likes to give the cats their food and water. I got him to sort the silverware from the dishwasher the other day. He gets tired of his tasks before they are completed sometimes, but it's still nice that he likes to help and be given jobs.

Ovearall, Landon is a very sweet and happy little boy. We feel so blessed to be his parents!

My little artists

2012-01-21T18:27:00.001-08:00

The boys got an art easel for Christmas.

We finally busted out the paints today.

It was going great until I turned my back and Tate started using the chalkboard eraser on his painted masterpiece. He's just a little more creative than what I'm prepared for sometimes.

And now, Christmas is over

2012-01-21T18:00:00.000-08:00

Finally getting to the pictures on my camera from our final Christmas gathering (yes, several weeks ago).

We made a several day trip of it and visited my aunt and uncle in Fort Wayne and spent the night. Then we headed onto Berne to visit my grandma. She's spent a good portion of her time in Florida over the last, I dunno, 20ish years? And she's now retired in the countryside of Indiana. It was good to make a trip to visit her in her retirement community. I think I would like living there.

Had a great time seeing my brothers and their families. Always goes by too fast. Here's a few pics from the Strahm Christmas:

Not sure why she's only wearing one sock. Or why Adam is lifting her in the air.

AJ tearin' it up. Recently turned 1 and knows what to do already.

Not a bad family pic of us! It's hard to get us all looking at the camera and smiling.

These two can fall asleep anywhere! They must work harder than I do. (We added the Santa hats to make them look more festive)

G-ma and G-pa with all the G-kids.

The whole bunch of us - thanks to the camera's self-timer.

Goals for the Coming Year

2012-01-14T12:12:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big resolution setter, but I like the idea of goals to keep one motivated to accomplish things. And I like lists so that I can look back and see what has been accomplished. I like being productive and I don't like wasting time (although I'm certainly guilty of it at times!)

Here's a handful of things I'd like to accomplish in the coming year. Some are one-time things, while others are ongoing things that I'd like to work on. There are a couple of personal ones that I'm keeping to myself.

- Read 12 books - I literally went several years without reading books. I've now managed to fit in a little time for it here and there - and what do you know, I enjoy it! I mostly enjoy novels/fiction and non-fiction that inspire me or encourage me to live my life better and leave me able to sleep good at night (nothing scary or too suspenseful!).

- Have a Neighborhood Block Party (summertime) - We seem to have a great neighborhood, although I don't feel like we know people as well as we'd like. Would love to initiate and host some sort of summertime event that would get people mingling more. We've talked about it the last 2 summers. Let's make it happen!

- Have people over to our house for a meal at least once a month - Sometimes we're good at this and other times we just get busy and don't take the time to invite people over.

- Get Tate potty-trained - I don't need to explain this. I hope it's one of his goals for the coming year though also.

- Schedule 10 minutes to pray every day - I'm a natural multi-tasker and I pray throughout the day...in the shower, while driving, when I exercise, while doing laundry, etc. While that is nice, I'd like to make sure I'm setting aside time to talk to God and hear from Him - and ONLY doing that. I'd love to do more someday, but 10 minutes seems do-able to me at this stage in life.

- Go on an overnight getaway with Adam - (NO kids!)

- Take care of the grading issue on the north side of our house - On the north side of our house, the ground leads TO the house rather than away from the house which causes water to seep into the basement on this side of the house. It's a project that will most likely involve hiring someone and having the yard and landscaping torn up. We've been putting this off the last 2 years. AND if money and time allow, we'd love to get the driveway re-done (also needing to hire someone and have things tore up for awhile).

- Sew something - I've got a sewing machine. I've even got a project lined up....just have to remind myself how to follow the pattern and actually do it!

- Grocery Budget of an avg. of $45/week - I'm somewhat close to this usually, but I plan to use cash now to help keep track of my weekly spendings. This includes diapers, cat food/litter, hygiene products, cleaning products, and food.

- Get up by at least 7:15am 5 days a week - You might be rolling your eyes at this, but our kids sleep until 8 am and we've gotten used to this as well! Neither of us have to get up early regularly for work schedules. And we stay up until at least 11/11:30 pm most nights. I know that I need 8 hours of sleep to function and feel well. Adam needs a little less. But I also feel great about having some extra time in the morning when I do make myself get up - so I'd like to do it more often!

- Paint the Laundry Room - I've had paint for the walls for over a year now. Obviously this entails getting all of the laundry caught up (which I'm usually on top of) and moving the machines out of the room for a week. I'm also considering painting the cabinets a fun color...just not sure what yet.

Well, there's a few things that I'd like to get done in the coming year. Hope there's a few things that you are striving for also!

SNOW!

2012-01-03T07:53:00.000-08:00

Whoa! Look at me go! 3rd blog post of the year and it's only January 3! (I do not intend to blog every day like I mentioned the possibility of in a previous post. That was "crazy" Becca talking. I've put her back away where she belongs.)

We finally got some snow! The boys were anxious to go outside and play in it. Landon even told me that he had dreamed about playing in it the night before. It took us 20 minutes to get into snow gear and then I realized we didn't have snowboots that fit Landon. Poor kid had to wear rainboots with doubled-up socks. He never complained that his feet were cold though.

Look how close they are in size!

They are almost 18mos. apart, but Tate is closing the gap very quickly!

Landon really wanted to wear this hat....

It makes it easy for me to imagine what he would look like as a little girl with long blond braids.

I even put them to work. G-ma Vig got them little kid shovels and rakes this year. They loved being able to work and move the snow around.

And I got a new camera for Christmas! I'm pretty excited about it! I can already tell a huge difference in the pictures that I take! I'm excited to learn more about it and figure out how to do even better!

Just a little bit longer....

2012-01-01T12:33:00.001-08:00

We still have one more Christmas gathering next weekend, so I REFUSE to take down our Christmas decorations yet! Here's a few of my favorites this year:

This is our Christmas Card wall. We hang them up and pass by them many times in a day. I love to look at all of them and read some of the special inscriptions numerous times. Some of our friends (who will remain nameless....although you all know who you are....do not send out Christmas cards! And thus, we are saddened that we do not get to include them here. Maybe someday......)

This is a special ornament given to all of the Willis' from Adam's aunt. It's in memory of Grandpa Willis who passed away in May.

Here's our big Nativity set in our living room(I have several smaller, kid-friendly ones also). This room looks so nice with lots of red accents.

And here's the fireplace in our family room. I bought a canvas print of one of our family pictures. And I love our knit, homemade looking stockings.

And our newest addition to the Christmas decorations that I just picked up at an after-Christmas sale. A Kissing Ball! I had been trying to find some decent looking mistletoe or something. This will fit the bill. We've tested it out already. It works. :)

Yeah for Christmas!

2012-01-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

Christmas has come and gone! And we had many wonderful gatherings!

We travelled to Illinois for a few days to spend time with Adam's mom and stepdad - lots of fun traditions and we were all spoiled with yummy meals, special treatments, and too many presents! Such a relaxing and enjoyable time together!

We got home just in time to have all of the Willis family over! Again, special times with lots of fun times and presents. We played some games and enjoyed a full day together. We ended the evening with a special Christmas Eve service at church.

And on Christmas day, we went to church on Christmas morning and then had Adam's dad and stepmom and the rest of the family over. We enjoyed a casual and relaxing day together. We even went the non-traditional route and had Mexican fare to spice things up.

Such a great time with family! It's always a beautiful time of the year to reflect upon our Savior being sent into this world!

oh deer.....

2011-12-08T16:59:00.000-08:00

Well this has been long over due (Adam blogging that is) but i will do my best to update all of our many blog followers with the adventures of Adam the Archer and my hunting expeditions so far this year.

For those that don't know i am an avid archer i love shooting a b

ow and enjoy hunting, and I like being able to stock the freezer with venison (which the whole family enjoys too)

So this year's adventure started on October 18th when i was able to get 2 smaller deer but on the 25th of October the real adventure started. It was a cold deary Tuesday morning and i went out hunting and at first light i very nice Buck decided to grace me with his presence and i was able to quickly and cleanly harvest this Buck ( i won't go into all the details). He was only a 6 point he was a very big bodied deer with a very very big rack for a 6 point (which i did not see the rack very well until after i recovered the deer). This is only my second buck and biggest deer i have ever seen in the woods. Here are the pictures from the woods and also the mount that i now have to remember my adventure, if you want to see the deer in real life you will have to come visit me at church as Becca would only allow me to put the mount in the basement so instead i will gladly hang it in my office at church. Enjoy

Oh, Little Debbie...

2011-12-04T12:13:00.000-08:00

These Little Debbie Holiday Snack Cakes are too much for me to resist! (Only the yellow cake with chocolate frosting ones) I am sure there an no redeeming qualities in them.

I don't buy them - mostly because I know that I'm capable of polishing off a whole box in 2 days. I can resist them if they don't make it into my house. I can walk by them in the store and have no second thoughts about leaving them on the shelf. It's when they make it into my home and I know they are there - that's when I'm in trouble.

My sweet husband knows that I have a ridiculous affection for these things. Every now and then, he will buy me a box. I'm usually estatic and upset at the same time. It's kinda a love/hate relationship (not with my husband - that's all love! I'm talking about the cakes). The box doesn't last long. And then I calculate how many calories I've eaten in these store-bought delicious goodies. It's not pretty. But hey, it's all in celebration of this festive time of year, right?! :)

Where'd November go?

2011-12-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

Whoops. Fell off the blog wagon for a month. I'll try to be better. I'm even considering trying to blog every day for a year at the start of 2012. If I did that, I'm sure I'd have to expand my content. You might even get my thoughts and opinions. I said considering. Don't get too excited.

Here's a few pics from Thanksgiving. Here are all of the cousins at Grandma's house on Thanksgiving day. They are sitting pretty nice for this picture.

Here's what they look like the rest of the time:

Here, Adam has subdued several of them with technology as he plays Angry Birds on his tablet.

I'm sure there are other things we did in November.....but it's all a blur honestly!

On Tursdays, the boys get to spend the day with Adam. It's his day off from church and it's the one day that I work at Kuyper College. I'm thankful that they've allowed me to stay on in such a small capacity and I'm thankful that Adam gets to spend the day entirely with the boys. They do some things on Thursdays that they don't get to do the rest of the week. They visit sports/archery shops. They eat PB & J pretty much every Thursday for lunch. They are usually dressed in either camouflage, spiderman, or Puma outfits on Thursdays. This past Thursday, they even got to build this super cool race track such as in the picture below. They have a good dad.

Trunk or Treat - ARRRRGH!

2011-10-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

Our church had their Trunk-or-Treat/Family Fun event last night. Went through 700 and some hot dogs! Had lots of people pass through. This proves to be a great event to interact with our community and to see lots of faces that we don't know otherwise! And it takes a lot of people to pull it off! It always just reminds me of how the body of Christ is supposed to operate. We're all needed to do our jobs!

I got our trunk ready for the show. I had gotten pirate costumes for the boys last spring for super cheap. I bought some plastic tablecloths at the dollar store to paint for the flags and the ship on the side of the van. I made a treasure chest out of an old box. Adam's sister had spoiled us with some pirate accessories when she was here last knowing that we were to be pirates for halloween. Gathered up some "treasure" and jewels. I'll admit I did spend $10 on our parrot.

I've come to believe that having the best trunk is mostly about having a couple of cute kids who have coordinating outfits. Teach them to say "Arrrgh" and "Shiver me timbers!" while they give you menacing looks with their plastic swords - and there you have "BEST TRUNK"! Adam was a pirate also, but he worked the registration area the whole time. Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture taken with all of us together. :( You'll just have to imagine what it would have looked like.

I can can!

2011-10-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

At my request, my mom handed down all of her canning supplies and gadgets to me when I went to visit her last weekend. I vaguely remember her canning when I was younger. I mostly remember the scary sounds that the pressure canner made. I also remember going to the basement to pick out a can of something or other to go along with dinner. I've been desiring to give it a try. I think I know too many domestically talented people that spur me on to wanting to increase my domestic abilities. So, I bought a bushel of apples. There are a lot of orchards in our area, so it's pretty easy to get your hands on some apples at a good price.
And this machine, the fabulous Victorio Strainer, makes things so much easier! I ony had to quarter the apples....I didn't have to peel them or core them or anything. This thing strains all the stuff out that you don't want and leaves you with yummy applesauce. I used Rome apples and it made a lovely pink applesauce. I just left it au naturel and didn't add any extra sugar or cinnamon.

All but 1 of my jars sealed properly (and it was a small pint one). I consider that a success! It took me around 4 hours to do all of this. I was constantly cutting apples, switching pots on burners, straining apples, putting it in jars, etc. I don't mind doing things on my own, but next year I think I'll look for a partner to join me and we'll split the bounty. I'm taking applications.

Fall-ish things

2011-10-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

We've had some ridiculously wonderful weather these past 2 weeks. Lots of sunny days and warm temps. I know cold weather is inevitable, but it was nice that summer stuck around to bid us farewell. We tried to take advantage of the nicer weather and do some outdoor things. We played tennis twice in the past week. We took a bike ride and multiple walks. The boys played in the sandbox nearly every day. We left the windows open. It was lovely! But let's get real. Fall is here. And with that comes some fun activities (and yummy foods)!

Adam's mom and sister met up at our place over the weekend. We took a trip to get some pumpkins. Landon was saying that he was going to pick out the biggest one - but when we got there he liked the little ones and the white ones. Go figure.

Adam and I enjoyed having babysitters in town. And Grandma and Aunt Jaime enjoyed getting some special time with the boys. While we were gone, they stripped the boys down to their skivvies and let them paint the pumpkins they picked out. Apparently, Tate repeated over and over that this was "awesome."

And on Wednesday, I went with Landon's preschool on a field trip to an apple orchard. I took my camera, but unfortunately, it didn't have the memory card in it. Whoops. But I had some personal revelations while on this field trip: 1)People who work with preschoolers have very special gifts to tolerate high levels of squirrely-ness, numerous questions, and are able to talk in pleasant tones nearly at all times. 2)I do not think I am one of those people. On the outside I did well, but on the inside, I was thinking I might not go on another field trip. :) There were enough parents that I was only responsible to keep my eyes on 2 kids. With my desire to connect more with people in the community, I'm sure I'll convince myself I should go next time.

Here's to fall! Hope it sticks around for awhile because I'm not ready for winter!

Boyne Trip

2011-10-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

We went up north a little while back - up into the tips of the fingers (FYI...for those that aren't from Michigan....Michigan is shaped like a mitten). Stayed with our friends Marvin and Lindsay. We enjoyed hanging out, eating good food, doing a little window shopping, visiting their church, playing card games, helping with house projects, meeting up with the Spanding family, seeing the wonderful fall colors, among probably a few other things. Overall, it was a great trip. Very relaxing - and it helped that the boys behaved pretty well.

Upon returning home, we received 2 thank you notes from the Verwys' in the mail. Lindsay's was nice and sweet as expected. And Marvin didn't disappoint either. The envelope was addressed to "Adumb Willis". Inside he wrote,

Hey Adam,

I wanted a card with a picture of a face getting punched but this was all Lindsay had. Thank you for fixing everything at my house. I appreciate your wilingness to help without asking for anything in return. Come back soon and play more games with us. Marvin

I don't think Adam could have felt more appreciated. Those boys have a special friendship. They wrestle and trash talk pretty much constantly, but I know they enjoy each other immensely.

Rollerskating is still IN!

2011-10-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

Our church had a family skate night a few weeks ago. Super fun! I'm surely biased, but I had a couple of CUTE rollerskaters on my hands. Tate didn't think he wanted to try skating at first, so he just got pushed around in a stroller - of which he would protest any time we'd stop pushing him. Eventually, he got rollerskates too. Both boys never wanted to leave the floor. Round and round and round we went.
I'm glad that we're able to introduce them to rollerskating at a young age. My first experience on rollerskates was probably when I was 6 or 7 and I was at a birthday party. I think I was the only one who had never skated before - or at least it felt like that. Then for the next several years of elementary school it seemed like there was a class party at a rollerskating rink. Apparently, it's a somehwhat vital activity skill to aquire to more easily make it through childhood.

Art Prize 2011

2011-09-28T13:05:00.001-07:00

I blogged about Art Prize last year here. And now I'm blogging about it again.

I really think it is the coolest event of our city. An event that I would even say makes our city very cool. An event that should make you want to come and visit us. (We have a spacious guestroom that is currently unoccupied - although you'd had to share a bathroom with 2 preschoolers). It's on exhibit until October 9.

On a whim, we took advantage of great weather on Monday and headed downtown as a family. I don't think we had pushed the boys in strollers all summer long hardly. But we figured if we wanted to make good ground, we needed them not to be walking. We kept moving and strategically hit some of the larger venues so that we could take in the most artwork as possible without having to walk too far. There didn't seem to be as many ginormous exhibits like last year, but still some incredible pieces of artwork. And some others that were ........ (I'll let you fill in the blank....but let's just say, their mother might have been the only one that voted for them).

Pictures obviously don't serve justice to the actual artwork pieces.

Turning back the clock

2011-09-28T12:38:00.000-07:00

Felt like the good ol' college days! Got together with 3 friends from college this past weekend. We had all lived together at one point or another while in college. With varied majors - Recreation Management, Biblical Literature, Psychology, and Nursing.....we always packed in lots of fun despite our different programs. It has been WAAAAYYYYY TOOOOO long since I had seen some of them - Ok, all of them. We left husbands and children at home and gathered at my friend's parent's house since it was the most central location for all of us.

We enjoyed hanging out, eating pizza, getting pedicures, sleeping in as long as our bodies would let us (not much past 8am), hitting a few garage sales, playing tennis, P.F. Chang's, a little shopping, watching a movie, and as the picture below depicts....going to the local ice cream shop, of which I'm pretty sure we set some sort of record. We hit it 3 times in about a 24-hour period. And the other girls even hit it on their way out of town. Jenna is double-fisting it in the picture below....but that's totally allowable since she's expecting another baby!

So thankful to have these Godly women in my life - even if we live hours away from each other and don't get to talk as often as we'd like. Looking forward to when we can get together again! Maybe we'll even bring our families next time.......maybe. :)

House Update

2011-09-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick snapshot of what our little exterior update looks like. You can hardly even tell that the house had shutters in the BEFORE pic. They were white. And the BEFORE pic also doedsn't really show how bad the columns were looking. I painted the columns about 3/4 of the way up, but I made Adam do the more dangerous job and do the top 1/4. We discussed it. He knows how to fall better than I do. I'd probably break my neck falling 6 feet. I've seen him fall off a roof before and he was fine. Thankfully, there was no falling in this project.

BEFORE

AFTER

Shoot me up

2011-09-07T12:33:00.000-07:00

A few months back some friends informed us about a Plasma donation center in our area. I'm pretty sure I'm in love. Never has making money been so easy! We attempt to live primarily off of one income, a youth pastor's income, and quite frankly, I feel pretty blessed. Can we spend money whenever we want? No. Do we limit areas in which we spend money? Yes. Do I clip coupons, scour sale ads, buy at thrift stores and garage sales, utilize hand-me-downs? For sure. Do I feel like we have everything we could possibly need? Absolutely.

But, it is nice to find ways to have a little extra room in the budget. And there is a plasma donation center less than 10 minutes from where we live! I have no trouble with being poked and having blood drawn. I used to donate blood and never had any issues. Doesn't make me squeamish at all. And I feel like the process is super easy. Because I'm a smaller female (the amount of plasma you need to donate is based on your size), it's actually a pretty quick process. I'm usually in and out of the center in around an hour. And, there is childcare! Landon and Tate love going to the "Plasma Playplace." I now have the chance to just sit and read a book! The place is very clean and professional feeling. I only wish I would've known about it sooner! We're not gonna get rich off of giving plasma, but it does make for a little extra side money.

Adam has attempted to try to give, but they keep testing his blood and something in his protein keeps coming back "abnormal." We think it could be because he is actually an alien from another planet - which would explain his superhero tendencies.

Laboring on Labor day

2011-09-05T18:39:00.000-07:00

Labor Day is a chance to take a break from your "paying" job and spend some time laboring on other projects. Right? That's what I convinced Adam of anyways.
Don't worry, we had our chance of relaxing and playing over the holiday weekend as well. There was some of this:

(This is what Adam was doing this weekend while I spent relentless hours attempting to learn how to dive. My goal at the beginning of the summer was to learn how to dive. I used to know how, but then when you don't do it for about 10 years....it's all of a sudden very scary to jump into the water head first. I'm not the most graceful person. Well, I still don't have a "pretty" dive, but I've improved and I at least spent some time trying! We'll build on it for next year.)

And we've recently started a house project. Nothing too costly or extensive. We took down all of our shutters. I spent some time cleaning them off. Adam and his dad spent Saturday afternoon power washing our house. And today, Adam began the painting of the shutters.

Our house is a very light gray and the shutters and all of the trim were white. Kinda "blah" looking. Last year at about this time we painted the exterior doors a navy blue. We bought enough paint to do the shutters as well. We also plan to give our columns a fresh paint of white paint as they really need it. Hopefully, I'll be able to post "before" and "after" pics of the front of the house soon (Don't be waiting by your computers though....by "soon," I mean a couple of weeks)!

Some Good Summer Fun!

2011-09-01T19:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a few pictures of the boys from the last month. Have to keep those grandmas happy!

Relaxing in the hammock with daddy.

Getting ready to bake a cake for Aunt Jaime.

Tate had an incident with a pen. You've got to keep your eye on him!

But he's so cute!

Landon smiling it up for the camera.

A different world....

2011-08-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a few cultural things we discovered while we were in Brazil:

- They take lots of showers. Especially one before the evening meal. Everybody showers before dinner.

- The big meal of the day is lunch.

- When engaged, both the guy and the girl wear an engagement ring. Many date and are engaged for quite awhile.

- They have hot dogs there, but they don't eat them like we do. They chop them up and put them in a sauce with a bunch of toppings on a sandwich bun. It's very rare to see them eating one ballpark style like we do.

- People eat with both arms on the table. It's weird to have your hands in your lap at the table.

- They use nicknames a lot for one another.

- They are very affectionate.

There's just a few tidbits of how they do things in another part of the world.

Brazil Update Letter

2011-08-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

Here's the Thank You/Update letter we wrote to those that supported us through prayer/finances for our recent trip to Brazil.

Dear Friends and Family,

When we think about what God has allowed us to be a part of the past few weeks, we cannot help but think of you also. We are very greateful in your parntership of the ministry opportunity we had to lead a team to serve in Brazil. You prayers and financial support paved the way for God's work to be done!

Even before we left, we saw God's hand at work. All of the necessary funds that were needed to make this trip possible came though. No only that, but we had an excess that we were able to use to purchase needed equipment for Camp Paraidse! We loved being able to purchase equipment to further bless the camp and allow them to be more effective in their ministry to chidlren and teens.

While we were in Brazil, we had numerous opportunitites to bless the camp through our manual labor. We cleared several areas of jungle, we painted multiple projects, and we helped to wash dishes and clean up after meals.

Even though there was a lanugage barried, we also had a considerable amount of time to interact with people. And that's why we will never think of Brazil like we used to - because we've met some of the wonderful people that live there and had the chance to share with them our hearts!

As leaders, we also played a large role in helping to guide our team of teenagers to grasp all that they were experiencing, doing, and feeling. For some of them, this was the first time to even ride on an aiplane! So needless to say, taking them out of the country was a huge thing for them! It was so amazing to see them serving even though they were exhausted, share their testimonies in front of a large group, love on children, and come to love another part of God's world. When we shared with our church about our experience last Sunday, several of our youth were even brought to tears as they talked about what they experienced and how God had worked in their lives. We're sure that God will continue to use this experience to challenge all of our hearts to live our lives more fully for Christ.

We also were very grateful for the connection that we had with a missionary family that our church supports. We had read prayer letters and heard reports from Dan & Kelly Cook about their work in Brazil, but to actually be able to spend time at Camp Paradise and visit their church plant - Koinonia Baptist Church - it was a new way for us to engage what they had been called to do. It puts a very personal face onto world missions for us. They were excellent hosts and we enjoyed having a lot of interaction was them as they shared their home with us, fed us, saw to our health needs, took us to tourist spots, and educated us on many cultural and spiritual things about Brazil that were helpful to know.

Thank you again for allowing God to use you to be a part of this ministry opportunity!

Blessings,

Adam and Becca

P.S. By the way, Landon and Tate had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa Vig! They did a lot of special things together and made some wonderful memories.

(Sorry for the lack of good pictures. I literally took 25 pics. I knew our team would share all of our photos after the trip and some of those teens were shooting pics every 3.5 seconds. I just haven't gotten access to those photos yet)

I did some reading...

2011-08-03T17:58:00.000-07:00

We're back from Brazil! What a great trip. I'll try to post more about that next, but I felt inspired to share what I read while gone.

I value reading, although I don't make time to read in my everyday life - well, besides children's storybooks to the boys, the Bible, and devotional books. It had been over a year since I had read a novel. But give me some long flights and layovers and I can skirt through books pretty fast.

I asked for recommendations on Facebook and got an overwhelming amount of responses. I didn't want to pick up duds, so I was super grateful for all of the great ideas that people gave me. After a trip to the library and a few loans from people, these are the books that I made it through.

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall & Denver Moore

Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo

The Bible - I was on a reading plan to get me through the Bible in 3 months. Well, it took me exactly 4 months.

And I also made it through portions of Crazy Love by Francis Chan and Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung.

I would highly recommend all of these books! Overall, they all left me desiring to live my life fuller, love people deeper, and draw closer to God. I like books that leave me feeling those things.

Brazil: Here we come!

2011-07-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

In just a few hours, we'll be getting ready to head to BRAZIL!

It's like one of those things that you've been planning for - but you never actually think that it will really arrive. Or that Jesus would obviously choose to return before the event arrived. I used to think that way about getting married. Jesus would most certainly choose to make His return the night before I got married. Welp, we're approaching 8 years of marriage. Jesus still hasn't come and it looks like I'm going to make it to Brazil before He comes also. :)

We're looking forward to partnering with missionaries Dan and Kelly Cook and Camp Paradise, in Recife, Brazil. There's 14 on our team. Pray that we will share God's love in word and deed. Pray that we will be a blessing to all that we come into contact with and have the chance to serve. And ultimately, pray that God's will be done!

And on a personal note....since this is our personal blog.....Pray for our boys to do well while we're gone. They'll probably be fine, it's their mother I'm worried about (yes, Becca is writing this). Grandma and Grandpa Vig have come to take care of the boys. I was a bit ridiculously emotional this morning at church anytime someone asked me what the boys were going to be doing while we were gone. Sheesh! Waterworks! I know they will love spending time with their grandparents! They will have a boatload of fun! And I know that I'll be fine once I get going and get past the saying goodbye part.

Until next time...

Tate turns 2!

2011-07-14T18:55:00.000-07:00

Two years ago today, Tate officially came into our lives and was born into this world. We were supposed to be having a pool party but had to cancel since we were kinda in the middle of having a baby. I remember feeling much, much more laid back with labor for our 2nd child. Maybe a little too laid back. By the time we got to the hospital and checked in I was already dilated past an 8! Whoa, I didn't think I was that far along! Epidural, please, NOW! He came a week early, but thankfully, he didn't bake any longer in the oven since he was born at 10lbs. 8oz!

Fast forward two years and we have this wonderful healthy boy to be so thankful for! According to his 2 year old check-up, he's a bit above average in weight, but still in the 90th percentile for heighth! He could be a tall boy! He's only a couple of inches behind Landon.

He has a personality all his own. Sometimes he is very comical and very noisy and other times, he's shy and not wanting to interact with others. He still likes to cuddle and hug. He sleeps with a blanket put over his head and with a donkey and a duck. He seems to be much more dramatic than Landon ever was. He will still throw fits and try to get his way. He also seems to find his way into things he's not supposed to. Leave him alone for too long and he'll dump things out, take things off shelves, color on the wall, eat something, etc. He's a momma's boy, but he's also not afraid to jump ship and just make a run for it and disappear! Oh, we love this little guy!

Out of Control!

2011-07-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

Rather than doing things I should be doing (like cleaning, packing for the upcoming missions trip, making snacks for our 2 pool parties this week, etc.), I'm going to blog about my garden. I must say, I'm quite proud of her. She looks totally and completely out of control! I like to think of her as "full and happy." This year's garden is twice the size of last year's.

In this year's garden, I've planted:
- Several varieties of tomatoes

- Zucchini

- Summer Squash

- Green beans

- Cauliflower

- Lettuce

- Green pepper

- Strawberries

My green beans are rockin' it! We already have gotten enough for generous portions at 2 meals.

I'm expecting a decent bounty of Zucchini and Summer Squash. Someone should've warned me how crazy big these plants get! I'm sure I put too many in my garden!

My tomato plants seem to have gotten a disease called Septoria Leaf Spot (totally self-diagnosed.....by me, not the plants). I've eaten one cherry tomato and there are numerous green tomatoes on the vines, but unless I get this situation under control, it could be a smaller crop this year.

I have one beautiful head of lettuce. The seeds for lettuce are super small. I actually attempted to start some of my garden from seeds this year. The Zucchini and Summer squash did great from seeds. Green beans, eh, not so much. I ended up buying some plants as I wanted a good amount of green beans this year. I had tried to do some lettuce from seeds, but my sweet darling son Tate (also known as Tatezilla - destroyer of all things) found my seedlings in their earliest stages when I had brought them indoors to avoid frost and dumped some - my lettuce being the main casualty. One little lucky seed of lettuce survived as it was unknowingly tranplanted by Tate into another container. I wasn't sure if it would amount to much, but I'm thinking this has salad written all over it!

The strawberries got into the garden in June, with the hope that next year we'll actually see some strawberries from them. Oh, and Momma Strahm gave me a rhubarb transplant that seems to be doing well in another area of our property.

Cauliflower. They've gotten big and I have way too many plants of them, but we'll see if they actually produce anything. I'm optimistic.

And I've got one little pepper plant which I got on a clearance sale. I couldn't resist. We'll give peppers another shot even though they were very disappointing last year.

If we had plenty of land, I would totally be one of those people with a HUGE garden and freezing and canning things like crazy. But for now, this satisfies.

No comment for you.

2011-07-07T20:50:00.000-07:00

For some reason I'm unable to comment on anyone else's blogs. Argh. Don't worry, I'm still reading you.

Family Vacation

2011-07-07T19:41:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe the Strahm family vacation has come and gone!

My parents, siblings, and their families all headed up to our house for a Grand Rapids area vacation. Every other year we try to take a family vacation together. In 2007, we went to St.Louis. In 2008, we went to Silver Lake, MI. In 2009, they went to Gatlinburg, TN (Sorry, no link....I was in the middle of giving birth to Tate and we didn't join in on that vacation). 2013....we're thinking to maybe head out West somewhere?!

We had lots of fun visiting local spots. Frederik Meijer Gardens. John Ball Zoo. GR Public Museum. Coopersville & Marne Railway. Lake Michigan beach. Craig's Cruisers. Fireworks. Plus, a trip to see Cars 2 in the theatre, some time at our pool, a rousing game of Hide and Seek in the house, and multiple rounds of the game Ticket to Ride! Unfortnately, a few people didn't feel good at times, including Landon with an ear infection and Tate getting his molars in. Coordinating T-shirts, naps, mitten-shaped cookies, and good weather helped to keep spirits fairly high.

Here's some of my favorite pics....in no particular order (check out my Facebook for more).

Summer Fun

2011-06-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

Wow! Holy cow! We're already nearing the end of June!

The month took off running for us. We had over 15 graduation open houses to hit from our church! Which meant no cooking for several weekends in a row! Lovely!

The pool is open and we've had several pool parties already.

We've had regular playdates with friends at parks and at our house!

We got several projects done around the house!

Summer Softball season has begun!

VBS is in full swing for us this week!

Here's just a couple of pictures of our recent adventures:

Trip to the ZOO with the Miller's! The Pumas (the BEST animal...according to Adam) were very active.

Must've been feeding time. Pretty sure they are eyeing a small child while I took this picture.

Checking out the Walker Festival!

I like going to this event because you get to walk around and area businesses have lots of freebies that they give away and drawings to sign up for. They also have activities for kids, a petting zoo, food vendors, etc. And they also have the coolest kid's port-a-john - (if "cool" and "port-a-john" are allowed to be in the same sentence)!

See below pic. The girl's one had princesses on it.

And the above is some....race car....I guess. I don't remember.

My boys get excited about things with wheels though.

Haircuts for my Handsome Boys!

And you should see what my husband did to his hair to get into the VBS SonSurf Beach Bash Theme this week. Oy. He bleached his hair. It's so bright I can hardly even look at him for more than 3 seconds. Oh dear. :)

Hiding God's Word in their Heart

2011-06-05T19:18:00.000-07:00

Landon made his debut on the church stage this morning. The preschoolers recited I Kings 10:8. They all did so great! These little precious minds can soak up so much! I was proud of my little boy! I value those that put in the time, energy, and thought every week to work at teaching these kids about God. It's certainly not just babysitting! There is eternal value in what is being done. (Landon is the littlest one in the front row).

After them, the next age group of kids recited a whole chapter in Psalms that they had memorized!

Seriously, these kids are putting most of the congregation to shame when it comes to Scripture memorization. Including myself.

Most church programs put so much emphasis on Scripture memorization at the younger stages, but somehow it gets lost once one gets out of elementary school. These kids reminded me of the importance of hiding God's word in my heart.

I'll tackle that after my current Bible project. I'm attempting to read the Bible, front to back, in 3 months. Yowzers! I'm over halfway through at this point, which is honestly the furthest I've ever made it when it comes to reading it from cover to cover. I'm confident in saying that I've read the whole Bible - I've just never actually read it from cover to cover. I've tried 1-year reading plans several times...and I've failed at those several times. I wouldn't recommend reading it like this always, but I will say it has helped to remind me of the fluidity of the Bible. This is one big message that is continual from the first page to the last. Although I'm still in the Old Testament, I totally see Jesus coming! Oh, the richness of God's word!

Someone else's treasure...

2011-05-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

I had a little garage sale this past weekend.
Ok. Maybe it got a little out of control.

For the past month or two, we have been collecting donations of "stuff" from family and friends.

The thought was to have a garage sale to help raise money for the upcoming missions trip we are leading to Brazil with some of the youth from our church. Approximately 25 families (I lost count - I know it was over 20) rose to the occasion and cleaned out their basements and closets. Thankfully, we have a large unfinished and fairly empty basement in which to put most of this stuff.

And I'm a dork, and I really do love organizing and sorting in preparation for something like this. A bit overwhelming at times, but thankfully, I had a good amount of help in prepping and carrying out the sale.

There was an 80% chance of rain on both Friday and Saturday! EEK!
But hey, my God controls the weather.
Friday was G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S!
Saturday started off rainy, but eventually cleared up and allowed us to have a steady stream of people.

Overall, we made about $1,150!
(I still have a couple of items listed on Craigslist)
I consider this pretty exciting since we didn't have any big ticket items. The most expensive thing we had was $40. And I priced things to sell. Most clothes were only $.50 (We had a ridiculous amount of clothes).

So, WAHOO! We are getting super close to reaching our financial goals for the Brazil trip!
God provides!

My little boys wearing their suits....

2011-05-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

My handsome boys. Here's the boys on Easter morning dressed in their cute little suits. Their Aunt Jaime gave them to the boys for Christmas. They were quite cute running around like little men. And unfortunately, they had another reason to wear them recently. Adam's Grandpa Willis passed away on May 4. Although a sad time of having to say goodbye and dealing with the sobering thought of our fleeting time here on earth, it was good to spend time with family remembering the memories that we have been given through his life and celebrating the promise of eternal life we have if we trust in Jesus. During the visitation time, Adam took Landon up to the casket for a moment. Landon's comment was something along the lines of, "Grandpa Willis is sleeping......That's not a very good place to sleep." Oh. From the mouths of little ones.

Here's a picture of 4 generations of Willis men taken in July 2009. We'll miss you Grandpa Willis.

EaStEr

2011-04-22T05:47:00.000-07:00

Easter recognizes the most important aspect of Christ. As the Son of God, he came to this earth in human form, was crucified as a sacrifice for our sins, and then 3 days later ROSE again!

HE ROSE AGAIN! Did you hear that??

HE ROSE AGAIN!!

Pretty amazing stuff to wrap your mind around.

While I truly believe this is the whole entire reason for the holiday, I will admit I like some other traditions of the season. Mostly the candy.

Diving into my blog archives, here's a blast from 2 years ago.

Click here to visit my thoughts on Easter Candy....

Getaway for the Girls

2011-04-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

A much anticipated event has come and gone.

I've been very blessed to stay in touch with several girls that I went to high school with. I know undoubtedly that the reason I've stayed connected with them is because of the bond of Christ. We've all moved onto the rigors of adulthood and being "responsible." And we've all spread out over the general Midwest region. But that doesn't mean that we can't get away and celebrate one another and the momentous occasion of all of us turning "30" in the past year. We put it on the calendar months ago and the event finally came. Kissing our husbands and children goodbye, we all met up for a weekend of fun!

Our destination was chosen pretty much solely so that we could go to IKEA!

We spent about 4.5 hours at IKEA, wandering through the showrooms and aisles of home goods.

I think my favorite repeated quote of the weekend was:
"I would commit a crime for that _________."

(fill in the blank) (i.e. kitchen, closet, desk, toilet bowl scrubber)

(OK, I don't remember anyone saying that about the toilet bowl scrubber - but it was only 99cents! I got 3.)

Here we had asked some strangers to take a picture while we jumped on the nearest bedroom set.

We had found a great deal on a hotel room for 2 nights and enjoyed having a place to rest our feet and hang out while we ate junk food and talked into the wee hours of the mornings. Now if only hotels would have an adults-only hour in the pool room.

We also enjoyed that a Trader Joe's grocery store was super close to our hotel. They have some fun products and we went there twice.
I think the below packaging for their cereal bars is hilarious!

A bit sad that the event is over, but so glad that we were able to fit it into our full schedules and have the chance to spend some special time together.
You don't let friendships like this get away.

Getting spoiled in Spring!

2011-04-12T17:57:00.000-07:00

We've loved getting to enjoy some decent weather these days. The boys and I have ventured to several area parks recently. Here's a few pics.

I love this one! Notice that Tate is trying to eat the stale bread that he is supposed to be throwing to the birds!

We were also SPOILED with the visit of Adam's mom this past weekend. The boys loved having a grandma here! Every time Landon woke up, he would ask, "Is Grandma still here?" Even though we said goodbye to her several days ago, he's still been asking. She put together a fun Easter basket for them full of candy and little goodies. They also made a trip (or two) with her to the toy store. Plus, Adam and I were also spoiled as well since it allowed us to get out more without the precious and consuming kiddos! We did our first adult "taste test" (got paid $50 each to Gazelle's sports store for tasting 6 different protein bars), enjoyed a lunch out, caught up with some friends, and got in our first tennis game of the year! We also had an Easter egg hunt for the boys in our yard while she was here. Landon especially loved it. I've done a few more with him since then. I envision it as practice for when we participate in a community Easter egg hunt with him right before Easter. He's gonna tear it up!

Is It Possible?

2011-04-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

Not sure why my dad thought it would be a good idea to try and take a nap in the middle of the living room.

Also, not sure why I thought it was a possible idea to try and take a family picture!

Or a picture of the boys!

Entryway/Stairway/Hallway Update

2011-04-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

I think Adam has a couple of before pics on his computer, but he's not home. And I'm choosing to update the blog instead of working out. So.....here's the "after" pictures. Lots of sanding and patching had to be done. We painted the trim. We tore up all of the bright green carpet that was on the stairs and in the hallway. We decided to leave the edge of the stairway showing and stained the edge of the stairs, while painting the spindles black. We stripped and re-stained the railings. Adam used leftover wood flooring to go in place of the tile that was in the entryway. We picked up that mirror at a rummage sale over the weekend. Paid $5 for it. Took off the glittery vinyl snowflake stickers on the mirror. And then sanded the frame and painted it black. The hallway isn't very exciting, but it's nice, new, and clean feeling.

Cruisin' on training wheels

2011-03-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

We had a few teaser spring days in Michigan where we got to enjoy some outside weather. We took Landon's bike out for a spin. He LOVED it! He was laughing and smiling the whole time. He's pretty good at pedaling, although the terrain isn't quite as smooth as our basement floor and he has a little trouble getting going on his own sometimes.

Bathroom Makeover

2011-03-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

The main floor 1/2 bath is finished! I still want to find some new artwork, hand towels, and other dilly dallies to go with the new decor. I'm trying to save that for my trip to IKEA in April with some girlfriends.

BEFORE

This before pic was actually taken when we had looked at the house for the first time before buying it. Sorry, I'm awful at taking "before" pics before we start projects. The purple was bright. The border was 80's/90's ish looking. The cabinet and trim had been painted white - and painted a bit poorly. The toilet's seat shifted when you sat on it and would randomly "run" after being flushed. A jiggle of the handle would fix it. This pic doesn't show it, but they had put the toilet paper holder on the wall, but not on a stud probably, so over time they probably started ripping it off the wall with use. To fix it, they just attached a piece of wood to the wall and then attached the toilet paper holder to that. The door to the bathroom was not in good shape and was splitting apart. This is the bathroom that is used the most when we have people coming over, so we're glad we did a few things to get it looking and functioning better.

AFTER

The color of the walls is Canary Grass - I know you can't really tell well on a computer monitor. It's a green. We stripped the cabinets and mirror frame. And then repainted them a glossy black. It looks sharp! We found a super cheap vinyl remnant that is a gray-ish color. I think I paid just under $15 for it! We replaced the toilet. We patched some walls and moved the toilet holder and towels holders. We also painted the trim and ceilings in the bathroom (as well as the hallways and entryway). And we've also put a new door in. It's all very wonderful! I love completed projects!

We're pretty much done with the entire project as a whole. Adam is completing the stairway railing. I couldn't find "before" pics of any of the other areas. Once the entryway/stairway is complete, I'll post a pic of some of the other areas.

Everything is GREEN!

2011-03-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

I'll admit that I don't really know who St.Patrick was and why we celebrate him. Click here to see what the History Channel says about him. I didn't really read it. You don't have to either unless you are feeling especially inquisitive.

I used to try to get away with wearing as little green as possible on this day. To avoid "the pinch," I'd just point out the small fleck of green on my sock or watch or something else easy to hide. I've grown up since then and realized as long as I don't go overboard and wear a leprechaun suit or something, it's kinda fun to peruse through my green-hued clothing items and determine which is the best one for the day.

For dinner, we had Ponytail and Pigtails over (a.k.a. Moppy/Maria and Ryn).

And I made some of our food green.

Applesauce

Cornbread Muffins

And well, the salad was already green. And the chili......I don't think I could've made that green.

And on another somewhat related note. I'm really looking forward to the day when my children like to eat the food that I make. Something like, "Thanks for making a nutritiuos and delicious dinner for us to enjoy Mom. I know you put loving time into preparing it for us and we really appreciate it." Maybe a little far-fetched, but I LONG for the day. I'm not asking to be touted as a famous gourmet chef, but I'm certainly not as awful as they make me out to be! They are making me a little self-conscious to expose my cooking to other people when they unanimously turn their noses up at it! Unless I serve them hot dogs, chicken nuggets, or pizza, they are quite possibly going to whine their way through dinner. (They did think the green corn bread muffins and applesauce was very cool.....but I'm a mean, mean mom and I don't let them fill up on that if they aren't willing to eat the main course). At least my husband eats anything I put in front of him without making a fuss.

Ahhhhh! What's that?!?!

2011-03-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

One thing after another with Landon this past month! We had been healthy for too long. First, croup. Then, an ear infection. And now, an allergic reaction to amoxycillin.

A week after he had been on amoxycillin, he woke up with splotches all over his face, neck, chest, and back. It spread as the day went on and he was itching at it. We were thinking, "bed bugs" or maybe an allergic reaction to the strawberries we had the night before. The off-hours doctor I talked to said it may just be a reaction to a virus. Landon didn't have a temperature and was otherwise happy and normal, so he told me not to be too worried about it and even continue the amoxycillin. Sunday morning, it was even worse. His cheeks were puffy and swollen and he had even more of the rash. After a very quick trip to the urgent care center on Sunday morning, it was fairly conclusive that this was just a delayed reaction to the amoxycillin. (It really was a quick trip. We were in and out within 20 minutes!) (When we had to go for his ear infection, we were there for nearly 3 hours).

Anyways. Glad it was fairly a minimal reaction and didn't involve constricted breathing or anything.

RENOVATION ZONE

2011-03-05T13:38:00.000-08:00

So, we've tackled our house projects! There is NO MORE bright green carpent in our house. This is a big deal. There was a lot of it, and little by little over the last 1 1/2 years, we've managed to get rid of it all! (The above pic is Adam thinking, "Why are you taking a picture of me?" And my verbal response was, "It's for the blog!")

What are we working on? Our front entryway, the staircase going upstairs, the hallway upstairs and downstairs, the downstairs bathroom. And because I have a handy (and handsome) husband who has experience in painting and carpentry, he doesn't let us cut corners very often. I don't know how many times I've either verbally said or thought in my head, "How many more times do we have to sand?!" We're sanding and painting all of the trim. Patching, sanding, and painting all of the walls. Staining (and stripping) the edge of the stairs and the new handrail and spindles that Adam will make. Stripped the bathroom vanity and mirror frame and will repaint them. New vinyl flooring in the bathroom. New throne (a.k.a. toilet in the bathroom). Carpet will be laid on the stairs and the downstairs hallway. Whew! We've finally gotten through most of the prepwork and will be able to start getting some colors on walls this next week hopefully. My hands have an awful, dry feeling from doing all of that stripping and sanding and there's a lovely layer of dust on everything in the house because of the mess we've made! I love envisioning the finished product though and I love that we are able to do the majority of this work ourselves! No one is too young to be put to work in this house. ;)

Landon hasn't helped at all (OK, Tate hasn't really either....he just picked up some sandpaper this morning and I thought I'd snap a pic) as he's been plagued with an ear infection this past week. This is the first one that he's had. I didn't take him to the doctor until Friday, so he suffered through it most of the week. Plus, he had croup the week before. I'm so ready for him to be healthy and happy and back to his normal self. This is a pic of him in his healthy, happy state singing the ABC's. I took video of it but it's not in a user-friendly format for this somewhat tech un-saavy girl.

Look what I dehydrated!

2011-03-05T13:10:00.000-08:00

I asked for a food dehydrator for Christmas and I got one! I hadn't had the chance to pull it out yet or even think about it, but finally a week or so ago, I thought I'd fire it up and start seeing what I could do with it. I've never used one before, so I was pretty clueless. Did a little bit of asking around and research on the ever-present internet.

First, was some venison jerky. I didn't love this. But Adam liked it. I'm not crazy about jerky though in general.

Next was some fruit leather (made from unsweetened applesauce) and pineapple tidbits. The fruit leather was good. I'm pretty sure I didn't share it with anyone else. I ate nearly 1/4 of it right off of the trays while it was still warm. The boys really liked the pineapple tidbits.

I've also done a batch of apple slices. (sorry, no pic......it's apple slices, c'mon, not much to the imagination). The boys and I have been eating a lot of these.

Overall, it's a fun little machine to have. It does seem like it takes a REALLY long time to dehydrate things. Most of this stuff took 8 - 11 hours. The dehydrator that I have is one of the lower ones on the market, but it does the job. It is louder than what I expected it to be. It's nice to know that the food is healthy. For example, the fruit leather would be comparative to a Fruit Roll-up, except that I know there was no sugar added or a bunch of other preservatives or other "stuff." Also, the boys like the pineapple tidbits and apple slices so much that they feel like it's a treat. The next thing I think I'll try is yogurt leather!

A lot in one post

2011-02-21T07:31:00.000-08:00

Adam's sister visited us a few weekends ago from the East Coast. Tate enjoyed his rides in the reuseable shopping bag. Who knew those bags had so many uses?! We also celebrated Maria's 29th(!!!) birthday over that weekend. Dinner out and then pedicures for the girls while the big men took the little men home to give them baths and put them to bed. I won't lie. I love pedicures. I only get them done a few times a year, but it's soooooo wonderful. A pampering that is well worth it. Glad we could celebrate Maria's birthday with her!

Valentine's day. Lovey dovey. Adam and I got a babysitter and went out for dinner and did some shopping. All with giftcards we had. We didn't spend a dime for our date (well, besides to pay the babysitter). We did actually get each other gifts this year. Sometimes we nix that. I got Adam a giftcard to get a massage. We'd had conversations about it before and weren't entirely sure how we felt about someone else massaging the other person. But I'm a pretty awful massager. My wimpy hands and wrists last all of about 5 minutes on his meaty back and shoulders before they are burning and aching. He is still slightly leary about it, but I want him to give it a shot as a special treat. If you're lucky, maybe he'll blog about his experience once he gets it done. He got me an assortment of little things that make me happy - a few cute shirts, a super cute pair of shoes, and my favorite chai tea drink. All at deeply discounted prices - he sure knows the way to my heart. :)

This past weekend we had a Sr.High Youth Conference. Our boys went up to Newaygo for a couple of nights to Moppy and Poppy's. Great speakers (the talking kind and the kind that music comes out of). Passionate worship times. Challenging and encouraging words. Fun times playing extreme spoons. Sleeping in our church. Making sack lunches. Probably the most impactful session for me was hearing the story of Heather Williams. She spent most of the hour sharing her incredibly compelling story. Really, I think I cried 6 different times. She has a song that has gotten play time on radio stations. I'd heard it and loved it before. Now that I know her life story and what she was going through in her life when she wrote it, pretty sure I'll cry every time I hear it. Here's a link to a YouTube video that has the song and lyrics of the song called "Hallelujah."

And we are in a Winter Wonderland again. We got a bunch of snow yesterday. PM Church was even cancelled. Otherwise, our previous Snowmageddon snowfall from a few weeks ago had almost completely melted late last week. We saw what grass looked like again. We've probably got a good 6-8 inches on the ground now. Sigh. I knew it wasn't really gone for good.

Here's a really cute pic of Tate sitting on the toilet. We're not potty-training yet. We've just had a few successful times of getting him on the toilet for an obvious approaching #2.

And Landon has turned a new corner. He likes to sing! Previously, he would request that I would sing song after song, but he would never join me. Now, I'll catch him singing songs by himself. And when I sing, he'll sing with me now also. He's really good at his "ABC's", "Zaccheaus", "Jesus Loves Me", "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." He's pretty cute when he gets in the song mode.

And now you know...

2011-02-09T21:28:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to lie. I like to eat at Long John Silver's. It makes me happy.
Yes, nearly everything is battered and fried and I'm sure grotesquely awful for your digestive system. But it still makes me happy. Some friends were recently surprised, or maybe appalled, at my excitement over this establishment. It's not like I eat there every week. Maybe twice a year. Ok, maybe 3 times.
I just felt the need to share this with my blog readers. Now you know.

Here are some other somewhat "quirky" things you might, or might not, find useful to know about me:
- Our bed gets made EVERY morning. I do not like to get into an unmade bed at night. I'm not at all a neat freak. I just like my bed to be made.
- I think these two jobs sound fabulous: writing for a greeting card company or coming up with paint color names. So cool.
- I've been doing a lot of research and reading on Islam lately. Nope, not thinking of converting. Just educating myself.
- I find it somewhat painful to just sit and watch a movie. I MUST be doing something. I do not like to let 2 hours pass without having anything to show for it.
- Whenever we're driving in a lot of traffic, I nearly always make the comment, "I wonder where all of these people are going."
- 95% of the time, I sleep like a rock. I fall asleep quickly and I have very little awareness of anything until about 8am. Tonight is one of those exceptions - which is why I'm writing a blog post at 1am.
- I'm starting to lose some of my very large "sweet" tooth - I think it's starting to turn into a "salty" tooth.
- Most of my dreams consist of being chased (mostly by horribly vicious animals, but sometimes by horribly vicious people) or marital unfaithfulness. Awesome. Thankfully, I sleep like a rock most of the time and don't remember my dreams very often.
- I really love getting the mail. Seriously, I'm so glad our mail comes early in the day. You just never know what you're going to find when you open your mailbox door!

What about you?

Anything quirky you'd like to share???

Landon Turns 3!

2011-01-30T19:31:00.000-08:00

Landon turned 3 last Tuesday! Oh so fun! We tried to make sure the day was special for him. Everyone in our family wore GREEN - it's his favorite color.

He got to talk to his Aunt Jaime first thing in the morning on skype.

We brought cupcakes to his friends at church (with green frosting).

I let him pick what we had for dinner. His menu choice was hot dogs, french fries, and carrots.

We opened presents and cards from several of his grandparents. And cards from great-grandparents, cousins, and aunts and uncles. (So.....are we bad? We don't really get our kids presents at this stage in the game. If they need something, we get it for them. And they get spoiled with toys from everyone else!)

We let him go to the toy store and pick out some new cars. (If you are on the Toys R' Us birthday list, they send you a $3 gift certificate on your birthday, which for Landon that equals 3 new Hot Wheels cars!)

And he got to spend a night at Moppy and Poppy's house this past weekend. They requested to have him come spend the night for a special overnighter (no little brother!).

We had his 3-year old check up at the doctor's the day after his birthday. He immediately associates the doctor's office with shots, suckers, and stickers. While we were getting ready to go, the following conversation took place:

Landon: Mom, do I need to get any shots?

Me: I don't know. You might.

Landon: I think they ran out of shots.

They didn't. He got two of them. He did really good leading up to it though. The doctor even told him that he'd be getting shots and he handled it like a trooper up until just seconds before they actually stuck him. As for his stats, he's averaged out on height and weight - pretty much in the 50th percentile for both. BUT he's potty-trained and has great verbal and motor skills for his age.

I know this is Landon's birthday post, but Tate had his 18-month check-up at the same time. 50/75th percentile for weight, but 90th for height! He might just pass his brother up some day!

Anyways. We're grateful for every moment we have gotten with these guys! Just praying that we are able to raise them to know Jesus and teach them how to love and live life with purpose!

The Christmas gatherings have come to an end...

2011-01-21T19:45:00.000-08:00

We had our final Christmas celebration last weekend. We drove down to Indy to spend time with my (Becca's) family. We took off Thursday late in the evening. With the boys at the ages they are, we tend to prefer to travel when they should be sleeping. Makes car rides more enjoyable.

On Saturday morning, some of us went to watch my nieces basketball game. I think they are waiting for a rebound...or they are praising Jesus. Not sure.
Then we had a festive time celebrating Christmas. Whenever we have holiday celebrations on days other than the actual holiday, I like to pretend it's still really the actual holiday. I tend to make comments like, "Who's calling on Christmas day?" if the phone rings. I'm a dork. I know. Unfortunately, Adam came down with some sort of bug on "Christmas" day and he spent most of the day feeling sick and hiding out in a bedroom. Good thing I know him so well, otherwise I might be afriad he didn't like my family.
How could he not like these people? :)

Grandma and Grandpa with all of their grandkids.

My brothers and I. I'm really surprised I didn't get any bunny ears in any of the pictures taken. They've mellowed out with age. :)

The boys got some cool new tractors, monster trucks, and airplanes. I think their Uncle Dan and Uncle Jon were re-living their childhood when they picked out toys for them.

And we got to meet the newest member of our family! A.J.! He's a good and snuggly little baby that could probably get a job as a professional sleeper.
Next big gathering is Strahm Vacation 2011! The hope was to find a vacation house that all 17 of us could stay in within the midwest somewhere. Oh, and it had to be affordable for everyone. After a week of searching and phone calls and emails, it's been pretty discouraging. Back-up plan is vacation at the Willis estate (ahem, that's our house). I'm still hopeful that something will pan out, but if not, we'll have a big party at our place with fun excursions and lots of good times.

Cute Thangs

2011-01-11T08:44:00.000-08:00

Even though the boys have been sleeping for several hours, I often find myself going to bed at night smiling about something they did that day. It's usually something Landon said or a certain mannerism or expression that Tate used. People with kids can probably relate about these simple things that they find incredibly endearing. Here's a few recent ones:

Landon: "Mommy, are you so proud of me?" (with great enthusiasm in his voice and emphasis on the "soooo prrrrooooud") (nearly always after he goes #2 on the potty) And of course I reply, "Yes, I'm sooooo prrrrroooooud of you!"

I was sick in bed on Saturday evening. And after a nice hot bath, I was relaxing in bed with a book. Adam was trying to keep the boys downstairs, but there was no containing Tate. As soon as Adam would turn his back, Tate would make a bee-line for the stairs. I could hear him coming up and enthusiastically repeating "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" He would run into our bedroom and act like he had just discovered a lost treasure or something. Our bed is very high so he can't climb into it, but he would just stand next to me and laugh and squeal. Adam would come up and get him, but Tate escaped at least 3 times and did this.

Landon has had a cold this past week. He really does not like "being snotty" as he calls it. His natural reaction is to wipe his nose with his sleeve. We've been trying to teach him to use a tissue instead. He's not crazy about using a tissue. I have caught him wiping his nose on the couch...and even the carpet. Gross. Horribly gross. But uh, still kinda funny and makes me laugh on the inside.

When you ask Tate what sound a rooster makes, he just says "Doo!"

Landon equates "coolness" with whether or not you have a motorized vehicle on your shirt. Stripes and plain-colored shirts are not cool, but I still make him wear them sometimes. Oh, and he likes green. Green shirts are cool too.

When it's getting close to mealtimes or Tate just needs a snack, I can often find him underneath our kitchen table scrounging for dropped crumbs. Yes, I know I need to sweep more often.

When Landon gets tired, he doesn't get dopey, slow, and cuddly He gets CRRRAZY and hyper! Spinning in circles, giggling hysterically. Not fun when you are trying to put him in PJ's, but kinda entertaining to watch. (And no, we really don't give him much sugar!)

Tate has the cutest way of saying "yes," "thanks," and "please." You'd have to hear it.

When I ask Landon who he loves, he'll easily say the standards....mom, dad, Tate. Sometimes he'll even start listing off grandma and grandpas and cousins. But on his own, he started saying "Jesus" regularly.

Ok, that's enough for today. It's lunchtime and Tate has disappeared, although I'm guessing he's under the table. '

Around the House

2011-01-04T08:06:00.000-08:00

We still have one more family Christmas weekend to go, so we're spreading out the season a bit longer and I'm not in a hurry to take down the Christmas decorations. Here's a walk through parts of our house to show some of our decs.
The above pic is our front living room. The Willow Tree Nativity Set is on the wall shelf. The tree has red and gold balls and sparkly icicle ornaments. And below is a Nativity set that I let the boys play with. It's been fun to watch Landon be able to learn who the different people are as he sets them up. Tate just bangs the figurines on the floor. Here is a big canvas picture that I have hanging in our dining room. I wrapped it up to make it festive for Christmas. This is a Christmas Countdown I have hanging on our fridge. It's magnets on a little cookie sheet. I think it's super cute. I'm still not sure if you are supposed to start with a clear board and put a magnet on each day or start with all of the magnets on and take one off each day. Eventually I'll let the kids do this, but I kept it all to myself this year. Here's our bigger Christmas tree with a hodge podge of more sentimental ornaments.

I like Christmas cards. And I like to look at them more than once, so I hang them up. This is in our entryway area off the front door. You may notice the wall the cards are hanging on has been stripped of the wallpaper. All of this area will be our first house project of 2011! Take out the remaining green carpet on the stairs and in the entryway. Carpet the stairs. Tile the entryway and hallway. Come up with a new stair railing. Paint the walls and trim. Can't wait to get started! Oh, now we just have to figure out a chunk of time to do it so that we have toddlers running through a mess for as little time as possible!

Christmas Weekend #2

2010-12-28T07:20:00.000-08:00

So, most of these shots are still blurry (*read previous post).

We had Adam's dad, stepmom, sister, stepbrother, and Nick (a new friend) all over for Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas morning we had a nice, quiet morning with just the 4 of us. We only had a couple of little things for the boys to open. (Hello? Do they really need anything more?!) But it was nice to stay in our PJ's til noon and lounge around.
Then we headed to Grandma's Willis' house for the Willis party.

Unfortunately, Grandpa Willis had to be in the hospital for the holiday. But we made it to the hospital on Sunday evening to visit him and give him a present.

Another fun and festive weekend with loved ones. Only one more Christmas weekend to go!

Through a smudged lens

2010-12-28T07:05:00.000-08:00

I learned something new this past week. When there is a smudge/fingerprint on your camera lens, all of your pictures will turn out poorly. Duh. Not rocket science, I know, but still I was baffled for several days as to why my camera was taking poor pictures. I'm glad it was just a smudge and I don't need a new camera!

Here's some pics from having some teenagers over for a baking day. All pictures include a smudged lens and are blurry. I do not know if it was my smudgy fingerprint that was the culprit or that of my small, grabby children. But I know how to fix the problem now if my pictures start turning out like this again.

One Christmas weekend down. Two to go.

2010-12-20T11:50:00.000-08:00

The family gatherings have begun! This past weekend we had Christmas with Adam's mom, stepdad, and sister. I love having a houseful of family at festive times!

Our traditional Christmas with them includes opening stockings and presents in our PJ's and then eating a big breakfast of pigs in a blanket, eggs, pancakes, and other breakfast goody items. Of course, by the time we eat this it is noon.

Landon got his first biclycle (helmet, included....for all of you safety conscious readers). He's pretty excited. His feet can't quite move the pedals, but hopefully by this summer they will be able to.
Kevin doesn't always choose to use an ax to open presents, it was just convenient and a new gift that he had to try out.

Tate doesn't need presents. He just needs a Christmas orange (another family tradition).

And on Saturday evening, we had the Curtis family gathering. I'm bad at taking pictures at larger family events for some reason. But here is a picture that Adam and I took of each other while waiting for the boys to wake up from their naps so we could leave. We clean up pretty good sometimes.

And Sunday was full of wonderful Church services helping us to keep in mind the true reason for all of this celebrating. In case you didn't know, it's because this is when JESUS, Savior to all, Son of God and Son of Man, the ultimate sacrifice for all mankind's sin, was born into this world. What a gift, what a gift! Hope everyone finds the time to embrace the full meaning of this, not just at Christmas, but every day of the year.

Because I think they are cute...

2010-12-11T05:19:00.000-08:00

Let the merriment begin...

2010-12-11T04:25:00.000-08:00

And the Christmas season is upon us (just in case you hadn't noticed)! Our trees are up. The house is decorated. Most of the shopping is done. Gatherings are on the calendar. I love it!

We had our church staff Christmas dinner this week.

And then we hosted our Flock Christmas party tonight at our house (Flock = Sunday school class......of people our age.....We technically don't ever go to SS with them since we teach the youth, but they always let us in on all of the parties. :) ). Wayyyyyy too much yummy food. Lots of laughing and talking. A white elephant gift exchange. A fun chance to surprise and bless a couple of our members. A very good night.

Let's be THANKFUL!

2010-11-24T06:12:00.001-08:00

Although I try to have a positive and thankful disposition most of the year (some days I'm certainly better than others at it!), this is the time of the year where we draw extra attention to what we are thankful for. Or I like to think of it as "recognizing our blessings." Here's some of my thoughts today:

* I'm thankful for a knowledge, awareness, and concern for knowing and loving the God of our universe. He loves me, died for me, and rose again for me....WAHOO!
* I'm thankful for the gift of our 2 little boys and the task that we've been given to raise them.
* I'm thankful that Adam and I were both raised in families that knew God. We both had living testimonies of faithful Christians to watch.
* I'm thankful for Adam. What an amazing husband. So thoughtful, helpful, handy, good, responsible, respectful, caring, and the list goes on.
* I'm thankful to be a part of a loving and caring Christian community.

And now for some less serious thoughts, but things that I am still really thankful for (these are the ones that we would get a stern look from my father for if we shared them during "serious" thanksgiving time):

* I'm thankful for modern conveniences. I'm washing my clothes right now. Not by hand. Not in the river. I like these machine things.
* I'm thankful for chocolate. Really. Yes, chocolate. It's so good.
* I'm thankful for our credit card. (Yes, we know Dave Ramsey does not like credit cards). But we use them reguarly and pay them immediately. We had so many points from credit card purchases that we were able to receive well over $300 in gift cards to go toward Christmas presents this year!
* I'm thankful for disposable diapers. And I'll be even more thankful when we don't have to use them.
* I'm thankful for nail polish. My toes look so much better if they've been freshly painted.
* I'm thankful for happy-ending girl movies.
* I'm thankful for dessert. Whoever thought of that needs to be given an award!

Okay, all of my sporadic and few blog readers...you're turn! Give me something serious and something a little silly that you are thankful for!

Jackson Party

2010-11-09T18:36:00.000-08:00

Went down to my hometown for a Jackson family gathering over the weekend. Lots of fun to spend time with my siblings and extended family. Below is my parents, their kids, and their kids.
And we also fit in a baby shower for my sister-in-law, Michelle. My newest nephew should be arriving in the next month or so! Phil and Michelle will make fabulous parents, even if Cubbies apparel is deemed high on their list and they think they've received too many wipes already! :)

And the below pic is from a shower game. First person to get their little plastic baby released from it's ice cube without actually touching the ice cube wins! Oh, my mom. She had too much fun planning the shower. Gotta love her!

Rolla-skatin!

2010-11-09T18:06:00.000-08:00

Our church had a family skate night last week. Yes, roller rinks do still exist!

I went thinking that I would just hang out with everybody since I had 2 toddlers to chase around. Turns out that we all got on the floor! Landon LOVED it (note to the grandmas....Landon would like rollerskates added to his Christmas list). It was fun to watch him experience skating at such a young age. Tate had a good time too. They have strollers to push around little ones around the floor! I'd never seen that before. Lots of people took their turns pushing him around.

Overall, it was just fun to skate around to flashing lights and loud music with people that we like.

(And notice all of those little stickers on Landon's shirt?? Those are potty-training stickers. Yeah, baby!) (It's a work-in-progress....but hey, at least we're progressing)

Trunk-or-Treat

2010-10-30T18:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry that I didn't snap any great pictures of the boys! It's not easy! They don't sit still and we needed to go get our parking spot at Trunk-or-Treat!

Phew. What a phenomenal turn-out! Our church has done Trunk-or-Treat the past couple of years, but they ramped up the promotional items quite a bit and added a bunch of additional indoor activities this year. GREAT turn-out! Most faces I didn't recognize - which means they don't go to our church regularly. I was running out of candy before the first 1/2 an hour was up! The bowl got replenished several times thankfully. I had to come up with a way to keep the boys "caged." For events like this, Adam is usually very busy running around doing things and I know it's up to me to handle these two crazy kids. I might've trusted Landon to stay close by me at all times, but Tate is a runner. This solution seemed to work. They did get to go around the loops of cars with their buckets, but otherwise spent the most of the 2 hours in the back of the van like this while I handed out candy. I had to keep them sugared up to keep them happy. Lots of people said it was a cute idea and strangers even asked to take pictures. Hmmmm....now what to do for next year?

And today was also Adam's 31st birthday! Oh, what a gift he is to me! Oh wait, it's his birthday - he's supposed to get a gift. Anyways. He's wonderful. I'm such a blessed girl to have him as my husband.

Time-out Chairs

2010-10-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Time-out chairs should be cute and personalized. Says me.

The little people I spend nearly all of my time with...

2010-10-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

The boys haven't been featured a whole lot on this blog lately. Oh, how they melt me. Even when they are fussing or whining, I can't help but look at them and smile. They are too, too precious.

Tate is growing like a weed. I think he's going to end up being taller than Landon - well, that is, if he drinks his milk better and eats his veggies! He can be picky at times, but lately, we've found that if we give him a fork or spoon, he'll eat nearly anything that is on it since he loves this new ability of feeding himself. This past week, we took away his pacifier - he was only using it at sleeping times. We went cold turkey and haven't caved yet. He whines a bit and I caught him sucking on the corner of his blanket today, but thankfully, it really hasn't affected his sleeping too much. He's not saying too much yet vocabulary-wise. All of his words, other than momma or dadda, seem to start with a "B"....Book, Ball, Baabaa (for bottle, which he doesn't get, but still stays that when he wants a drink). He does seem to understand what I say a lot of the time though and he respond accordingly. He's incredibly lovey and likes to be held. Although is very independent at times as well. He's already escaped childcare at church once and wandered away! Eek! He has a big affection for playing fetch with a ball (just like a dog would), playing with cars, and looking at books. He's a keeper for sure.

And Landon. Oh, a day doesn't go by where I find myself incredibly amused and endeared with him. He's a sweetie. He loves holding hands and getting hugs. Sometimes he gets upset in the car because Tate won't hold his hand. And he's soaking up soooo much around him. It's so fun to see and hear how he puts things together and communicates them back to us. We asked him if he was tired one evening and he said, "No, I'm not tired - I don't have any yawns in my mouth." And another one that I've shared with some people already: We ate out at Taco Bell awhile back. He wasn't a big fan. In the middle of eating his dinner, he said, "Maybe next time we could go to Hot Dog Bell." Oh, we laugh a lot with him. He loves anything with wheels. We're in the habit of going to the library every week and getting some books. Once we get home with them, he will sit on the couch and just look at them for a good 20 minutes or so. Well, as long as they are about cars, trucks, planes, motorcycles, tractors, etc. I tried to broaden our selection and get one about animals this past week. He's hardly looked at it and was quick to try to share that one with Tate. Oh, he makes me smile.

Here's a couple of pics from the boys playing in the yard today. I raked this pile just for them to jump in. And then I raked it again. And again. And again.

I like the below picture of Tate, even though he's hardly in the picture. It shows him in the action of "jumping" into the pile of leaves. Although, I know that when Tate jumps, he never leaves the ground. :)

And here's a picture of one of Tate's first time-outs. And just so we keep it even. Landon has a first yesterday also! He used the potty! By his own prompting! He hasn't wanted to use it since. But hey, we celebrate even the small steps.

Garden Re-Cap

2010-10-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

It's time to hear about how my little garden did this summer. So, I meant to do this awhile ago, but didn't really think anyone would care or notice if I didn't. A friend said she'd been waiting for it though!

I planted everything from small plants since we got a late start on the garden. Plus, it's easier and is 1 step closer to success (hopefully).

We had:
4 cherry tomato plants
1 plum tomato plant
1 bush tomato plant
1 cucumber plant
4 derby green bean plants
2 variations of Bell Peppers
1 honeydew plant
2 cantaloupe plants

My mom usually had a garden growing up and I remember weeding, picking beans and strawberries, and finding super-gross huge worms on the tomato plants - but that's about all that I remember.

Here's what was successful for me this year:
- Tomatoes! I had cherry tomatoes coming out of my ears! So yummy, but I'm the only one in the house that really likes them. The 2 larger variations did really well also. I had plenty of tomatoes and I ended up dicing a lot of them and freezing them for later use.
- My cucumber plant was pretty successful and produced quite a bit...but I'll talk more about them later.
- Green beans. I LOVE fresh green beans. My plants did good. We had 4-5 meals that included beans from my garden. But I want MORE next year!

Here's what was NOT successful:
- Honeydew. I saw a couple of flowers, but it never produced any fruit.
- Cantaloupe. These were given to me from a friend from church that works at a farm. He had no idea what variations they were or if they would do much. We got 1 medium-sized fruit.
- Green Peppers. I got 1 very small pepper from each plant. And they were on the plant for like a month. I kept waiting for them to get bigger, but they never did. :(

Things I want to change for next year:
- I want another little box garden next to this one.
- I want more beans.
- I will not plant Cucumbers and Melons next to each other. My grandpa Jackson warned me about this and said they would cross-pollinate making them taste funny and I needed to get them away from each other. I had a smaaaaall garden....you can't get anything away from anything else without removing it altogether! I did some internet research and found multiple sources that said that concept was a myth and I thought I would just have to learn on my own and test it out. My cucumbers tasted fine early on in the season, but towards the end, they definately had a sweet taste to them that wasn't very enjoyable.
- I will put tomato cages around my tomato plants next year. I just used stakes to hold them up, which still drastically helped. The tomato plants seemed so small and innocent at the start of things. Who knew they would go nuts and get HUGE?!
- I want to have Zucchini and maybe yellow Squash next year. Maybe some strawberries and rhubarb.

It was fun and worth the effort!

Jr.Highers

2010-10-12T16:27:00.000-07:00

We hang out with teenagers quite a bit. Good thing we like them.
This past weekend we went up to Lake Ann Camp for their Jr.High Exiled Retreat. We took with us 14 6th-8th graders (we normally don't have 6th graders at youth group stuff).

Jr.Highers are great for the following reasons:

- They still want to hang out with you (for the most part). They'll save you seats in chapel, want to sit next to you at meals, show up in your bed first thing in the morning, etc.

- They think weird things are funny. Most of our girls will still be giggling about Cous cous and Bob the Plunger (I'm not sure if that was his name) (And by the way, these were 2 separate incidents).

(This is a picture of some of the girls playing a game in our cabin. It was their idea.)

- They aren't into the guy/girl thing very much (or at all). No worries on inappropriate situations or what's going on in the back of the bus. And if they do like the opposite sex at this point, they still avoid each other and don't talk to each other.

- There is something very innocent and pure about many of them. One of our 6th grade girls prayed before bed for all of us one night. I'm glad it was dark. I nearly started crying at her sincere heart and unashamed approach.

It was a fun weekend. We were challenged by our speakers to be willing to "stand in the gap" for God. Still praying that God will help these young people to "get it" and choose to fully live their life for Christ. (This was me coming in on the zipline. It goes over a part of the lake. Quite fun.)

And the scenery was BEAUTIFUL at the camp and on the drive up. How can anyone deny a thoughtful and involved creator when they look at the colors of the leaves?

Our boys spent the weekend at Poppy and Moppy's house. They seemed to have lots of fun! I'll try to post something more about them soon! Gotta keep all of those grandmas happy!

Art Prize 2010

2010-10-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

Grand Rapids is host to the largest cash prize art show in the world. Art Prize. The is the 2nd year for it. It's pretty outrageously cool. There's over 1700 exhibits set up in the downtown area. Some are outside. Some are inside. It's pretty difficult to see all of them (and we didn't even come close), but Adam and I had the chance to see a chunk of them this last week. We figured it was our only chance to get out and see them, so we wanted to hit as much as possible. Our speediness was helped by not having the boys with us (Adam's mom was in town for yet another wedding and she volunteered to watch them). They will be on exhibit until October 10.

Here's some of the pics we took:

I believe the above project was a "World's Largest Greeting Card" effort. You could even sign the inside of it.

The above picture was composed of lots of little mosaic tile pieces.

The above drawing is probably one of my favorite pieces. It's a pencil drawing with amazing detail. Not to mention, it's HUGE! Life-size people..maybe even bigger. You can see an actual person on the far right of my photo.

This giant penny is made up of a whole lot of little pennies!

This baby giraffe and mom were made out of paper mache. I don't know about you, but the only time I ever did paper mache was around the edge of a balloon and it looked pretty bad. I could never turn it into this!

And as with any art exhibit, you see some stuff that you say, "How is that art?"

But overall, a very fun and entertaining evening to spend together.

Coupons are COOL

2010-09-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

Don't try to tell me coupons aren't cool. Because they are. Very cool.

I got everything in the picture for 99cents. That's 99cents! Not even $1!

Brand new, from the store.

Actually from 3 stores.

But they were all close to each other.

Energizer Rechargeable batteries ($10.47 normally)

John Frieda Root Awakening Conditioner ($6.99 normally)

A whole schlew of Wet n' Wild make-up items (8 nail polishes, 1 blush, 1 concealer, 1 lip gloss, 1 powder) (normally around $22.00) (I know this is really cheap make-up, but I'm pretty low maintenance, plus, this totally helps to build up my already rockin' basket o' nail polish).

Coupons are cool.

Boys will be Boys

2010-09-17T18:02:00.000-07:00

So Becca is away on a women’s retreat this weekend so I thought I would take this opportunity to make a Blog post since it has been quite a while since I have actually made a post, which by my lack of punctuation and improper use of grammar you can understand why Becca does not push me to blog more often.

While this gone this weekend my mom did come to town, so I was able to do important things like go hunting (it’s early doe season) and go to my cousin Jake & Alyssa’s Wedding (while my mom went to so i got a babysitter, thanks Stacy & Kayla) …. Oh and go to work too.

Here are a few pics of the weekend. Enjoy

Mom and the Dutch Lady aka Patty

Jake & Alyssa

Tate likes wearing Dad's hat

This picture is called "meat in the freezer"

my weapon of chocie to "put meat in the freezer"

when/ if i get a deer the pic will go here :)

30 is pretty good....

2010-09-14T19:10:00.000-07:00

So, I'm 30.

Really, I'm good with this.

I mean, I've had a few moments of looking at myself closely in the mirror....and I'm not talking metaphorically. Sure, I can see some lines forming around my eyes and on my large hereditary forhead. I have a few "age spots" that I've found on my hands. A few subtle spider veins have begun peeking at me on my legs. Our bodies weren't meant to last forever - or to look like we're 18 forever. Or to act like we're 18 forver. Life was fun as a teenager, but it's way better to grow up.

And I think about what I've had the opportunity to do, trips I've been able to take, experiences that I've been able to take in, people that I've gotten to know. My goodness. It's overwhelming. Some absolutely life-changing, eye-opening, rock-my-face-off things are on that list. What fullness! Of course, there's also been difficult times. Times that resulted in many tears, heartache, and hurt. Whether good or bad, easy or hard, they've all helped to bring me to where I'm at today.

And where is that?

Most importantly, I'm at the point where I have the confidence that I know what this life is really all about. Sure, I get side-tracked sometimes. I mess up. I lose my focus. I cry over stupid things. I get distracted by all of the things that I forget really aren't very important. I justify my wrong attitude or behavior.

But I know, I KNOW, I KNOW that this life is not my own. It's meant to be lived for Jesus Christ- the Savior of the entire world and all people (not just me). The only one that can truly satisfy our longings and desires. Our experience on this earth, however many years we are given, are nothing in comparison to what our eternity will be. All the things that we spend so much time worrying about or letting consume our lives does not mean anything in the grand scope of our existence.

Even though the world may not look at me and consider me very successful, famous, wealthy, attractive, accomplished, or intelligent......I feel like I'm on top of the world because I know that the Creator of the Universe loves me! I'm a rockstar! I know the right answer! I'm wildly successful. I'm blessed beyond what I can possibly fathom! All because I have given my life over to God and trusted him. He is all that matters! And it's my purpose to live my life honoring and glorifying him! What freedom, what joy I have!

Oh, if everyone could have all of this by the time they reached 30.

Or even before they took their last breath.

Another great weekend

2010-09-13T08:08:00.000-07:00

We headed to the east side of the state for Adam's cousin's wedding this past weekend. We left the boys with Moppy and Poppy and enjoyed the chance to be kid-free for a bit. Dori and Paolo had a beautiful wedding day. It was good to spend some time with family.
We tried to take some family shots. Adam's sister, Jaime, is absolutely unable to keep her eyes open for a picture. I took 4 shots of Adam and Jaime.....all of them with her eyes closed! None of the family shots included open eyes either. Really!?!?! You can count, not count...it doesn't make a difference, her eyes are shut.

One note about the wedding: THE MOST FOOD I've EVER, EVER been served. Seriously, it was outrageous. I lost track of how many courses. Antipasto, bread, soup, 2 hot pastas, salad, Main course - with 2 large meats, potatoes, and veggies. And then wedding cake, hot fudge sundaes, and an overloaded dessert table (pictured below) with various fruit and a large amount of sweet treats. And did I mention, it was an open bar that also included a cappuccino bar? Dear goodness, I couldn't consume nearly as much as what I would have liked! That much food needs to be spread out over a week! Or a month!

We planned to take Sunday off (Adam gets 2 Sundays off/year...and our fiscal year ends in a couple of weeks and he still had one to take). Being away from church is always super weird for me. We rarely miss obviously - not because we think we are so incredibly self-righteous, but because it's our line of work/ministry! My whole week is thrown off without being able to start it with corporate worship. Whenever I'm not in church on a Sunday morning, I look around and wonder if these people have any idea what they are missing out on?!?! I can't imagine not having the blessing of my church family and having a place to enjoy corporate worship, a challenging message, and fellowship with others. My Sunday feels so empty and meaningless without it! Sometimses I wish we had more freedom to be gone more often on Sundays, but reality is, it would just feel weird to me. Church is where we belong.

Anyways, we have some hot shopping spots that we love to hit that are on the east side of the state.

First stop: CABELA'S!

(Below is the statue that stands out in front of the store. I love big bears....they are super scary! )

This is about as excited as I get about the store though. I did a lap and within 10 minutes I had parked myself at a table to work on some things that I had brought with me. But this is one of Adam's favorite places on earth, so I'm happy to come along.

Next, we hit IKEA! I'm still giddy about it the next day! I had my catalog with me and all marked up for things that I wanted to look at. We picked up several items that help to furnish our front living room, plus numerous other little items here and there. (Sorry, no pics....you'll just have to come over!)

Next, we hit an outlet mall that always provides a few good deals. Plus, I just like to shop! I'm pretty good at restraining and only spending if it's something that we can use AND is at a great deal. Adam did a small amount of walking, but then sat in the car. He thinks shopping is painful....unless it's at Cabela's, Gander Mountain, Dunhams, Dick's, etc. Silly Adam.

Ahhhh....what a great way to go into my 30th birthday (the 13th)! More about my reflections on that in another post.

Holiday weekend

2010-09-06T19:18:00.000-07:00

What a great holiday weekend! Why can't every weekend have 3 days in it?!

On Friday night, a girl's night was in order! My friend, Becca (fabulous name and fabulous person), opened up her studio for girls from church to come and hang out. Yummmm food, giveaways, eyebrow waxing and nail painting, and lots and lots of great conversation!

On Saturday, Adam helped a friend with house projects during the day. We then had his cousin and family over for dinner. Apparently, as young boys, Adam and Jason called themselves the "Daring Do-Jobbies." I'm still slightly confused as to what the "Daring Do-Jobbies" really were....Superheroes? A circus act? All I really got from the conversation was that peanut butter was an important part of their diet.

Sunday was a great day of being at church. I even walked to church in the evening - something I hadn't done yet since living here. Our house is 1.5 miles from church. I love taking walks. And I had to get to church. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Adam didn't have any meetings so he was fine with taking the boys at the normal time. I grabbed the ipod, walked out the door, and put on Kutlass' Strong Tower worship album. Pretty rockin'. A most excellent way to arrive at church.

On Monday, my parents and grandparents arrived at our house for the day. It was my mom's birthday. I like to think that I'm her favorite child since she came to see me on her birthday. We had a fun day of celebrating. The boys loved all of the extra people to give them attention. Plus, to top it off, I kicked everybody's tail at a game of Skip-bo.

7 years ago in a galaxy far, far away....

2010-08-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

Seven years ago, we tied the knot, said "I do," joined in matrimony, became Mr. and Mrs., and all of that other jazz. And since then, we've travelled to 2 foreign countries(Brazil and Dominican Republic) and numerous places in the states (South Dakota, St.Louis, Door County-WI, Georgia, Tennessee, Wash.D.C., various mid-west locations). We've bought and worked on 2 houses. We've had ministry jobs in 2 different churches. We've brought 2 little precious boys into this world. I learned how to cut Adam's hair. Adam has taken up bow-hunting. I learned how to decorate cakes. Adam learned carpentry skills. And I'm sure the list could go on.
Fact is: It's been a very, very good 7 years.

We even got to go on a date for our anniversary! We enjoyed a nice dinner out (thanks to a gift card that we'd been holding onto for awhile). Then we took a walk in a park. And then we headed to a bookstore where we milled around for awhile (again, because we had a giftcard to spend). (On a sidenote: Gift cards really do make great gifts! We love getting to use them! Some people think they are "impersonal" gift items....but we fully love being able to use them for what we want, when we want!)

We ordered calamari (squid) for an appetizer for dinner. We had only ever had it before as little rings. Take a look at the guy below. It looked like a little baby octopus! Kinda weird at first, but anything drenched in that yummy batter would've tasted good. :)

And on another food-related matter.....Look at the below dessert. Adam gave me a couple of mini cast-iron skillets so that we can make these yummy treats at home! We made them the other night. YUMMMMMMM. I must say I've gotten weaker over time. I couldn't even finish mine! I was incredibly disappointed in myself. We've decided we'll have to share one skillet from now on.

And we were able to go out for our anniversary because we had a grandma in town to watch the boys! Adam's mom was in town for a family reunion and bridal shower over the weekend. So nice to have her stick around so that we could go out! We went out for ice cream one night while she was here. The boys get a little nuts-o about ice cream. They probably get that from me.

Move Over Martha!

2010-08-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

OK, Martha Stewart has nothing to worry about when it comes to me being domestic enough to take over her empire. But I did do some crafty/home-y things in the past few days.

The main project being a cushion for Landon's built-in bench in his room. Let me preface this and say that I do not claim to be good at such things. I do have a simple sewing machine. And I did use to be the queen of making scrunchies (Hey, I did celebrate my childhood/adolescent years in the 80's/90's - they were VERY cool...I had a whole drawer full of them). And home-ec/sewing/cooking was a part of the mandatory curriculum when I was in middle school. BUT don't let any of that mislead you or impress you.

Anyways. Here is my finished product:

There is certainly a problem area or 2 and I will not let close-up inspections be done on the piece, but I am not a perfectionist when it comes to things like this. I am satisfied with my opinion of "good enough." There are more important things to stress about. This project has taken enough of my time already. I'm very happy with how it turned out for my skill level. Plus, I'll probably want to change the color of it in a couple of years anyways. Landon already is understanding how to relax on it.

I even had enough fabric and piping to squeeze out a little pillow - barely enough though. My spool of thread was making me very nervous! I ran out of bobbin thread, literally, as I finished the project (I know some of this simple sewing jargon means nothing to some of you.....Just know that it is the extent of my sewing jargon - it just means my thread was nearly all gone...and that's kinda/pretty important).

Plus, I gathered some of my foilage and put them in a vase. These have a lovely, light fragrance. Several people have told me what sort of plant this is, but I can't remember. I just know that I have two overgrown bushy areas of it and it attracts large, scary, fuzzy looking bumblebees.
Plus, I roasted some of my small cherry tomatoes making them very tasty! I froze those that I didn't immediately eat so that I can enjoy garden goodness later on in the year.

Like I said, Martha has nothing to worry about. I don't like to clean, we are still eating off of a blue card table in our kitchen, I talk in excited and loud tones sometimes, and I'm perfectly fine having guests over and letting them eat off of paper plates. :)

Rainy Day Post

2010-08-11T07:06:00.000-07:00

So, it's raining. I felt that my options were clean or do a blog post. I'll clean later.

Adam's mom was here this past weekend. She gave Tate a super-cool tent and tunnel for his birthday. All 3 of the boys enjoyed it. And we enjoyed having her around. Finding childcare is so much easier when you have a grandma staying at your house!

We lost our tenants this week. Ok, we didn't actually have tenants, we were more of a storage unit for the majority of their earthly belongings. Verwys', we will miss having some of your stuff in our home, but we'll miss having you around even more! I'm envisioning a getaway to Boyne in the coming year! We now need guestroom furniture and a downstairs time-out chair for Landon. After having a U-Haul parked in our driveway, I'm thinking we're going to have a few of our neighbors asking if we're moving.We went to our county's 4-H fair last night. Several kids in our youth group had horses and artwork to show. Landon was mildly interested in the animals, but it was the picture of the below ride that he was transfixed upon. The message he conveyed to me through words, behavior, and body language was that his life would not be complete until he rode this. For a cost of $3, we gave in and made it happen. And we enjoyed a yummy, elephant ear. Mmmm....I'm pretty sure I had cinnamon sugar all over my face after I was done with it.

This last picture is for my brother, Phil, who thinks that having this device is the beginning to good parenting. They are expecting their first child at the end of this year.

First, you need to learn how to change a diaper, Phil.

Leafy Things

2010-08-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

So, my garden looks incredibly overcrowded these days. Pssshhhhh. All that research I did where they showed that you could plant one thing in each square foot was a bunch of bunk! They are all over each other! We had to build a little fence for the cucumber to climb over and out of. Here's what the garden looked like when it was freshly planted. I'll give a re-cap of everything once the season is over, but know that we have eaten our own produce on multiple occasions already!

Here's some of my other leafy, flowery things.

And don't you worry, I have multiple areas where I just can't seem to control the weeds. If I turn my back for 2 days, they take over. I've given up on a few areas.

Productivity

2010-08-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

If you know me well, you know I have trouble sitting still very long. I like feeling productive. If Adam and I watch a movie at home, I HAVE to be doing something.....folding laundry, clipping coupons, cutting doll clothes, painting my toenails, blogging, planning menus, etc. Which is why I don't love to do things in which I can't multi-task (i.e. driving or reading). I used to even kinda work out while I showered....wall push-ups, calf raises....I've gotten away from doing that.

Anyways. I love days in which I feel like I am able to get a lot done. Reality is that at the end of many days, I don't have much to show for my time except feeding and cleaning two little boys, picking up countless small cars, throwing some make-up on my face, and managing to get an edible meal on the table.

Well, I had a decent to-do list at the start of the day. I had a cake to decorate and I wanted to get it done before lunch today. I was trying to finish it up as the boys were eating. Tate needed to have some squash fed to him and I wasn't quite done still. I thought to myself, "I bet Landon would think it would be fun to feed Tate" (it's been months since I've let him do it) and then I could finish up. And he did SUCH a great job. Very, very little mess at all. Well, Tate was still hungry so I mixed up another little batch. As I'm scrubbing some dishes, I hear my sweet little boys giggling together. I love that sound. I really do. But I should probably start letting it be an alert to me that they are doing something naughty together. I looked over and Landon had the spoon with squash on it and was circling around in Tate's hair. Ugh! My boys are usually pretty neat eaters. I'm not used to having to give after-meal baths.

But I still finished the cake shortly after. It's a monkey-themed Baby Shower.

We then managed to go to the library, vote in the primaries, and play at the park for a little bit - all before naptime. And then I managed to do some pool-care (a.k.a. float on the raft for awhile....and I did scoop out some bugs with the net thingy). My day also included a shower, several loads of laundry, running a shopping errand for Adam, attending a bridal shower. And now I'm blogging. Ah, it's the simple things that make me feel accomplished. I haven't settled for less or become lazy.....I've just changed my perception of what makes a successful, productive, and worthwhile day. I find joy in knowing that I enjoyed a another day that God gave me and I did what I could with what I had.

Girl Time

2010-07-25T18:38:00.000-07:00

When I was young, I used to really wish I had a sister. Then I got to a point where I realized I'd have to share my room and other girl stuff with a sister, so I didn't want one anymore. But now that I'm older, I know how wonderful female relationships are....and I really wish I had a sister. (No offense to my 3 brothers....you guys are very cool....you just don't know how to talk about nothing and everything, shop, paint toenails, or eat chocolate like your life depends upon it).

Gaining an actual sister at this point in life is obviously not going to happen. :) Embracing my other female relationships from friends and sister-in-laws will have to fill that void.

I had another great time with old friends this past weekend. I've known Misty since kindergarten and Shannon since middle school. The summer of '99 is one that we will never forget as that is what set the 3 of us together! We had all just graduated high school. We went to Mexico on a mission trip together. We had multiple sleepovers every week. Regular Steak 'n Shake runs. A roll down a big hill late at night. Very little responsibility on our plates which left room for lots of fun! Again, soooo good to spend time with girls where anything goes! We've already got the next event planned out to celebrate our 30th birthdays this fall!

And I might have taken a picture of a horse and buggy on my way to Shannon's house. Ok, I did (evidence below). The route to her house had me go through a heavily populated Amish area. The Amish intrigue me...and so do prisons (I'm not saying they are related -- just showing that I'm interested in some semi-odd things).

My baby is 1!

2010-07-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

Tate turned 1 year old this past Wednesday. It really does go by so fast! I'm constantly reminding myself to enjoy the days when my boys are in diapers, need help eating, can't dress themselves, are whining for attention, and need afternoon naps. Give 'em 12 years or so and I might have to endure laziness, bad hygiene, no desire for attention from mom, awful clothing fads, and them talking back to me. Life is good right now. :)

On Tate's actual birthday, I think we told him Happy Birthday a few times and opened a few cards in the mail. We had friends over for dinner that night - not for his birthday celebration, it'd just been too long since we'd seen them!

And then on Thursday evening, we had Poppy and Moppy (Adam's dad and his wife), Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Willis, and cousin Sarah over for dinner. (Tate's getting real good at eating his own little cake. By the time Grandma Vig is here in August to celebrate, he'll inhale it before she can snap a picture.)

Here's some things about Tate at the age of 1:

- He's really turned on the walking skills this past week or two. Still falls some and looks like a little baby frankenstein, but he's really progressed quickly.

- Sleeps from 8:30 p.m. to 8 a.m.......usually. Also takes 2 naps a day at around 1 1/2 - 2 hours each.

- He says "mama," "dada," "ba ba" (bottle), "ball"......and that's about all I can understand.

- He loves playing peek-a-boo, clapping his hands, and pointing (I have no idea what he's usually pointing at).

- He's not the greatest eater. You'd think with all of those teeth, he'd be eating hamburgers by now. (He has 11 teeth...Landon had 2 at this age) He will eat cut up bananas, all sorts of breads, and small shreds of meat. Otherwise, he's not tolerant of most other fruits or veggies, unless in the pureed form. He also likes to eat books. Leave him unattended with any sort of book for more than 10 seconds.....it'll have a chunk taken out of it.

- He's a bit of a momma's boy. Sometimes I am the only person he wants. He's not so bad if I'm out of sight, but if I'm in the room and he decides he wants me.....no one else can make him happy.

- He likes to wrestle. He often initiates rough housing with Landon.

- He's super sweet and we love, love, love him.

---------------------------------------------------

And on a completely different note......Adam and I played tennis last night! I forgot how fond I was of the game! It felt so good to hear the new can of balls pop open. To wear a cute tennis skirt. To run around and get sweaty. To ace my husband with my serve (Ok, he'll probably say none of them were aces since he got a piece of them....but still, he got burned). To yell out in frustration and talk to myself in between points.

We hadn't played yet this year. And I didn't play at all last summer since I was largely pregnant or just had a baby. I played throughout high school and Adam is just annoyingly athletic at anything he tries. We played a lot together the first several years we were married. We weren't stellar out there last night, but it went better than I was preparing for! We still had a lot of out-of-control shots and many of our points were earned on each other's errors rather than a stellar play. But still, I LOVED it! I lost 6-4, 6-4 for those of you who were curious of the score. Hope we can play it for many years to come!

Time with a friend

2010-07-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

Well, our house has felt like it has a revolving door lately, but that's why we wanted a good-sized house! It's much easier to entertain and have friends and family over when you feel like you have enough room to put them!

This past week, we had one of my hometown friends and her husband and kids stay with us for a couple of days. I've known Rachel since 7th grade. Oh, I smile just thinking of the memories I've had with her over the years. We were in each other's weddings and have managed to stay in touch over the years. Always wishing we lived closer. It feels good to spend time with a friend who knows me. Someone that knew me before I was married. Someone that knows about my family. Someone who saw me do stupid things when I was younger. Someone who did stupid things with me. Someone with whom I can be totally honest with. Someone that I don't have to impress or prove anything to. Someone whom I know values the friendship just as much as I do. Even though we are now juggling our kids and have our "dream" husbands by our sides, it's still so good to know that our friendship is important enough to preserve. I'm so thankful that God has blessed me with her friendship.

We had a good couple of days with them. We did some shopping, spent time at the house swimming, and even made a trip to the beach. Unfortunately, we didn't snap any pictures of the two of us together. But here's some shots of our kiddos.

Taking pictures of the boys

2010-07-05T20:18:00.000-07:00

Thought it would be nice to get a picture of Landon and Tate in their festive patriotic polo shirts. This is pretty much what it is like most of the time when I try to take pictures of the boys: And this was with several adults and children trying to entertain them and get them to sit still and look at the camera! It's not that they don't like pictures. They just can't sit still!

They did slightly better when I had them sit with a couple of their cousins.

4th of July

2010-07-05T18:58:00.000-07:00

Hosting your family at your house is a beautiful thing.....but it sure makes you tired and leaves a lot of towels and sheets to be washed! :)

We hosted all of my (Becca's) family over the weekend. Some arrived as early as Thursday. And the house was hoppin' until Sunday evening.

Here's some things to note about our gathering:

- I got to pass a heap of my maternity clothes onto my sister-in-law as we anticipate the newest Strahm in December! So glad I'm not needing those clothes for awhile again!

- Our boys were in their first automobile accident. It occurred in our driveway going at about .5 mph. Obviously, everyone was fine......except the windshield wiper fluid tank in Phil/Michelle's car. Oy.

- We celebrated Tate's birthday a little early with my family. He'll be 1 on the 14th of this month. Not a ton of fanfare, but we sang, let him eat a cupcake, and he opened a few gifts.

- I still get surprised everytime I've seen my father in the last year or so. He has a beard. He never had a beard while I was growing up. Looks good on you dad....just surprises me.
- My brother Dan and his family arrived in one of his company's motorhomes, pulling a trailer, with a bobcat (machinery, not the animal) on it. He was doing some "testing."

- We also had my aunt and a few cousins of mine from my dad's side come on Saturday. Always fun to get to see them. Plus, my uncle, who is currently in Sierra Leone, called to wish us a happy 4th as he didn't want to totally miss out on the gathering!

- The big pool and the little pool were both enjoyed a lot over the weekend. It was perfect weather - hot and sunny!

- We saw a very impressive fireworks show on Saturday night at some friend's house. Their neighbors do an incredible show! I think all of us agreed that it was the BEST show we've ever seen! (Illegal?.....well, I suppose) It was the first time either of our boys had watched fireworks and I wasn't sure how they would do. Tate fell asleep. Landon wanted Adam's hands over his ears the whole time, but he still seemed to like them.

- We managed to get 14 people to church on Sunday morning. We were even quite EARLY!

Overall, it was a great weekend and we were glad everyone was able to make the trip! Just makes us wish we could do it more often!

Race Track

2010-06-29T08:24:00.000-07:00

This is what Landon and I do many days when Tate goes down for his morning nap. We get out his Race Track and race all of his cars. It's super fun - or at least that's what Landon says about it. We've been busy, but not too many pictures to post. Adam's sister, Jaime, was here 2 weekends ago from DC. The boys loved being spoiled rotten by her. And she loves to spoil them! Clothes, toys, cars, books, bubble makers......It almost felt like Christmas! Now if we could only get her to move closer to us. And she helped entertain the boys while I made a couple of graduation cakes. And while Jaime was here, we also had some of the Willis' over for Father's Day. Here's 2 of my good-looking guys!

And then this past weekend, Adam's mom and husband were in town. We really need to get better about taking pictures when we have company! Again, the boys loved getting so much attention and having people here! And a new development.....the boys both were in the pool and they LOVED it!

No pictures of Tate, but he's keeping us busy and working on more teeth....I think he's going to have more than me pretty soon if he keeps this up. Thankfully, he's just cranky and needy, and there's no high temps. or other problems. He's also taking some steps here and there on his own as well. He gets so excited about it! We'll be celebrating his 1-year birthday soon!

Summer Youth Events Have Begun

2010-06-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

Summer is a nice break from the regular Youth Group calendar. There's still a lot going on, we just don't have weekly mid-week youth group. We have Sizzlers, Open Swims, Weekend Service Projects, STRONG events, SNAC's, and probably a few other things thrown in there. Plus, Adam just likes it that the kids don't have school and he can hang out with them and take them out to lunch, get them to help with projects, go golfing, etc.

Here's a couple of pics from last Wednesday's bike ride. It was a perfect evening for a bike ride. Plus, we got ice cream at the halfway point! Not sure how it could have gotten any better! I did witness a few tumbles on the bikes. I dropped my camera battery at one point. A few small groups might have taken the wrong path at one point (hey, just because I'm a youth leader does not mean that I come with the spiritual gift of an inner GPS system). But a very fun night!

Ladies Man

2010-06-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

We had a pool party with some friends a few weeks ago. I just thought this picture was funny. The only time that Landon really hung out with the girls was when we were eating. Otherwise, he had no interest in going near the small, inflated pool. Let me rephrase that, he was quite deliberate about avoiding the pool or getting wet. In fact, he kept asking if we could go inside now. Before we left, I put him in the 4 inches of water that was left in the pool after all of the splashing, with his shoes still on. He tolerated it. And then wanted to get back out. Hopefully, we'll get him warmed up to our pool at some point in his life.

Party Mix

2010-06-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

Today was a Party Mix (aka Chex Mix) day. My mom is the queen of this stuff. We have it at most family gatherings and it's so hard to not eat this stuff by the fistful! It's so addicting! This is sooo much better than store bought Chex Mix. It's saturated in butter, seasoned salt, and worcheshire sauce. The Chex pieces and cheerios shrink a little if they get too much butter on them - thus making them soooo yummy. The pretzels get all toasty and baked. And way back in the day my mom added something that I've never had in a Chex Mix before - Chow Mein Noodles! When I was little, I used to stack the cheerios on these things (Ok, I still do it now sometimes). I made a big, double batch today in preparation for our 4th of July weekend family gathering (it freezes really well).

Landon did not help, as the above photo might suggest. He got too crazy at one point very early on, about 2 seconds after the photo was taken, and started flinging spoons. Just being a boy. He was banished from the helping chair.

After I finished assembling everything, we then spent some time attempting to play Memory (without the cards being flipped over). Nice, calm activity.

Let's get growing!

2010-06-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

We put in a small box garden a few weeks back. I love the idea of growing food! But I also knew that I don't have time to go nuts-o and have a huge garden. This satisfies me....for now. I just have a few variations of tomato plants. Some green beans. A few kind of bell peppers. A cucumber plant. I've got room to throw in a few other things, but not sure what I'll put in there. Eventually, maybe next summer, I'd like to have another little garden for just strawberries and rhubarb. That'll be a pie waiting to happen!

And I'm trying to keep all of our perennials under control around the house. I have so much to learn! I feel like I'm slowly getting a handle on things, but there's a lot of it. Most of this landscaping was put in professionally when they built the house 30 years ago. Little did they know that someday the owner would have very little know-how when it came to landscaping and plants. I'm becoming too acquainted with weeds. That's the biggest time sucker. Just when I think I have an area nicely cleared, they seem to pop up. I'm completely convinced that weeds are directly related to The Fall of Man....you know, that whole "You shall sweat and work the earth and it will be horrible and some of the weeds will have prickers and others will cut you and the weeds will grow faster than all of the other plants." It says something like that in Genesis when Adam and Eve got in trouble.

What do boys get excited about?

2010-05-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

Here, my 3 boys are checking out a lawnmower next door (the 2 little ones did it naturally, Adam just wanted to get in the picture I think). Landon doesn't like being outside if a lawnmower is close by, but he'll stand inside at the door or window and watch in great awe.

I'll admit, I thought this cart was pretty sweet too. Some stores charge you to use their cool carts, but Menard's doesn't seem to. Landon could hardly contain himself when I started walking to this cart. Tate got tired of it after awhile, but it worked for a half hour or so. In all honesty, I avoid shopping with them unless it is a short trip. I like to browse, even if there is something specific that I was supposed to be getting. Boys just don't understand the need to do that kind of shopping and don't seem to tolerate it well.

And Adam was pretty anxious to get the pool opened up for the season. He got on that today on his day off. Last year when we opened it up, right after we had bought the house (mid June), it was DISGUSTING! Sooooo gross. I'm not sure I would have jumped in for $1000...well, maybe for $1000, but someone would have to push me. This year, we can still see the bottom in a good portion of the pool. We're kinda guessing that the people before us didn't close it very well (Why would they spend money on pool chemicals when they weren't paying the mortgage or utility bills on their home??) I would probably jump in for closer to $50 this year. It should be cleaned up in a week or so hopefully and swim-ready (and cold!).

Vacation Re-cap

2010-05-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh.....and we're having to get back to normal life again. Vacation was amazing! Such a great chance to get away and spend some time together! We'll try to give a brief re-cap. There are more pictures on my (Becca's) facebook.

We went to the Dominican Republic to visit our friends, Marv and Lindsay. They have been working at a school there this past year. They made the arrangements for everything and were excellent companions.

The first half of the vacation we stayed at the northern coast city of Cabarete. We were in a nice condo close to the beach. There were a lot of restaurants along the coast and we had access to some great pools. The boys drooled at the idea of kite surfing, which is a very big thing in this area. They deemed it too expensive (or maybe their wives did, I'm not sure) and settled for riding the waves with some borrowed boogie boards several times. We also did a waterfall tour. This was rather intense and beautiful, but wildly fun! The tour guides were pushing and pulling us up 12 waterfalls and then we jumped, climbed, slid, and swam back down through them. On Thursday, we headed to the sourthern coast city of La Romana. Our friends were offered the use of a vacation house that belonged to some very wealthy people that they work for. It was at the resort Casa de Campo. This location happens to be where Beyonce threw Jay-Z's 40th birthday party (Since our mothers are the main readers of this blog, I should explain that Beyonce and Jay-Z are big-time recording artists - big-time celebrities). Numerous celebrities have stayed there. Basically, it was waaaaay out of our league...but awesome.
We couldn't really afford to do a lot of the extra activities, but still had fun "living it up" and pretending we were rich by picking out "our" boat while walking down the Marina. We even had a maid that made breakfast and lunch for us everyday and cleaned. (That was weird....we didn't really know how to handle that!) (But that's the culture there. I just wish I spoke better Spanish so that I could have communicated with her to let her know how great her food was or just be able to talk to her). The beach at the resort was much tamer. It was obvious that the guys were quite disappointed at the lack of waves. It was more of a "girl's" beach....PERFECT for laying out. Eventually, the guys found it necessary to invest in some flippers and snorkels. They used them in the ocean...and the resort pool. Overall, we experienced some wonderfully beautiful scenery. The D.R. is an economically poor nation, and that was obvious as we travelled through towns and saw the condition of homes. Hard to swallow why we have all that we do while others have so little. Quite humbling at times.

Adam and I both agreed that this is probably one of the best vacations we've ever gone on. A great mix of activity and down time. You should only go on vacation with other people that you are certain that you'll get along with (unless they are actually family ;) ). The 4 of us enjoyed doing a lot of things together. Marv and Adam are like brothers from different mothers. They thoroughly entertained one another by making up games in the pool, playing Mario Kart (even after their wives went to bed), trash talking each other, and talking about whatever it is that guy's talk about. And Lindsay and I were more than happy to keep each other company as we sunned ourselves, read books, shopped, and talked about things that girls talk about.

And, now we are back to normal life. Glad to be back with our boys, but it was very nice to have a break and step away from the scheduled life of two little ones.

Mmmm.....vacation

2010-05-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

We're on vacation. It's blissful. Even more blissful living in a day and age where we are able to email and skype with Adam's mom who is watching our children at home! And even more blissful that they seem to be doing really well! Helps us to relax much easier!

A few things about the Dominican Republic that are worth noting:

- Much like our friends warned us......the driving is CRAZY! There seems to be no laws regarding this. There are lines on the road sometimes, but they don't seem to matter. 2 lanes quickly turn into 3-5 lanes. There are little mopeds and motorcycles that dodge in and out of the traffic as well. There is no age for being able to drive...no driver's license...no training to drive - AHHHH!!!!! Crrrr-aaazy! I just try to stop looking out the front window. Marvin has done a very good job of learning to operate and be crazy right along with them.

- People are very laid back and trusting. We went out to dinner last night and the restaurant's credit card machine wasn't working. We didn't have enough cash to pay the entire bill. Rather than making us go into the kitchen to wash dishes or something to cover the remainder of the bill, they agreed to let us leave and come back the next day to pay it. They didn't even take down our names or any information - they just let us leave. It was 200 pesos (around 6 dollars). Not a large sum, but still, they didn't even act annoyed......I can't imagine that happening in the states. (and yes, we did go back the next day and pay)

- It's hot here. Like 90 and humid. It doesn't go below 70 overnight. The sun is bright. Thankfully, we have air conditioning at our condo to retreat to when necessary. Many of the locals wear pants most of the time. Do they not know it's HOT?! I guess they could get used to it, but it makes me even hotter seeing them dressed in pants!

Anyways. We'll give more details on what we've done on our vacation later....but I need to get back to being lazy and relaxing now. Here's a couple pics for our few faithful readers to tide you over until we blog again!

Tate's Dedication

2010-04-21T06:07:00.001-07:00

This past Sunday we had Tate dedicated at our church. To us, having him dedicated meant that we were committing ourselves to raising him in a loving, Christian home. That we would do our best to instill in him Biblical values and bring him up to know (and hopefully accept) the life-saving message and power of Jesus. Having him dedicated at church also meant that we were asking our church body to come alongside us in our efforts and to hold us accountable. If we are not doing our part at some point during his life, we hope that our church family would lovingly confront us. Having a baby dedicated at our church is a very simple, yet intentional, thing to do. There isn't a lot of fanfare, just a simple, short prayer time during the morning service. But to us, it was further solidifying a commitment that we had already made in our hearts before our boys were even born, and bringing our church family in on that commitment as well. And onto other things, Tate is now 9 months old! I don't remember the exact measurements/poundage from his recent doctor's appointment, but he's a little heavier than what Landon was at this point, and he's considerably taller. Both boys were only slightly above average in their weight at this point. Tate is still in the 90th percentile for heighth though. Why on earth do they have to start out so big if they are just going to average out for the most part?!

Here's some noteworthy things for Tate these days:
- He pulls himself up quickly to things and scales across the furniture.
- Everything still goes into his mouth. Everything.
- He goes to bed around 9 p.m. and we "try" to keep him down until 7:30/8:00 a.m., although not always successful. He consistely goes down at 10:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. for naps, usually sleeping for 1 1/2 hours at each nap.
- He has a strong love for Cheerios.
- As of this week, he is completely weaned from nursing.
- He loves splashing in the bathtub.
- He has 8 pearly white teeth.
- I'm pretty sure he says "momma" frequently and intentionally.
- Sometimes he's very serious and observant, yet it's not too difficult to crack a smile from him usually.
- He's recently learned to clap.
- He loves watching and playing alongside Landon.
- His little bum is very cute when he crawls.
- One of his favorite activities is throwing toys off of the coffee table.
- He's a big, big, big joy in our lives!

Easter -- Grandmas -- Spring!

2010-04-15T16:19:00.000-07:00

So, it's been awhile. This is going to be a multiple event posting. Easter was a few weeks ago. Below the boys are opening the Easter baskets that Grandma Vig had delivered. They loved them! Especially Landon, who is now understanding what candy and presents are.

Below is an Easter Lily that we got from our church. It's huge! The matchbox car is there to show the size. Plus, we have those stinkin' little things all over the place.

Here's the boys on Easter morning. It seems to be impossible to get a good picture of them together! I won't give up though.

And then we got a whole lot of grandma action! We saw Grandma Moppy and Great-Grandma Willis on Easter afternoon. Then Grandma Vig came for a few days so that she get a little more time watching our regular lives since she will be watching the boys while we are on vacation (just a few weeks away!!). And then Grandma Strahm came this last weekend for a visit! The boys loved the extra hugs and attention they get from their grandmas. I think Landon is starting to understand that he has more than 1 grandma. I think they used to meld into one person in his mind into some sort of "super-grandma." It's fun to watch him "get" things.

And here the boys are getting ready to go on a bike ride! I love that the weather is getting warmer and we can do more things outside! Bring on the sunshine and nicer temps!

Visit from the Cousins

2010-04-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

Becca's brother and his 3 kids spent their Spring Break visiting family members and we were fortunate to be a stop on their tour. They arrived in time for lunch on Wednesday and left Friday mid-morning. They had fun playing in our makeshift sandbox (a.k.a. an area where we tore up some concrete last fall) and chasing our two cats. Kids are easy to entertain.

On Thursday, we visited the local nature center. We had a picnic lunch and then walked a little bit of a trail and checked out the visitor center.

Later, we went to the lakeshore. It was fun playing in the sand. There was a near casualty - Adam's precious frisbee. He should have known better than to let me know me throw it. It ended up getting caught by the wind (or maybe I'm just an awful thrisbee thrower) and it ended up in Lake Michigan. Freezing, cold Lake Michigan. For awhile, it looked like a lost cause, but it ended up coming close enough to the shore that, with the help of a stick, I was able to reach it and only get wet up to about my knees.

Above, Landon was pretty excited about a barge that was coming through.

Tate wasn't quite as excited about his beach experience. It could be due to the fact that when you drop a pacifier in the sand, it's impossible to get all of the sand off. He was good most of the time though.

Overall, it was a fun couple of days! We're always glad to have visitors! Looking forward to the Strahm 4th of July gathering at our place!

Pizza Party!

2010-03-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

I was referred to a party hosting company to try new products from different companies a few months back and I was chosen to host a Digiorno Pizza and Breadsticks party. Digiorno now sells Pizza and Breadsticks (with Marinara sauce) all in one box. I wasn't sure how exactly this all worked (and I'm still not), but 2 weeks before the designated party that I agreed to host, I received a box in the mail with all sorts of fun stuff in it! 6 coupons for a free box of the new product and 12 coupons for $4 off to give to the party attenders. A fun apron. Party beads. Paper Coasters. A pizza cutter. A chip clip. Definately a fun excuse to invite some friends over and not feel burdened to come up with what to serve or ask people to chip in a few bucks. The guys watched the basketball games in one room. The ladies talked in another room. The kids bounced back and forth and entertained each other for the most part. A nice Saturday evening. Hope I get asked to have more parties to try new products in the future!

My cute monkeys

2010-03-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

A picture of my monkeys. Yes, I fully intend to dress the boys alike for as long as they let me.
This was from several weeks ago, but Tate really enjoys the stairs and trying to pull himself up to things. He's fast and we've realized that the baby gate needs to be utilized more often. Thankfully, our stairs are padded and I have a semi-quick reaction time that enabled me to catch him before he made it all the way to the bottom of the stairs (yes, he fell from the top - I thought Adam was watching him....he thought I was watching him, we felt like bad parents, etc., etc.). He's recently been getting his top 4 teeth in. This has been painful for all of us. Adam heroicly took all of the night shifts. He should get some sort of medal. And now our 8-month old has 8 teeth! 8 teeth! Landon didn't have any at this point!
Ok, it's a Friday night and we have some incredibly exciting things planned.....Ok, not really. But someone has to make dinner.

The results of our 2-week gym membership

2010-03-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

So, are we in better shape after having worked out for 2 weeks with our free 2-week gym membership? Did we even use it? Was it worthwhile?

I (Becca) went for the first 6 days, then I was at about every other day for the remainder of the 2 weeks. It did feel good to sweat. I did a few classes. I did some running and a little weight lifting. I took showers. I didn't lose any weight, in fact, I probably gained a few pounds. I was even more ravishingly hungry than usual. And of course, I don't make good food choices when I'm ravishingly hungry! My most favorite thing was probably the childcare option. I would plan a morning workout to include a showering time -something that doesn't always get scheduled into a normal daily routine. Now the childcare option wasn't great. They had 1 person on-staff to watch however many kids were dropped off (ages 8 and under). They said they would turn children away if there were too many, which they didn't specify how many was too many. Thankfully, the weather was pretty nice outside so I think overall attendance at the gym was slower becuase of people choosing to be outside.

Adam didn't make it to the gym nearly as often as I. Although, he felt like he reached his goal of being sore for the majority of the time. He also said he enjoyed using free weights again. He also (kiddingly) said that it's hard to make his amazing physique any better than what it already is (my eyes are rolling). He thinks he lost about 3 pounds.

The thing is....upon the 2 weeks expiring, the gym never even talked to us or followed up with us asking if we'd like to join. Would we pay what they are asking for membership? Well, no. But still, everyone likes to feel needed.

Photo Shoot

2010-03-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

We had a photoshoot for the boys back in January to capture Tate's 6-month and Landon's 2-year. I've had these pictures for quite awhile, just slow in sharing them. A very talented friend has taken up photography on the side and he came over to our house on a Saturday afternoon. I'm telling ya, this is the way to go! You don't have to haul little ones across town. Or make a snap decision on what pictures need to be ordered. Very convenient to get a disc full of wonderful photos 2 weeks later in 4 different finishes (Color, Black/White, Cool, OldWestern).

As wonderful as all of that was, the day still had some hiccups. Mostly a 2-year old who uncharacteristically was cranky and didn't want his picture taken. And that same 2-year old getting a mysterious hot, bright red blotch on his right cheek. Still not sure what that was....but it had disappeared later after his nap that afternoon. Not sure if it was some sort of allergy that popped up and went away or what. Thankfully, Jamie still got a few good shots of Landon, although I was prepared to not have any decent shots after witnessing him whining and flailing.

Here's just a few of my favorites.

We're workin' out!

2010-03-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

Our local fitness center was offering free 2-week trial memberships if you signed up before the end of February. We slipped in on Sunday and got signed up! It's not even 2 miles from our house. We would enjoy having real memberships to a place like this, but don't feel the need to make it a part of our monthly budget. We invested in a nice treadmill a few years ago and Adam has a Bowflex that he traded for his carpentry skills. Plus, the local libary offers a ton of workout videos that I like to do. We just thought it would be fun to do while we had the chance. They even offer childcare during parts of the day/evening! Tonight we are going to do a Spinning class together.
I've always enjoyed working out as time allows (define "working out" as you like...but I enjoy being active, doing exercises, weights, etc.). Adam enjoys "playing" something rather than working out, but for 2 weeks he plans to "work out". He said his goal is to be sore for this whole 2 weeks. Such a guy. I just plan to get back into some sort of fitness level. I haven't been working out regularly since having Tate as I feel like it affects my nursing "supply.". My weight slid off quite easily and is down in digits that I haven't seen since high school so I haven't felt a need to try pushing it much (Don't hate me.....I'm just sharing with you my current situation...don't worry, things definately don't feel like they used to and are distributed differently than what I remember). Anyways. Let's see if 2 weeks of working out (probably nearly every day) will make much of a difference.

My most recent cake

2010-02-23T19:16:00.000-08:00

Remember, I took a cake decorating class like 5 years ago? Well, I did. I had wanted to, but I didn't want to pay the $25 to take the class. Adam signed up and paid for me without me knowing and then told me about it. That booger. :) I enjoyed the class and learned basic decorating techniques and have a lot of the tools now. It's just something fun I do on the side occasionally. It's a good outlet for my artistic side (Remember, I used to be quite an artist...not so much anymore...TOO time consuming!) It had been awhile since I had done anything, but a lady I worked with wanted a cake made for her newest grandbaby that was to be born. Maybe someday I'll post some of the other cakes that I've done.

A few recent activities....

2010-02-23T18:53:00.000-08:00

I've only let Landon help feed Tate twice now. He really likes to help with it, but he doesn't wait for Tate to actually open his mouth. It's kinda funny to watch, especially since Tate just grins whenever Landon gets that close to him.

We had a playdate with the Rottier girls one day last week. We turned our back on the toddlers and they had found the Wii remotes. The TV wasn't on, but they were pretending to play.

We went to a wedding on Saturday. It was beautiful....not so much in decorations (although that was lovely), but moreso, the couple's lives leading up to this point and now beginning their life together. Adam helped broadcast the wedding over the internet. The couple had a lot of international friends and wanted a site set-up so that others could view it that couldn't be there. At one point, 89 computers were logged in and watching the wedding! It's amazing what technology can do!
On Sunday afternoon, we took the youth ice skating. I've only been ice skating once in my life prior to this and Adam, well, he's annoyingly good at anything physical that he tries. I believe what I was saying in this picture was, "Adam, don't sneak up behind me! You're going to make me fall!" I did pretty well though - I never fell!