Swim Lessons

Winter is a great time to take swim lessons - its way easier to manage our schedule during the winter and the kids are bored anyways! I am falling in love with all the opportunities that the YMCA offers including swim lessons. Ellie hopped right to it and made some great advances in her comfort level in the water and Ryan took his lessons sans parent for the first time. His first lesson was really hard on him, but after that you'd never have known that day one was a bust. So proud of these water babies.

This was Ryan before his lesson

Ellie floating on her back day one!

So happy she can touch the bottom of the pool this year

Ryan during his lesson on day one - poor baby

Ellie the ballerina

Ellie's Christmas present from us was to take a couple ballet lessons at the YMCA. It was the perfect amount to trial run ballet for her and she loved it! We aren't quite ready to commit to it long term which is what most studios run (quarterly or semi year), so we are holding of just a little bit longer, but filling in with other stuff too!

Happy Birthday & Eric Church

For my 30th last year, I ended up traveling to Seattle on my birthday. This year ended up the exact same! However, I was welcomed home with a big surprise - dinner and tickets to Eric Church. Jared surprised me with dinner at a new local restaurant with a bunch of our friends and then we had amazing tickets to the concert!

This was without zoom from our seats! Amazing!

Welcome 2015

With no plans for the new year celebration, we managed to host a fun night at the last minute! We have such a great group of friends! Our kids both passed out on the couch around 9 and 10, while the Simmons kids managed to keep it together until midnight!

Midnight Groupie Pic

The boys

Christmas 2014

Christmas is always a special time. It means more quality family time, but there is always that extra little buzz of excitement. We continued our annual tradition of picking our a Christmas tree on Green Bluff and cutting it ourselves. The daycare hosted its annual Christmas concert. Ellie participated last year and being it was her first a little out of her element, but this year she looked like a pro, but her poor little brother who had his first debut was unsure of it all. He constantly was seeking her out or one of his teachers. Super sweet as usual. The kids also had fun with all their presents, but had clear favorites. Ellie loved her ballet outfit and lessons that she got to do in January and Ryan was in love with his Jake the Pirate Duplo Legos.

The winning tree

Posing for pictures on the long walk back to the truck

Post Christmas Program

All smiles now that the program is done

Our little angel

Enjoying a night out at my work Christmas party with BFF Ali

We clean up pretty good

Christmas pottery painting

Making new Christmas decoration for years to come

While Ryan made a blue rubber ducky

Loving his Jake Lego

Modeling her ballet outfit

2nd Cousins playing together

Loving on baby Payton

In the very little snow we got, we managed to make at least one snowman

Pre-sledding run down the street

Ellie testing out the weight limits of Dad's new hunting pack

Ellie's 5th Birthday

Ellie had a fun FROZEN birthday! With Frozen being all the rage this year, how could we not follow up our Frozen Halloween with Ellie's Birthday being Frozen themed too! She got to wear her Elsa dress once again, we played with non melting 'snow' and had a blast! Of course we made an Elsa cake too!

This hat was a hit from Uncle Nick

These Frozen looking boots were her favorite all winter. She also had 2 or 3 other little girlfriends who had matching boots!

Cake with our cotton ball snow

 

Halloween

For Halloween we were directed by Queen Elsa herself, that we all needed to be Frozen for Halloween. It really sounded like a lot of fun since Jared and I hadn't participated in Halloween costumes in years and of course wanted to make our lady happy. My mom created a beautiful Elsa for Ellie, we found a great Kristoff vest on ETSY for Ryan, I crafted my Anna costume from purchased items and things I had on hand and we found some great faux fur for Jared's and he crafted some great antlers for his Sven costume. Of course it wouldn't be Frozen without Olaf so he made an appearance too. We all had a great time!