White Christmas!

   We woke up Christmas morning with presents under the tree and were blessed with a white Christmas for the second year in a row. The wind was horrible this year so there was no sledding but without the crazy wind the roads would have been horrible and we would not have made it to our family get together with Honey(my Mom).
   Bailee was up by 7 am like normal but poor girl had to wait on her brother to wake up and he did not do that until about 8:30. So she was in our bed trying to talk us into going and waking him up. The kids both got exactly what they asked Santa for this year. I love being blessed with such a hard working husband that we were so excited for Christmas to get here so he would not be so busy. For those of you that did not know Kurt builds toys(will add a link at the bottom to check them out.) so from Thanksgiving until Christmas he works lots of hours. He worked so hard this year and not only made others kids Christmas wishes come true with the toys he builds but our our kids were able to get a little more than they usually get. Bailee got her first American Girl Doll and JP got his spider man boots. Bailee has asked for almost 4yrs now for and AGD but there was no way possible and this year that dream came true. The doll has gone everywhere with us. I loved seeing her face light up when she discovered it was an actual American Girl Doll. JP was so excited to get his spider man boots he has been asking for them for over a year. One reason he has not gotten them is his foot was not big enough for the smallest size they make but finally he has grown enough that they finally fit. I think he hugged them more than Bailee hugged her doll.
      We had a great time with both of our extended families. Bailee and JP love cousin time. Watching them with their cousins reminds me of the excitement when I was young of the holidays and spending time with my cousins. Love seeing my kids making the same memories with my nieces and nephews. Oh, to be a kid again and to have that Christmas magic light in your eyes.
       Tomorrow we will ring in the New Year with some friends. We have been blessed to grow closer to so many friends this year. There is nothing better than having friends you enjoy spending time with. Makes life so much more fun.
      Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and prayers for a Blessed New Year!!  http://www.thehappytoymaker.com/

A season of Thanksgiving!!

    Cant believe it is already Nov. The years just keep going by faster and faster. Everyone used to tell me that life goes by way too fast and growing up I could not wait to be an adult and now I see how true it is. I wish it would slow down just a llittle. I went looking for a certain picture today and found pictures from our wedding and the first year of Bailee's life. Wow, where has the time gone? She was so little and her black hair that is now a sandy blond. It went away as fast as she is growing up on me. I cant believe she is 8 years old. JP will be 4years old in 2 short months. 4, no way!!
      Life is too short and I don't think we take the time to stop and enjoy the small things. For a few years now I have done a list of things I am thankful for and this year I decided to add pictures with my list. I am going to ask the kids to tell me something everyday they are thankful for and cant wait to hear their answers. I love this time of year that is full of cold weather and family time. Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner and they have always been my favorite time of year. Just praying we get lots of the white stuff. I am dying for lots of fun in the snow this year. We have a ski trip planned with friends in March and that cant get here fast enough!! I am so excited to head to the mountains and enjoy our first ski trip with some other great families.
      So my challenge to you this holiday season is to stop and enjoy the little things and make sure and thank the good Lord above for those small blessings. Today my blessing was Kurt of course he is not a small blessing in my life but I thought about the small things that he does that adds up to make him the huge blessing he is in our lives. He always complains when I come up with a spur of the moment DYI idea at the house but you know what he does it through all the complaining. :) He also takes the time to make sure the kids enjoy their horses. Especially JP that thinks that is the best thing in the world to do right now. He does not mind(at least out loud!) that his favorite past time hunting has now become a family event. He does have his days he gets to go out on his own but most of the time there is at least one kids tagging along or all of us. Then my favorite blessing that he has no idea is a blessing to me is his laugh. You don't hear it often but when he does it is one of the sweetest things to my ears. He is such a serious man and so quiet but when I get to hear that laugh it seems to make all right in the world for that little second.
      Here is that this holiday season your little blessings become the big ones!!

Goodbye summer time

We have had some great adventures just here at home but also some great weekend trips. The kids and I love to just get away. Kurt would rather stay at home but the kids and I are always up for a quick weekend get away. We manage to drag him on a few trips but we have learned how to just go on our own if we want to get out of the house for the weekend.

We took a few trips to Leander(Austin area) to see my Mom and to of course hit up the outlet malls. We also made a few trips to the Dallas area to see Aunt Tiffany of course. This summer we have started on a new adventure as we went to Stephenville to pick out lambs for stock show season.

Bailee has two lambs Spike and Lilly. She is so excited to start this fun part of her life and Kurt and I are excited for her to get to experience the fun and to take on the job of taking care of these animals.

Bailee starts 3rd grade on Monday and she is excited to see all her friends but nervous to take on the challenge of a new grade. She is excited for all 3 of her teachers she gets to be with this year also. Guess that is the joys of the small town is you know who your teachers are outside of the classroom.


JP is also going to start pre-k this year. He is very excited but Momma is kinda sad. I am excited for him but the time has gone way too fast and I am kinda sad to send my baby off to pre-k. I know that it will all be good for him. He has been home with me since the day he was born. He did go last year to Jennifer's for a while but he was with his cousins all the time then. He cant wait to meet new friends he says. Cant wait to see how the year goes.

So as the summer ends we say good bye to the warm weather and get ready for some football and sweaters. Great memories were made in the summer of 1012 cant wait to see what the school year holds for us ahead.

Summer Blessing!

  We have had a busy busy summer!! I thought we were going to have a long lazy summer at home but that has not been the case. We have been on the go from day one with VBS, basketball camps, visiting friends, swimming, gymnastics and our new adventure stockshow animals.

  I am not going to complain because we have enjoyed almost every minute. Don't get me wrong a day at home every once in a while sure has been nice. This summer as we have been busy going and going the long boring days at home seem to be full of sister/brotherly "love.". Who knew kids could love and dislike each other so many different times in a day. LOL! Even those stressful days of back and forth I am counting my blessings.

  We know of two different families that have someone in them that are fighting daily for their lives. Who are battling everyday to stay strong for just one more day with their family and friends. Both of these families have some kind of blog with updates for friends and families to read. These blogs amaze me. One is the point of view of a loving wife who has kids and her strength and faith amazes me. I just cant even imagine what they are going through. Reading these blogs have made me stop and enjoy my kids a little more. Watch them enjoy the little things in life and try to take it all in just a little more than before. To these amazingly strong people I tip my hat to you all and thank you for sharing your adventures with us and making me stop for just a few minutes and take life in. You all are in our prayers daily.

 I don't know what lies ahead for our little family but whatever God chooses I am choosing to enjoy it and stop just to watch and remember the things we go through. Life is way too short and I am learning we just don't stop enough to take in the small moments. Like tonight my kids laying on the floor together just watching TV together. No fighting over who has the most pillow room or that one is touching the other just laying there and not even know that I am watching and remembering that loving moment between the two. Those sweet moments are what life is about just loving the people around us. Tonight I am taking on the challenge of making a note book for my kiddos of things they do. To sit down each night and write down something or things they have done that day that made me proud, laugh, or even cry. The moments in life that pass us by that one day might mean something to remember.

You will never know how much it meant!

Today we found out that a guy that blessed Bailee more than he will ever know went to be with the Lord. Mr. Larry Reynolds had never meet any of us he just happen to know our sister in law Tiffany and her parents. He had heard how we were looking for a horse for Bailee to help build her confidence after her fall off her horse a few years before.

One day I got a text from my sister in law saying "I think I might have found Bai a horse." So Kurt and I began asking the number one question how much? Then came the surprise that we never expected "he says he wants Bai to have Bandita." "He wants her to come spend a week with her here and see how well they get along and if every thing works out then he wants to give Bandita to Bailee." Then came the story of why. You see Mr. Reynolds was very ill and did not have much longer and wanted to make sure she went to a good home. He thought her and Bailee would make a good match.

So we began to plan Bailees stay with Aunt Tiffany to meet Bandita. I was so nervous for her to meet a new horse and for Kurt and I not be around. She went back to Wylie with Aunt Tiffany after she made a trip here and we were to go down the following weekend to get Bailee and see how things were going. The first day Tiffany began sending pictures of Bailee and Bandita and you could see the instant connection.

Bailee was never able to meet Mr. Reynolds but she was able to meet his wife. Mr. Reynolds was not feeling well the week she was down and was hoping to make it the weekend we were there to meet us.

When we got there Bailee was so excited to show us all she could do with Bandita. Kurt and I were so amazed we were looking at a different kid. Her confidence was amazing! Bailee was riding in the arena and saddling her horse and even down "painting" Banditas hoofs. The whole time that horse did not move an inch. She did exactly what Bailee wanted and Bailee was in love. We had been waiting to find that one horse that Bailee would have that connection with and we were seeing right before our eyes. What a Blessing!!

Unfortunately we were never able to meet Mr.Reynolds either. This man that we were never blessed to meet had blessed our daughter with a new best friend and a new outlook on life. A life with confidence. Bailee and Bandita still have that amazing connection. Bandita is special herself, she has arthritis and has to be given a shot each month.

Larry Reynolds will always be special in our book and we were never able to thank him in person for what he did and even if we were able to in person I don't think we could ever really tell him how much what he did meant to us and touched our lives. This random act of kindness is one that will never be forgotten.

Today we lift his family in prayers as God comforts them in this time of loss. We are unable to make it to his service this weekend due to Jaci's wedding but will be thinking about them all as they celebrate his life. A life that changed Bailees and he will never know how thankful we are.

Thank you Mr. Reynolds!!

The Small Things Mean the Most

You never think things hold meaning as much as they do until you get rid of it. Today we sold our Dodge Durango and it kinda made me a little sad.

We bought the Durango when Bailee was about 7 months old. I remember going and test driving it and we were so excited to find exactly what we were looking for. We went looking for a Durango and was hoping to find a 4*4 and we did the first place we looked.

That car brought both my babies home from the hospital, we have laughed and cried inside of that car and also had some great trips in it.

Selling it today made me think of the trips we took as a family. We took our first family trip to OKC and took Bailee to the zoo. We had stopped at the Donut Stop on the way out of town and I have pictures of her covered in cherry donut. That was also the first time my two best friend Christy and Susanne meet Bailee.

It also carried Kurt, Bailee, Bobbi Jo and Mom and I on all of our first trip to Sea World in San Antonio. We had a blast and I remember being thankful we had a vehicle that was so tall because it flooded a little while we where there.

It is the car I drove for the first time in the Dallas area while it was just the kids and I and Kurt was at home trying to look up maps on line while he directed us off of the wrong hwy in rush hour traffic.

 I loved all the room that car had with the third row seats but it sure got full of junk because of that third row seat. That is one thing I will miss is my car is usually the one everyone loaded up in because it had the most room.

Never thought that selling that Durango would mean so much to me. I have cussed that thing so many times because it did have its problems but today I forgot all about the problems we had and remembered the good things that came from the Durango.

We have moved on to a smaller car that gets much better gas mileage and now Kurt has a new to him pick up. He has been needing/wanting a pick up to haul things and feed to the horses and that was kinda hard in the durango. We are going this afternoon to buy him and pick up as old as we are but it is in great shape and it will do what we need it for. We are trying to remember to "live like no one else so that one day we can live like no one else."- Dave Ramsey

    Wow, I am horrible at this!! I am so bad with keeping up with this blog but we have been very busy.

I am extremely busy with school. A&P and medical terminology are taking up any free time I have and much of my evenings with Kurt and the kids. I just know that one day it will all pay off! I am loving being able to go up to AC on Tues and Thursday for class. Kinda funny I never thought I would say I enjoy going to school but it I never realized how much I miss having a place to go and being with other adults. I have meet some wonderful friends in my class and have loved every minute of it. Don't get me wrong I am blessed to stay home with my kiddos and love every minute but it amazes me how much I really miss the social aspect of work.

Bailee is almost done with 2nd grade which makes me very sad. She is growing so much and I love it but makes me very sad. She has become a little social butterfly and has spent lots of time with friends lately. She spent the week of spring break with a friend in Colorado skiing. She has a new love! She is already making plans for all of us to go next year. She says she cant wait to teach her Daddy to ski. The family she went with says she has no fear. I watched a video of her coming down the mountain and thought I was going to have a heart attack. I don't know if I can handle seeing that in person. She has started softball and is enjoying it. It is kinda new to her and she was very nervous during her first game but she did great.

JP is as wild and crazy as ever. I don't think he ever slows down. He keeps us on our toes. He has become such a big boy. :( We bought him a back pack for pre k next year and he is so excited. He told me "don't be sad I am just not a baby anymore." Which did not help at all. He is learning so much and I love watching how hands on he is. Much different from the way Bailee likes to learn.

Kurt has started a new job with Wheeler Welding. He is enjoying it. I think he likes being back welding and building things. We are blessed that he does not have to drive but about 10miles to work. He is still helping Jerry making toys in the evenings or weekends when he can. As we speak he is out there and they are working on a new toy. The things Jerry comes up with amazes me and I think Kurt loves learning from him.

That about sums up what we have been up to since Christmas. I will try harder to keep up with our summer adventures. I promised Bailee and myself that after the past two summers taking summer classes I would take this summer off. We are all kinda excited about that! Bring on the swim lessons and VBS and big camping plans being made. Cant wait!