THIS. Is what I get excited about!

Today it snowed for the first time this season. I cannot tell you how excited I get about the first real snow that sticks to the ground and the trees. I LOVE IT. I know that a lot of people get bugged by it, but I really love it. I even like driving in it. It just gets me sooo excited for Christmas and playing in the snow with my kids and SNOWBOARDING!! Even though I will probably only get to go a couple of times this year. It brings back memories of being little and loving the snow and then even learing to love it more as I started snowboarding. It makes me so giddy and happy inside. So needless to say, today was a happy day for me.

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving this year was such a great day! We had almost the whole family here except for Matts family who live in Michigan. I don't know why, but the food tasted better to me than it has for the past many thanksgivings. We had a full house, as we always do, at Mom and Dad's house, but it was lots and lots of fun. It was a great day to kick off the holidays!!

What could be more fun?

These kids had a blast raking up the leaves and diving right in.

it's the small things....

that makes being a mom so rewarding. Tonight, it was just the kids and I at home. This is something that is quite common on any given night, but for some reason I enjoyed it more than usual. We laughed and played and laughed and played. Brooklyn decided to bring a whole bunch of books out onto the couch to read. Zach and I counted them and there were 20 books! So we read them all. Of course some of them were the condensed version, but even so it was a lot of books.

Halloween!!

This year was lots of fun for Halloween, mostly because Tyson and I got to dress up too. Tyson was originally going to be Pedro, but then he decided to be white trash butt rocker instead. As you can see, I had a lot of fun with the wig and Zach. Brooklyn looked cute as ever as a "butterfly fairy" and Zach is supposed to be dracula, although he looks a lot like grandpa munster in the first picture. I took the kids trick or treating since tyson had school that night and it was so fun.

Another Birthday

I have to say that this year I had quite a good birthday. The celebration started the weekend before when Tyson took me out to dinner to the Happy Sumo. I am so loving that place right now. The next night we got to go to a Halloween costume party. On Sunday, my whole family came over for dinner and celebrated and we had a yummy yummy chocolatey cake from costco. On my acutal bday, my friend Annemarie had me over to her house for lunch. mmm cafe rio. And I got so many phone calls and emails and texts that day. It was lots of fun. Then the next night Libby and Karla took me out to California Pizza Kitchen. So after five days and about 10 lbs more, I am happy to be 28, and feel so loved.

ps. notice Nicks nerdy halloween shirt in the background. What a goon, I love it.

my boy zach

These pictures pretty much show Zach as he is. He has such a huge imagination and he is always playing some sort of imaginary play. He loves to get his guns and go "hunting" it's cute until he is "hunting" Brooklyn. The other day I went into his room and his racecar track was all torn apart. I asked why he did that and he simply stated, I was a sea monster and I was attacking the race cars. Oh ok that makes sense now.

Brookie

These pictures were taken back in September by my very talented photographer friend, Meegan. I just loved these pictures so much and this is just my little Brooklyn. She can be a pill a lot, but she is oh so sweet.

Boating in Nebraska

Rewind to the summer. While we were in Nebraska for one of our summer vacations, we went boating with Tyson's friend Josh. He has a very nice ski boat and we had a blast! The nice thing about the lakes in Nebraska in the summer time; they are VERY warm. We jet skiied and wakeboarded for the day and it was so much fun. I also got to leave Brooklyn home with Grandma and all the other aunts that didn't want to come, so it was nice to be able to be free for a day.

Soccer Days!

Zachary started playing soccer this fall. He and his friend Sam are on the team called the Polar Bears. Being a first time soccer mom, I thought it was going to be such a fullfilling experience. Boy was I wrong!! Zach and his buddy Sam, decided that the soccer field was their own personal Ultimate Fighting field. They would kick, hit, punch, karate chop, wrestle, and scream like little girls. After about 3 or 4 games, Tyson and I were very frustrated with the situation. We were leaving the games not too happy with Zach. His last game was about 3 weeks ago, and I have to admit that the last game was probably his best game. He didn't attack anyone and he actually kicked the ball a few times. We are hoping for a better experience come spring.