Jackson is One!

Ok, as usual I am a little behind. Jackson turned one on September 19th. We had the grandparents and our siblings over for the birthday party.
It was pretty tame. Jackson was cute, when we started singing "Happy Birthday" he put his hands behind his head to listen. When we finished he sat up and put his hands down. Pretty funny...

Where to start?

Ok, so I admit that I am so overwhelmed as to where to start since I am so far behind that I won't try and catch up. I will just post some stuff from this summer and call it good. Sorry I was not able to blog while we were on our trip, but we were lucky to get cell service half the time much less Internet. Don't even get me started with AT&T they are horrible. You would think, no matter what state you are in that they would at least cover major interstates, well they don't! Good thing we did not have car trouble.

The fast and the furious

About to pull out on our summer adventure.

I will make this brief. I'm sitting in the hall at camp while the family is sleeping.

We made it out of our apartment alive (barely). We were hoping to be out by Thursday night, but with kids I should have known to tack on an extra 12-15 hours for nursing and feeding Hannah, and diaper changes etc.... We finally closed the door and turned in the keys at 10:00 Friday night. To back track a little, Clint took the DAT on May 26th and made a 20! We are so glad that is over. He started helping move stuff on Wed. night. I was stressing out big time! My sister and her boyfriend helped us load the big stuff into storage, so that was good. I could not have done it this time around.

We missed the family reunion this year since moving took so long, so I was sad about that. I was excited for my extended family to meet Jackson. We stayed with my Aunt Judy on Saturday night and headed out for our adventure on Monday morning. First stop, Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns. Not bad for a first day on the road. Carlsbad was a bit of a let down, the bats had not really arrived yet. There were only about 100 that came out of the cave instead of the hundreds of thousands we were hoping for. Oh, well.... I will attach a few pics from the first few days of our trip.

Looking for bats...

( or is she boarder patrol in training? )

Quick Update

Fun swinging at Mimi's house

I was trying to get them both to look at me and this is what I got

Not much to tell here. Jackson is an eating machine, and Hannah has had fun helping feed him. He does not like cereal of any kind, so that has been a challenge.

I am in the middle of packing for our two month trip and trying to pack up the rest of the house to put things in storage. We will look for rental property when we return from our trip. For a girl that has never truly camped this whole trying to be prepared has been stressful. Clint takes the DAT exam on May 26th, we load the moving van on the 27th, and leave for our trip on the 28th. My sister will be here in a few days. I will be putting her to work helping me pack and wrangle the kids. I hope to be blogging from the road so that anyone who cares to hear about our travels can keep up. That's all for now. I need to go pack a box while Jackson is taking his 30 min. nap.

Easter 2010

We had a busy Easter weekend. We started the weekend at Mimi and Granddad's house. The "Easter Bunny" did his thing on Saturday morning. We wanted to keep Easter Sunday's focus on Jesus. Later that morning we got ready for the Kiwanis's Egg race ( that is what we call it at our house). Last year Hannah only got 1 egg, but this year we tried a different approach and called it a race instead of a hunt, and she ended the "race" with 16 eggs! As we lined up across the 3rd base line, Hannah started stretching and doing jumping jacks to warm up and prepare for her race.




That afternoon we went to see Aunt Brandy and cousin Ben for another egg hunt at their house. She had fun and ended the day with a black eye. She got a little crazy on the swing set and wound up with a black eye just in time for Easter pictures. I was able to fix her hair so you could not see it much.

As with most family pictures with small children we took tons of pictures trying to get one "good one" here are a few we wound up with after church on Sunday.

Here are some more that were good for at least one person in the picture

In conclusion here is the "Easter Story" according to Hannah:

"There were some bad men that did not like Jesus, so they put him on a cross. They put nails in his hands and feet so he would not fall off when he died. They also cut his side with a sharp sward and hurt him. After he died they put him in a tube. They put a big rock in front of the tube so he could not get out, but he did anyway. He came alive and saw all his friends, then he went to heaven." This is the story she told me on the way home from school last week. As the weekend went on the story changed a bit... "Jesus was put in a cave, like one that bears live in."

I hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. Bye for now.

Happy Birthday Hannah

Okay, so this is a little late.....but better late than never right?
My sweet Hannah turned 4 on March 16th! What a sweet and curious girl God has given us to raise. I am so proud of the young lady she is becoming.
We started your life in the state of Washington and moved you to Texas to be closer to our family.
You love to dig in the dirt, and you have no fear of creepy crawly things like your mama. You love to catch bugs and be outside.

Sweet Hannah, God has given you a very caring heart. Your teachers at school and church are always amazed at your caring for others who feel left out or are hurt. I hope to help you grow in that spirit of caring and love that God has given you.
You are becoming a wonderful big sister. I hope you and Jackson will be close and take care of each other growing up.
Happy Birthday to my beautiful girl! I can't wait to see what year 4 has ahead.

Growing up

Time keeps marching around here, sometimes faster than I am ready for. Hannah turned 4 on March 16th and Jackson has started eating baby food. He loves to eat when we do and will not stop yelling until he gets fed. So far the only thing he does not like to eat is baby cereal. He prefers veggies and fruit. We purchased two kayaks in the hopes to start doing something fun outdoors this spring and summer. We were going to try and use them this past weekend, but we got around 8" of snow. We still used them, just not on the water. Hannah had tons of fun, but we are ready for the warm weather to come and stay a while.