My Sweet Boy is One!

My sweet Jacob is one tomorrow! It's hard to believe that he has only been with us for a year...he is the perfect addition to our family. We could not have asked for a sweeter, happier boy. He is so easy going and always has a smile on his face. It is so cute to see him learning and exploring his surroundings, and really starting to talk! He is saying so many "words" and signs now. My favorite is when he wants milk he squeezes his hand (the sign for milk) and screams, "mi, mi, mi!" Until we get it. It makes me smile when this is what I wake up to in the morning.

We are celebrating Saturday with our friends and family and will post pictures then! Happy Birthday Sweet Jacob!

Hmmm...

I don't really have much to post about...so this is going to be random.

We have been loving our boys, they are so funny and easy right now! Noah is obeying so well, and it's so fun to see him going to the next developmental level...I love it! Jacob is choosing to walk everywhere, forget about crawling:) He is starting to make so many animal sounds and does a few baby signs. He pushes around trains and says choo-choo, just like Noah. They are so fun to watch explore and learn!

Tomorrow is the first day of my jr. volleyball leauge, which is a big day every season. There is always so many things that can go wrong, and this year I have 22 teams, so that's a lot of work! After the first week it's smooth sailing, so that's nice.

Andrew is almost done with school and we can't wait! Only 3 more weeks! What a relief that will be, although we will miss all the freedom of summer and spring breaks next year. Finding a job in this economy will be hard, but he will do great. It will be fun seeing what this next year brings us!

Have a great week!

Here is one of the promised videos from the past few months. I'm not sure why, but when we imported them, they came in really choppy...so sorry!

Here is Noah doing cross-fit...Andrew makes him exercise every day:) He has really good form as you can tell...

Family Pictures

Well, we got a few pictures in today, though I'm not sure we've gotten the one yet...what do you think? 

Aquarium

Noah is still obsessed with fish, after beginning this obsession in Hawaii a full year ago! So we journeyed yesterday to the aquarium. Noah lost his mind most of the trip, but here are some fun pictures of the day. Here's our whole family in the shark's mouth...I love Noah's face! Jacob was clueless:) 

We made Andrew climb in to the old scuba head to take his picture, we got Jacob and Noah too, but their pictures are on the other camera. 

They are just as

 funny:) 

Noah loved looking into all the different tanks, though his favorites were the Nemo and Dory ones...I wonder why? 

Here's another good picture of Andrew and Jacob right outside our condo. 

We're hoping to get some family pictures today, but it's raining right now so we'll have to see. I also have a bunch of video I've been meaning to upload, so watch for those...there are some funny ones...or atleast I think so! 

Nice Day

We had an unexpected beautiful day here at the beach! Some friends drove down for the day and we spent the day swimming, eating, scrapbooking, and shopping at the outlets. Found some good deals at the outlets in Lincoln City, but nothing super cute. I got 6 shirts for $33, but they didn't have any SUPER cute things. Noah and Jacob found a playmate in Betsy and wouldn't leave her alone all day. Noah kept inviting her to do things...so cute!

A happy boy and a happy Papa

Two of my favorite boys

The day ended with wine and a sunset walk on the beach with my husband...perfect.

*sorry the pictures are small, the connection was really slow...

Road Trip

We made it through our first road trip with just our family yesterday. The four of us took off yesterday for Depoe Bay to meet my parents at their time share for the week. Somewhere along the road, the boys talking in the back, the music blasting, holding Andrew's hand, and eating Taco Bell (the second time eating fast food in four months), we realized that we've got a great life. Our little family is complete (atleast with our own kids...we'll see about adopting:) and growing up, and I love it.
Andrew and the boys this morning on our porch.

Best Dad

Sorry I have been such a slacker lately with posting, it's been almost a week! I had a huge volleyball week in starting up my junior league and am working full time in 6th grade for the week! It's so fun getting to do all the planning and everything, and my class is totally "buying in" to everything I'm doing with them and re-structuring the class. I LOVE IT! It's a class I've been with a lot too:) Anyway, back to blogging...

Lately, Noah has been saying that he has the best Dad. I'm not sure if Andrew's threatened him or what, but he really does. On Friday while I was working, Andrew and his friend, Colby took the boys up sledding at Mt. Hood. Here are some fun pictures from the day!

We had Colby over for dinner the next night and he came with huge pictures in frames blown up of the boys as well as a TON of pictures already printed off. I thought that was so nice of him and very generous. He's a good friend to Andrew, I'm glad they have each other.

Haha, doesn't this kiss look passionate! So cute:)


Colby is one of Andrew's crossfit workout buddies and they are doing an iron man together this summer in SunriverWhat a cute little wave sitting at the top of the hill:)

Hannah's Home!

Hannah's home, not from England, but she's back from Kenya. Make sure and check out her blog on my side bar to read about her trip! It's amazing to see how God has used and changed her! We are so proud of her...

New House!

I am posting up these pictures for everyone out of town that wants to see my parents new lot! They are so excited to build their dream house! It is in a really nice neighborhood backed up right to a little forest!


The boys will have a blast playing down there, there's a walking path and little creek. Noah is a little scared of the frogs...my mom said he could play with the frogs and it freaked him out:)

Doesn't get any sweeter

It doesn't get any sweeter than this...a handsome husband cooking on the Traeger...3 racks of ribs, cream cheese filled roasted/smoked peppers, garlic bread, broccoli, and banana cream pie (Jenny Craig style:). Mmmm...it was SUCH a good birthday dinner, thanks Andrew and Mom!

I promise I won't post any more about food...for a while anyway.

Birthday Fun

Andrew surprised me today with our new Traeger Grill! We had friends over tonight to try it out and celebrate my birthday...23 years old:) It ended up being a little harder then my "handy-man" husband thought...good thing we invited over who we did, every time Karen and I went downstairs to check on the guys Andrew was "supervising" while the guys were putting our grill together. They've already promised to help us with our move...poor Andrew, he just didn't get that handy-man gene. haha.

After a few extra hours then we had planned, we finally could sit down for our birthday dinner, and boy was it AMAZING! We had chicken, veggies, olive bread & olive oil, pineapple, grapes and some good wine. Oh, and how could I forget the cake...so good! You gotta love New Seasons.
It was worth the wait.

We had Kyle join us tonight who recently returned from Kenya, and had some great conversations about what it really looks like to impact the world, I'm excited to see where that's going to go and just what that's going to look like. I still feel such a strong pull to some sort of either foster care or adoption, I just really feel for those kids. It will be great to hear all about Hannah's trip when she returns soon. She is doing great from what we hear, but we really haven't gotten any specifics so it will be neat to get to hear her reflections and see how God has used her. Since our dinner was so late we had already put Jacob to bed, but Noah enjoyed the yummy vegetables he said. We are so excited to keep experimenting...ribs are up next and mmm...I can't wait!

My wonderful husband who really made me feel special this year by doing extra little thoughtful things. Thanks! Now I'm off to a tournament all day...yay! Oh, and I'm so pumped about the time change! haha. Here's to growing older and the best family and friends to do that with. We are so thankful for people to really do life with...God has blessed us!

So Sweet!

First of all, I know a lot of you were praying for Andrew and his CLEP test, and he passed it last night! Yay Andrew, that's 3 college credits he's tested out of so far and is hoping for three more on the 17th...nice job Drew! Thanks for praying everyone.

Last night after our small group, Andrew wanted to go to Subway, and of course I whined and just wanted to go home, but ended up going to sit with him while he got a 6 inch. Well didn't I feel bad...when we got there he had all these presents in the white nike bags I love so much! I wasn't planning on really doing much for my birthday, just because I have a volleyball tournament on it, we're saving for some bigger things, etc. But Andrew was so sweet and totally surprised me with new nike clothes and shoes! (just what my Mom said I really needed;) And he also got me the sweetest talking card from the Office, one of our favorite shows besides Biggest Loser. Even though I LOVE all the new stuff, I really was touched by his thoughtfulness to want to surprise me even though we talked about not really doing much. We're also going to the Phil Wickham concert out at George Fox on Sunday, which will be fun! Thanks Andrew!

We're Debt Free!

For all you Dave Ramsey fans out there, this is our call-in to his show where we get to scream! haha. Andrew and I feel so good with where we are financially right now. We are going through Financial Peace with our amazing Lifegroup (Bible-study group) at church. We have been through the first 3 weeks and paid off all our credit card debts and just bought a car with CASH! All of our bills are paid and we've already tithed and set up online giving every month so we can give our first fruits to God. This may seem normal to many of you, so good job, but it's not for most Americans!

We are both on board with our spending and saving up for things, this month we're buying patio furniture with CASH! (just kidding...Andrew wants a vacumme instead...what's up with that:) Maybe if I get some birthday money we can get both;) There's a set at target I LOVE! Or we're thinking a Tragger Grill. It's so fun getting to dream and plan and save up for purchases we want to make instead of buying things and stressing over how we're going to pay for them. Living with my parents this year has been great in some ways and hard in others, but we've gotten to pay off LOTS of student loans and save up and buy almost a whole house's worth of new furniture. Oh, and a new car! We bought my parents 2000 Honda Odyssey. I never thought I would own a mini-van, but it's really nice for the boys and for $5000 we couldn't pass it up. We know the owners:) They've taken good care of it:)