Ryan is Becoming a Fish

Ryan did swimming lessons in the morning with daddy. He is more comfortable in the water than before--but still a little unsure of himself at times. He did love going with daddy. During his last week of swimming lessons, Grandma and Grandpa and the whole family watched him and we got pictures. The pool isn't heated so the instructor wore a wetsuit. Tony decided to wear his too. Ryan had two swimming shirts on. ; )

From November 2012

From November 2012

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From November 2012

We Love Grandma and Grandpa!

Grandma and Grandpa came up for Max's primary program. They boys have been having lots of fun. Jase and Grandma Pearl! Max did really well in the program. I got to help out. It was my first time being the person helping at the mic. I was so proud of how all the kids did. After Sunday dinner we dipped pretzels.

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Here's Ryan's pretzels with a few sprinkles.

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We went to the Rain Forest Cafe.

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We had a great seat by the fish.

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The boys were being gorillas.

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Elephants and a rainbow.

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And Cha Cha the frog.

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Stories with Grandpa are always nice.

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We went on a letter walk. I saw this on pinterest from this blog. You make a paper plate with letters around the side. You cut it to make tabs. When the kids spot something that starts with that letter, you push the tab down.

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All done!

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Max loved showing how he likes to color. He does more coloring since starting kindergarten and really likes it.

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Last night the boys wanted to snuggle and look at books. They were really cute together.

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Today we went to IKEA and had lunch and let the boys play in Small Land. They love having Grandma and Grandpa here. :)

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice!

I recently told the boys what little girls and boys are made of. Then we got the chance to watch some cute girls while their parents went on a date. We're not used to just having friends who are girls without any brothers along, and it was funny to see the boys show off. Here is Ryan and Lily. I think Ryan's going to have to work a little harder to impress her.

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Max loved making Rory laugh.

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It's fun having a change of pace.

5 Months!

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Our cute little monkey is a roller! He rolled a few times at 3 months but it is more constant now.

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His neck is doing well; he can look both left and right without problems and has been able to for awhile. He has much better neck strength but he still needs to get his neck a little stronger. The physical therapist and chiro think that because of his torticollis, his neck muscles grew assymetrically and he's had that as an obstacle to having full neck strength. Soon he'll be able to sit up with less support and hold his head up even longer. He just gets stronger every day.

The Latest

The election results were very disappointing in our home but we want to be positive and continue to be prayerful for this great nation and beautiful state that we live in. Lately, Tony and I have been trying to take our money-saving skills and food storage/preparedness to another level. It's been fascinating to read about different ways to be more self-reliant. It started with me reading this blog post which led me to read

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and then

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I love learning new ways to stretch certain areas of our budget so there's an even greater savings. We started doing our budget to reflect how they do theirs and it really works for us. Not everything in the book is how I would do things but there's so much to learn. Freezer meals have become a new favorite of mine. I recently tried these 8 meals and they are great. I'm constantly looking for ways to stretch our budget so we have more wiggle room to save and have fun outings and also we're continuing to save and be prepared for any emergency. Any tried and true tips are always appreciated! :)

We've also been reading from a reading list which is fun. There is a list of 100 books children should read from our local library system. I love requesting the books online from all over the county, picking them up at my library and reading them with the kids. This one wasn't on the list but it was a favorite anyway:

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Ryan has continued with swimming lessons. He is doing so well with daddy there watching him. Max is in an afterschool athletes class and loves it. It's fun to watch because he's got to be the youngest one there (5-7 years old). They play all kinds of games to practice sports skills and the coach is amazing. We've been lucky that all of the kids' lessons have been positive experiences.

A Real Candyland Game

We don't give our kids candy often, but I thought it would be fun to play Candyland for Family Home Evening and incorporate some of the Halloween stash. So if anyone drew a card with a candy on it, they got to pick a piece of candy. Also, if you drew a card with double blues, you got to pick a piece of candy. Ironically, Ryan kept pulling candy cards over and over. I thought maybe two pieces of candy each--Ryan got 4. haha. Oh well, it's not like that kind of thing ever happens here. The boys were kind of excited.

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And afterwards, we did burpees, push ups and handstands. haha. So fun!

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Camping in November

The boys had a fun day on Saturday. They both went to a birthday party and then Max got to go to a school swimming party. They kept telling me it was the best day ever so I couldn't disappoint them when they asked me to go camping. Besides when camping just means lying on your bedroom floor instead of your bed (crazy), it's no big deal. So here are the boys before they were asleep in their "sleeping bags".

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And here's how they ended up later. I love that they are such buddies.

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