Party Time

We had Logan's party today, and it was so fun! We had about 25 people show up, some families from preschool, some that we met through my mom going to church here, and some I knew from Arizona! We also had Chris's mom, sister and nephew here from New York. I'm so glad some of our family was able to make it.

It was of course a Winnie the Pooh themed birthday party, and people have been telling me to blog about how frugal I was with this party. I made all the signs myself, borrowed the games and tables, and couponed for the food. All in all, I spent around $80 on EVERYTHING, including food and decorations. I was pretty proud of that.

We made a section of the party for each of the Pooh characters.

(This one says Tigger's Bouncy Games somewhere, just not in a picture)

We had a lot of fun mingling with friends and family, and I was so happy to see the kids enjoying the little sections we set up for everyone.

                         Having some Grandma time.

  Mia and Cooper getting him to play with the big Pooh Bear.

                          He loved this balloon on his highchair.

                                  Hanging out with Aunt Sherry.

   Logan's with our friend Karen, and his friend Caleb and her mom Tammy. I have to say that I'm grateful my mom has met these women when she's come out to visit us. Karen and her husband Ed have really helped us a lot since we've known them. Tammy has set up play dates with us for Logan and Caleb and I love feeling like he has a friend. All those relationships are because of my awesome mommy!

Of course, Logan had his cupcake after we sang to him, and he did enjoy it.

  After the party, we opened presents with/for him. He mostly thought it was funny when we tried to get him to rip the paper, and he would just shake it.

It felt like it was over so fast, but it was so fun at the same time! Thanks to everyone that came and celebrated with us, I think he had a great time, and at the very least, we had a great time celebrating for him. Love to our friends and family and our sweet sweet little man!
 
 

Let's try this again, Logan is ONE!

My sister told me I didn't put enough pictures in the last post about him turning one. So here's pictures through the whole last year. Hope you enjoy!

                           First picture ever!!

                              First day at home.

                             Favorite picture of them together still!

                                What a funny face!!!

                                     He LOVES eating still!

                            So precious, right after a bath.

                                   Such a sweetheart.

                      12 months (can't see the sign)

So there you have it, Logan through the year. I hope that was enough pictures Jamie. I'll post party pictures later tonight hopefully!

LOGAN IS ONE!

My baby turned ONE yesterday!! I cannot describe the feelings I felt yesterday realizing I've actually been a mom for a whole year. It's one of those things where I felt like I just barely became a mom and I felt like I've been a mom forever all at the same time. When I think about how hard it is to be at work for most of the day and only see him for  a couple hours a night each weekday, it feels like it hasn't been a whole year. Maybe because I haven't spent a year of time with him. But when I think about how much he means to me, and how our lives changed when he came, it seems like that's been going on forever. Maybe that's because I've wanted a baby for a long time!

This year has been so awesome. I love being a mom. Something I didn't expect was a whole new insight into my job. If you didn't already know, I teach 2 1/2 year olds. They are the youngest class in our school, sometimes considered the "babies" of the school, but when I look at them and think "Logan will be there in another year and a half!" I'm amazed at the things he's going to learn in this next year of his life! Having my own child has helped me step into the parents in my class's shoes even better. Not to toot my own horn, but I think parent relations is one of my strong points and a part of my job I enjoy. I know I've always tried to put myself in their shoes and help them any way I can, but having Logan has helped me with that in ways I could've never imagined. I see these kids for a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of their lives. I know the things they "should" be able to do when they get to my class, I can tell who is behind in which areas, and who is ahead. I know how to teach, I know how to potty train (usually, they're no sure fire way to do it, but I usually potty train about 8 or 9 of them a year, depending on if they came in already trained). I know about this age, but the difference now is, I'm starting to know more about where they come from before they get to me. One of my biggest things in our classroom is promoting independence. It takes longer in the  beginning to get things done, but each kid tries to do everything from pulling up their pants, to opening things in their lunchbox, to cleaning up messes on their own before asking me for help. In the past I've been a little irritated with parents that don't try to cultivate the same independence at home, and I now realize that's very hard when this little boy/girl NEEDED you to do everything for them just 2 short years ago. It's hard to make all these transitions when you have to make a conscious decision that today is the day I'm going to let him dress himself. Or today is the day he's going to feed himself, regardless of the mess. Those are hard things, and I often just expect them to happen!! Obviously, Logan is no where near these points right now, but I'm so grateful for this one of many lessons he's taught me already. I can't wait to see what else I get to learn from him.

I was really going to write about my sweet boy more, I'm not sure how this post turned into a lesson in preschool teaching. Either way, I can't put into words how I feel about having a 1 year old, and how awesome and enriched my life has been in the last year because of him. I'm so lucky and so blessed.

(I don't really have 12 month pictures yet, so this will have to do!)

This weekend is his birthday party, and then a photo shoot with a smash cake on Sunday, so I'm excited to be posting about those things soon. Yay!

I LOVE MY SISTERS!!

I have an awesome family. I grew up with 3 sisters very close to me. We fought but we always made up, and now that we're adults I'm glad to say that we're still close. It is so hard for me to not live close to them, especially because all of them live close to each other (Luckies!) I think we do a pretty good job of catching up on the phone and Skype a lot, but it's not the same. Although I love being an adult and a mom, there are a couple times where things have gotten hard and I've wished I could just go back and live with my family and the biggest problem I'd have was worrying if the boy I had a crush on was going to sit by me at lunch that day at school. So, I made a list of things I miss about living with a lot of sisters.

1. I miss going straight to a sisters room after something exciting happened in my life. Obviously, what makes something "exciting" has changed since then, but I loved running straight into someone's room (usually Jamie's because she's older and knew more than me about everything) to talk about the dance I just went to.

2. On the same subject, I loved being the older sister to 2 more girls that would come to my room to talk about their days. Jamie did too, hers were always so cool since she's older. :)

3. I miss always being able to have girl time. Nowadays, it's a big deal to have a girls night out, or even a girls night in. Back then, I could just break out some nail polish and a good movie, and the girls were just already there!

4. I miss getting my hair and make-up done just for fun by a sister. I guess that kind of goes along with a girls night in, but I know Jamie did my hair for dances a couple times, and that before I was allowed to wear make-up, she'd sometimes give me a makeover and sneak me out of the house...to a church activity. Seriously. We were real crazy at our house, what rebels!

5. When I was in college, I didn't live at home, but I still always lived in Arizona, so I was never more than a 3 hour car ride from them. I miss at least that, being able to go visit for a day if I needed it.

6. I miss freeze outs. Silly, I know sisters, but do you remember freeze outs? We would eat ice, and turn on the fans and what else? Something to make us really cold, and then when we couldn't stand it anymore, we'd jump under the covers all together to warm back up. Weirdest idea ever, but we were easily amused by our own games. I just liked that it was kind of an inside joke, and something just sisters would do.

7. I miss my parents reading us books before bed. Ok, I know that's not exclusive to my family or sisters, but sometimes when I have a hard time getting to sleep, I think, "I wish I was young enough to ask someone to read a book to me right now." Remember when Dad would read "Hey! Listen to This!" with the weird "Little Red Riding Hood" story, or the kid who couldn't do math correctly but still always got the right answer? Awesomeness!

8. I feel like from this far away, I can't protect my sisters the way I wish I could or used to try to. We're adults now, we take care of our own problems, and that would happen either way regardless of the distance. When we were in high school though, I could stick up for my sisters and they could stick up for me, and it didn't matter what other people thought of us, because we had each other. Now, I've got to make my own friends who don't know everything about my family, no matter how much I try to tell them.

9. That kind of leads right into this one...I miss that all of my friends back then KNEW my family. We had some similar friends or friends that were siblings, and friends whose parents were friends with our parents. No matter how much I tell people about my awesome family, they can't really get it as much as the people that actually know them could. It's a little frustrating sometimes.

10. Finally, I just miss them, being physically close to them. I miss being at Sunday night dinners with everyone every week. I love hearing about everything the family does together all the time, but it hurts me a tiny bit because I wish we were there to be a part of it. I feel like Logan's missing out on cousin time that everyone else gets together! 

I hope this didn't come off as completely negative. I was more trying to reminisce. I do love the life we've built out here as hard as it's been at times. I can still love my awesome family, and wish to be with them more than I am now. I can't wait to see you guys in November!!

Moving, and first week of school!

I am not that great at blogging, not like my sister Suzanne who can blog almost every day. My goal was to write something once a month or more, but it's been more than that now. August was a crazy month! In fact, life continues to be crazy right now, but I found some time to write  about it, so here it goes!

On August 17th, we moved about a mile up the street to  a great townhouse. We knew for a long time that we wanted to get out of our apartment when our lease was up, but we hadn't had much luck finding anything. Then, while talking to some friends of ours, they mentioned that someone in their church was moving out at the end of July. We got their number, saw the place, talked to the landlord, and everything fell into place perfectly. I was even able to bargain our rent down, because the landlord was so happy he wouldn't have to put this place on the market and there wouldn't be much time without anyone in it! I was thrilled. We're paying about the same in rent that we were paying before, but our apartment was 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom, no laundry. Here at our awesome townhouse, we have 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, laundry, and a small yard with a garden plot that I love. There's only 14 townhouses here on this little street, and next to them is a little field that's cared for by the HOA, so we can have parties there (I'm thinking Logan's 1st birthday!). So far, it's been great, and we feel a lot better here. Oh, and they let us paint here, which wasn't a requirement, but a nice plus! The day we moved, 15 people showed up from the LDS church to help, and we literally had everything at our new place in an hour and a half. I've never moved so fast before, and we are incredibly grateful for those that helped us, especially without ever meeting us. 

About 2 weeks ago, while I was in the middle of teacher prep week, Chris lost his job. He had actually switched jobs on his own to a place we both thought would be better, and after a week, it turned out we were wrong. He was being treated horribly, and was actually let go by their kitchen manager who, although they insisted on training him for a month, had spent the whole week yelling at him any time he made a mistake or asked a question. As worried as I was for him to have no job at that time, I know it was a good thing he got fired, because staying there wouldn't have been good for him. We only had to go 5 days without a job, and Chris found a place he's happier with at this point. During those 5 days, a lot of other families around here that we didn't know (I put out an e-mail on a moms list serve) offered to give him work around their house while we were looking. It was touching to me to see people again that don't know us being so willing to help out. There really are great people in the world.

Now, the first week of school is done. I have a great class so far! I still struggle with my assistant Maria, but I'm taking deep breaths, and putting more effort in, so hopefully it's a better year between us too. 

Next post will be Logan's birthday party, I'm so excited, we've already sent out invitations!!