Bang that drum

Some of you may remember a group called "Recycled Percussion"...they were on the show America's Got Talent last season. Well...they now have a Vegas show! We didn't actually know who they were but we took a chance and decided it would be fun to go out and celebrate our friend Brian's birthday and see the show and grab some dinner.

It was a a great show. Very interactive and a lot of fun. But don't go if you have a headache...or don't like loud noises!

Brian with his pot lid

Aranne and her cowbell

Dan and his pot lid

Cindy and her colander

We had a lot of fun...made a lot of noise...and celebrated Brian's birthday in style!

Music Time

Blake started his first music class with Musikidz today! He had a great time and I am so glad. We really needed something to get us out of the house and get him mixed with other kids and this was perfect.

It is a class that is offered through the City of Henderson and is once a week and for 45 minutes.....so it is perfect for him. It is a "mom and me" class and so much fun. They were able to play with a drum today, and rhythm sticks. They marched, and jumped, and ran. They chased the bubbles and played with musical balls and a parachute. It was a great class and I can't wait for next week to see what he gets to do then.

End of class bubble time.

Dancing with scarfs

Blake and his rhythm sticks

Springs Preserve

We decided to head out to the Springs Preserve since they were running a special and adults could get in for the kid's price! SCORE. It was still a little cool but not too bad. Blake had a great time running around and checking out all the cool desert animals and playing with all the hands-on stuff. He is still a little young, but he found plenty he could do.

Dan and Blake checking out some lizards.

Blake taking a ride on a turtle (I have a picture of me doing the same thing somewhere)

Blake building with these huge foam pieces...it was all fun and games until he took a spill!

Mommy and Blake on board the train

Blake catching a ride on daddy's shoulders back to the car (if you look closely you can see the pain in Dan's eyes as Blake is pulling his hair!)

Attack of the birds

Grandpa Al decided he wanted to take Blake to the park to feed the birds and the fish....

We loaded up the car with popcorn (tons of popcorn that he gets from the movie theater) and headed to Sunset Park. Blake was so excited about the birds. There were TONS of them. I kept trying to get him to just feed the fish and the ducks that were in the water but all that he wanted to do was feed the birds and chase after them. He had a great time and Grandpa loved every minute of it too.

Just call him BUZZ

For Christmas Blake got these cute jammies from Uncle Nate and Aunt Katie... It is so fun to watch him run around as Buzz Lightyear. We know he has no idea who that even is but we also know this is just a preview of things to come... soon he will be pretending that he is Batman, or Superman, or Buzz....or whoever the newest, coolest superhero is.

Thoughts on the New Year

First off I still can't believe it is 2011...

What do I want from this New Year? What do I hope it brings for me and my family? What do I hope to accomplish during the year? What do I want to change about myself this year? These are the questions I ask myself at the beginning of every year.... I love the New Year because I feel like it gives me a chance to start over and reconnect. I have a lot of big goals for 2011 and a lot of small ones too.

* I hope to find the time to reconnect with my creative side. I miss working on projects and using my hands. If I can find a way to sell them/earn some extra cash that would be great. But my main goal is to just get busy making things again. I miss that.

* Try to figure out this whole coupon thing. I am not very good at it and want to be. I see and hear about how people save tons and I have not yet been able to do that. I want to!

* Save, Save, Save... Most of you know we want to adopt again and this is our year to SAVE in order to begin the process again. We hope to be putting papers in this year and want to have money saved towards the adoption costs.

* Get moving! Now this doesn't always mean lose weight but that would be a great outcome. I just want to feel like I have more energy. I want to run and jump and play more with Blake and not feel so worn out after doing so.

Again... there are tons more little things I hope to do but these are the BIG ones on my list this year. I hope to be successful with these goals and see progress. That is the thing that keeps me going. Wish me luck and to all a wonderful 2011!

2010 in a glance

Wow... I can't believe 2010 has come and gone. It has been a really great year for us. Of course we have had our struggles just like everyone else but we have also had some really amazing times too. This year we were able to enjoy things as a family of three!

January - The Cox family came to town and we took family pictures which now included Blake! Other than that we just continued to settle into family life.

February - We celebrated our 8 year anniversary. Dan took a little trip to Utah and went hiking with his friend Brian.

March - We had a few visitors this month. Auntie Laura came to visit for a weekend, and Grandma Holly and Grandpa Mike were down for a week.

April - We celebrated Easter at home and were joined by Robert, Lisa and the girls. We also had a Families Supporting Adoption Education Conference.

May - We took a weekend trip to CA to watch Morgan and McKenna play a baseball game. I was able to celebrate and enjoy my 1st Mother's Day. We had our 6th and final post placement visit with our caseworker, and we also had a meeting with our lawyer for finalization of Blake's adoption.

June - Dan and I both helped out with Girls Camp for a few days. Auntie Laura visited for a weekend trip. Dan celebrated Father's Day.

July - We went to South Dakota/Mt. Rushmore for the 4th of July. We had all our family and friends here for Blake's finalization,sealing and blessing. Our friends Marvin and Maria came to celebrate Dan's 30th b-day. Blake and I went to Utah for the Stampin' Up convention.

August - We enjoyed the end of summer and stayed at home and relaxed!

September - Grandma Holly and Grandpa Mike came for a final summer visit. Blake and I went to visit friends for a weekend in CA. Auntie Laura came for her final summer visit.

October - We made a trip to AZ so the girls could go to Time Out for Women. We celebrated Blake's first Halloween and dressed as a farm family... Farmer, cowgirl and cow!

November - Blake turned 1 year old! Took a trip to Park City for a little time away. I had my 30th b-day. Grandma Holly and Grandpa Mike came to spend Thanksgiving with us.

December - Marvin and Maria were here for a weekend. We went to CA to celebrate Christmas with friends. We took Blake to Disneyland for his birthday - and mine too! Spent Christmas in AZ with the entire Urbancic family. Auntie Laura, Robert, Lisa and the girls were all here to ring in the New Year.

Christmas 2010 - AZ style

If anyone knows me...or my father-in-law...we take a lot of pictures. So I made a slideshow to help show what a great Christmas we had.

We spent Christmas this year with the entire Urbancic side of the family. Unfortunately Dan's dad had just undergone a pretty big surgery and wasn't able to travel anywhere and we all decided it was time to get together and spend our Christmas together in AZ. Steve and Amy (who had just moved to ID)were very excited to get out of the snow and come back to some warmer weather. It was wonderful to all be together and enjoy the family (as big and loud as we are getting!) There were 10 adults, 4 kids, 3 dogs, and two babies in bellies! It was quite a bunch.

We enjoyed our traditional (but less tradition this year) Christmas eve dinner and reading of the Christmas story. Things just don't seem quite as spiritual when you have three little boys running through Luke 2. We also enjoyed Christmas morning which seemed to go by in a flash...no longer did we do things in an orderly fashion. It all sort of went by in a blink of an eye and you opened something when it came your way.

I say all of this jokingly... Christmas is so much more enjoyable with the laughter and sounds of children in the house. There may be occasional arguments over certain toys and we might not all get along all of the time but the memories that are being made and the times that we spend together and starting to become very and far between and we cherish the times that we do have. We are so thankful that we were able to spend Christmas as a whole group and we love each other so much. It was a great time and the adults loved the evenings and naps when the kids were quiet and we could catch up on life too. Thanks mom and dad for hosting us all and letting us come and run through your house. We enjoyed it so much. Merry Christmas.

Bye-Bye Fro

We agreed the time had come to cut off some of those curls... Now everyone LOVES Blake's curls and can't seem to get enough of them but come on... look at this picture! The kid has a fro! It was definitely time. So this is the BEFORE shot.....

Here he is being such a good boy and sitting so nice for Jenny. Again we weren't sure what to expect from him but he was awesome and just sat there and let her do her thing.

Here he is... looking all grown-up with a little boy hair cut! It was amazing to see the actual amount of hair that Jenny cut off. There was hair all over the floor...crazy. The kid really did need the hair cut. He wanted to finish it off himself and comb his own hair (something he does daily with mommy's brush)

It was sad to see his curls go... but we are sure they will be back soon.

A day at Disney

We decided that since my dad has "connections" at Disneyland and we love Disneyland at Christmastime it would be fun to go for Blake's 1st birthday and my 30th. It was me, Dan, Blake and Auntie Laura. We weren't sure what to expect but Blake did a great job. He had a lot of fun, even though he wasn't quite sure what was going on.

We were able to get on a bunch of rides... Dumbo, the carousel, Alice in Wonderland, and a bunch of the rides at California Adventure. Since we were there on a Monday the lines weren't really too bad (for Disneyland) and California Adventure was nearly empty! The weather was great too. Blake started with a long-sleeve T-shirt and pants on but very quickly ended up in a brand new Disney T-shirt because it was warm.

We were even able to see some of the characters and Blake did okay. He loves stuffed animals so at this age I figure he still thinks they are big teddy bears and isn't too scared - YET!

We had a great day and it made our drive home nice and quiet because Blake was so exhausted from all the excitement that he slept the entire way!!! We hope to be able to take him back again soon. I grew up at Disneyland practically and have many good memories there and hope to be able to take Blake as often as we can... while we still have such great "connections"!

CA Christmas

For the past 9 years we have always gone to California and done a "California Christmas" party with our friends and family who are still there. This year we decided to keep it small and just had a small group of us get together for some dinner, presents and then we headed to see Santa! We found out about a great park out in Irvine and does a wonderful display and puts on a Christmas train that takes you to "the North Pole" to see Santa. It was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed it (I think all of the adults did too).

It is always so nice to go and visit our friends and family in California and enjoy the holidays with them. It was really nice this year and do something just for the kids and have Blake with us and have him be able to get in on the activities. I think next year he will REALLY enjoy Christmas (oh no!)

Christmas Card Photo Shoot

I decided I wanted a break this year and was not going to do handmade cards for Christmas...plus we had this cute little boy that we could show off...so we headed out to get some pictures done that we could put on a card. Deciding that was the easy part... having an active 1-year-old participate in the photos...not so easy.

Our good friend Jenny was great and worked well with Blake...even when we picked one of the coldest days yet to go out and get the pictures done. But we were quickly running out of time and really had no choice.

We think we got a ton of great shots and love how the card turned out... hope those who got one did too!!! Merry Christmas!