Friday Flashback

This Friday Flashback was taken December 24, 2010.  We had gone over to our neighbors house for Christmas Eve dinner.  Theresa made an awesome lasagna and we had a great night with our friends and neighbors.  Landon's helicopter went down in the Red Sea this past Sunday, September 22.  He was never found.  My heart aches for Theresa and their sweet little boys.  I can't stop thinking of them and the hard, hard road ahead. 

Brenalee, Tyler & Anthony (with Little Kitty photobombing)

One thing that makes me really sad is that for a few years now I've been really, really lazy about taking pictures, and blogging.  I don't have any pictures of Theresa and Landon - just Anthony.  We had all our Thanksgiving dinners together while we lived there next to them and this Christmas Eve dinner and saw each other nearly every day - and I don't have a single picture.  How is that possible?!  I'm going to be better about taking pictures. 

7 Months!

This little girl is 7 months old today!  She loves going on walks in her stroller, bath time, her brother and sister, and eating.  She does not like to have her nose wiped, or when mommy walks out of her sight.  She is trying to start crawling - she does a backwards scoot.  She is working on getting her upper teeth, which I think is making her a little grumpy.  This week she all of a sudden has stopped her long naps that she normally takes.  I hope we can get back to those nice naps soon!

Love this little angel to pieces!

Pack Meeting

Tyler had a pack meeting at church.  The theme was cooperation.  They had a spaghetti dinner.  The trick was that they had to have their hands all tied to their neighbors and try to eat!  It was funny watching them.  Some kids just gave up and put their face in their plate and started eating that way.

We started out with cooperation games to keep them entertained for a bit until dinner.

 Then it was dinner time!

Soccer

I missed Tyler's first soccer game because I was at Bodypump training.  We drove out to Christiansburg Middle School for his second game.  As soon as the game started Tyler kicked in a goal!  I was so excited I got to see it!  I always miss his goals for some reason.  It was also a Hokie game day in Blacksburg, so we were dressed in our Hokie gear.  We had tickets to the game because it was military appreciation day.  But, we ended up not going because it was pouring rain all afternoon.  We watched it on TV instead.

 Tyler is #8

 Bristol loving the outdoors

 She really liked picking the grass.  She even has her Hokie in!  (that's her pacifier - we call it Hokie because it's a Virginia Tech paci)

 Ready for the VT vs. Marshall game!  Go HOKIES!

Bodypump 87 Training

I have taken bodypump for years - I love it.  I have never seen muscle definition in my body until I started doing bodypump.  I've wanted to be an instructor for a long time.  I was thinking about it a lot when Tj was last deployed, but it's an all weekend long thing and I didn't want to have to burden someone with the kids for that long.  When Tj came home I was looking into it, but then I found out I was pregnant.  I could have still gone through the training, but I just didn't feel well.  I was always so nauseous.   Well, finally I found a time that would work for me.  I signed up back in July for training the weekend of September 14 & 15.  I was so excited.  I would be training on BP 87!  About a week and a half before the training I received my release and the tracks I was to learn so I could teach them at training.  I had the chest and back tracks.  I looked at that stuff and thought - man, how am I supposed to learn this stuff?!  I thought it was so easy!  Well, it's not as easy as my instructors always make it look!  But, I studied, practiced, listened to the songs over and over, and over again and finally had it memorized.  I felt pretty good about it.  Training weekend came and I headed out early for training - it was about a 45 minute drive.  There were 15 people in my training - 13 women & 2 men.  Some had experience in being instructors in other programs already.  Some, like me, didn't.  It was a great weekend.  I learned so much.  It was hard!  We presented our first track on the first afternoon - I did the chest track first.  I did good - no mess ups at all.  I was a little nervous getting up there in front of everyone for the first time with the microphone on.  The second day we presented our track again, then presented our second track later in the day.  It went well too, I just rushed a little.  We had a small run, for about 15 minutes, then came back to the gym for a pump challenge.  It was so hard.  The trainer set up 8 stations we had to rotate through.  He set the weight for those stations - and it was A LOT of weight.  Way more then you would ever normally use.  It was just to show us how strong we really are and how much our bodies are really capable of.  I was with two other girls in my group - one was great.  The other drove me nuts.  She was one of those who didn't really try all that hard.  She would stand there doing nothing while the instructor was turned the other way, then work only when he was watching her.  She complained and complained and complained some more.  She drove me INSANE!  At the end of the second day we received our feedback and found out if we had passed or not.  There are three different kinds of passes - I got the highest pass - yay!  All that hard work paid off.  I was so happy.  The instructor winked at me and told me to get started on learning the rest of the release and get ready to film.  I have 60 days to send in my film to Les Mills so I can be fully qualified to teach by myself.  I've been working hard and have 5 of the 10 tracks learned now.  I'm hoping to have everything memorized and ready to film on Oct. 9...it's scary!

I've taught in my gym now about 6 times.  Again, I was really nervous the first time.  But, everyone is so nice and supportive, I'm no longer worried.  I even messed up the first time I taught I was so nervous, but I didn't tell anyone and I kept going like nothing was wrong.  No one but the other instructor knew.

Got my release!  Now to study, study, study!!!

 Off to training the first morning!

 YAY!  I PASSED!!!

 At the gym, with my name on a poster telling me I was TEACHING!

What a great experience! 

First day of school 2013!

After a really long summer, school has started again.  I had such mixed emotions.  I was excited for them to get back to school and get back into a regular routine, but at the same time I miss them.  They are a HUGE help with Bristol!  It was very quiet without them today. 

Tyler is in 5th grade!  His teacher is Mrs. Henderson.  He said his favorite part of the day was playing sign-o - a get to know you game.

Brenalee is in 3rd grade!  Her teacher is Mrs. Mullins.  Her favorite part of the day was when the teacher read to them. 

Here's to a great year! 

Brena's 8th Birthday Party

Brenalee has never had a birthday party before - I let them have parties when they turn 5 & 8.  I HATE birthday parties.  We will do cake and presents at home for the kids and celebrate their birthdays, but I do NOT like parties - ugh!  For some reason we didn't end up having one for her when she turned 5, so it was time to give the girl a party!  She wanted to have her party at Paint N' Fun.  It's a place where you & your guests pick out a piece of pottery to paint.  It was fun and easy! 

They also had face painting:

 The cake - she wanted a Monster High cake.  A lady from church made it for us. 

 Opening presents!  She was super excited about all her fun stuff.  She got lots of earrings, necklaces, doll clothes and more.

 All the girls.

6 months!

6 months already!  Brisol went in for her 6 month check up today.  She weighs 15lbs 3oz - 48%, and she's 26 1/2" long - 78%.  Her head circumference is 16.5 - 35%.  She was declared absolutely perfect in every way :)  She got a few shots and was very, very angry about that. 

She is now very good at sitting up on her own.  She loves her brother and sister and they can make her laugh like no one else.  They are so good with her.  She loves to eat oatmeal.  She is eating veggies and fruits now.  But, her favorite is oatmeal.  She is still nursing 4x/day.  She takes a few naps throughout the day and sleeps throughout the night.  Time is going too fast!

St. Louis

We drove until about 10pm the day we left Colorado.  We drove all the way across Colorado and Kansas!  We got into Missouri and decided to try to find a hotel - well bad news - they were all full!  There was a Royals game and something else going on and we couldn't find a room!  We finally found one and it was a little scary - but we got to sleep which was good!  The next morning we woke up and headed for St. Louis.  We wanted to stop and go up in the arch because we had heard from a few people how cool it was.  The arch is right off the interstate - we saw it right when we were getting into downtown St. Louis. 

We got to St. Louis about noon Sunday.  It was a 3 hour wait to go up in the arch - we decided we had come all this way - might as well wait!  We walked into downtown and had some lunch while we waited.  Then we walked around the outside of the arch for a little bit.  

Then it was our turn to go up in the arch.  It was really fun.  It took about 5 minutes to get to the top in this little box like container, and it was pretty small!

It was really cool to look out the little windows at the top of the arch.  It was much smaller than I thought, but it's a pretty narrow arch - so I don't know what I was expecting.  You kind of had to lean over the walls to look out the windows.

The Cardinals were playing a game as we looked out the windows.

 The Mississippi River flows right below the arch:

 Downtown St. Louis

 Bristol was pretty tired and starting too get a little grumpy - she wanted to eat and go to bed!  Unfortunately, there was no where to feed her!

 These were the windows - pretty small!

 The tram down took about 3 minutes.

We finally got back to the car about 4pm - we decided to drive and see where we made it to before getting tired.  We ended up driving the rest of the way home!  We got home at 4am Monday morning - we were TIRED!  The kids did so awesome on the trip - they were great!  I was so worried that Bristol would cry for hours at a time, but she never did - she was a perfect angel!  It took me a couple days to recover from that all night trip though.

I hope the older kids have fond memories of this trip for the rest of their lives.  I thoroughly enjoyed this trip - I loved that we got to drive so many miles across this beautiful country together and see so many beautiful sights.  I will remember this trip for a long time.  I hope we get to do another trip like this someday!  Thanks family for the amazing experience.  I love you guys all so much!

Back to VA we go

What a sad day - it's time for vacation to be over.  We have a loooong drive ahead of us!  We are not sure where we will stop - we're just going to drive until we can't drive anymore!  I love this adventure!

5 generations and more

Sometime it's hard to have almost all your family in the same town.  When you go visit it's hard to make sure everyone has equal time.  On the other hand I love that so many of our family lives in the same town - we get to see everyone at least for a little bit!  I love that one of my grandmas lives right next door to my parents and my other grandma isn't too far either.  We had our 4 generation picture taken - the last time we did that was 8 years ago!

 Never mind that my mom and grandma can't keep their eyes open - sheesh!

And 8 years ago...we've had a couple new additions since this was taken!

 

Me, Grandma Landes & Kim

And we got a special visit from our cousin Krishelle that night!  Krishelle is right in between Kim & me in age and was our very favorite cousin to play with while we were growing up.  She lives in Arizona now, but had come up for a visit.  My Grandma Whiting turned 80 on August 13, and they had a big family birthday party for her, so she came up for that.  We went out for frozen yogurt and talked and laughed for hours.  It was so much fun to see her.  Unfortunately, we had to leave the morning of the party - so we missed the birthday party.

Me, Steph, Kim & Krishelle

Birthday girl

There was a few things Brena wanted for her birthday - one thing she has been begging for was a real pedicure.  She got her wish the morning of her birthday:

 The finished product:

After Brena's baptism we went to my parent's house and had some food catered from a Hawaiian BBQ place - it was really good.  Then we watched Brena open her presents.  I love that she got to do this with all her cousins.  She's never had a real birthday party before - so this is the closest she gets when we are in CO and all her cousins come. 

 She wanted these high heels so bad - she was so funny when she opened them.  She can barely walk in them :)

 She also wanted these fashion glasses so bad, she didn't have enough money to buy them in the store and we almost had to drag her out of there crying - I guess someone told Grandma Franklin how bad she wanted them :)

 

Grandma snuggling Bristol

What a fun night and what a special girl we got to celebrate!  I can't believe she's 8 already!