A Run of BAD Luck?!?

I think we can say that we have had a rough start to the 2009 year! We are really looking forward to March--you know St. Patrick's Day...Luck of the Irish...Four Leaf Clovers! We are not Irish but maybe just maybe it will work out for us anyways :) We're hopeful.
Here is just a quick run-down of what has been going on in our house since the beginning of January without a lot of details...
January brought a lot of drama--we felt as though we were living in a soap opera. We had to change babysitters due to some accusations our babysitter made about her husband causing her to have to leave town...lets just say when DCI (the State FBI) showed up at our house we felt like we were in a movie. Finding a new babysitter in Douglas is really really hard even though its a town of 7,000. But we did find one and we LOVE her although she is really expensive!
February has brought sickness and LOTS of Hospital visits. The kids have started another continuous round of getting sick all starting with a cold, and then the stomach flu and now another bad case of the cold is back. Poor Cohl has been sick once again continuously since the beginning of February. In the last two weeks he has gotten 2 teeth with another popping up; been sick with the stomach flu which he is still not completely over with and now has a really bad cold. Can we say bless his heart! He is soooo miserable. Although we are NOT happy that he is sick we are just loving how cuddly he is. He is not a cuddly baby but is very much so right now. I love how he snuggles with me and falls asleep in my arms. Awwwww...but I am looking forward to him feeling back to his old self. Last week when we took him to the Dr. he was down 5% in his body weight since the week prior when we took him to his 9 month check-up. He has not eated solids since last Monday so over a week now so I am sure he is down even more. Poor guy. Jyllian has also gotten this nasty cold. She actually was the first one to get it. She has a terrible cough and runny nose and is just run down. I'm starting to get it as well. Justin had the stomach flu last week right along with Cohl. Luckily it didn't take him as long to get over it as it has with Cohl. Without going into details we have had 3 surgeries in our family in the last two weeks! I'm pretty sure that's a record for a semi-healthy family. I was off work for 11 days and yesterday was my first day back. Lets just say I was pretty EXHAUSTED last night. Luckily we all slept good. We are all on the mend I think and doing okay but can we say BAD LUCK!!! Holy Buckets.
As a result we haven't gotten too many pictures lately but hopefully I'll be able to get some this weekend and get some posted.
I do want to take this time to Thank my mom for her wonderful help over the past two weeks. We know we could NOT have gotten through the weeks without her. And also a HUGE thanks to Ed (Justin's dad) for his help too. He has come down this week to help Justin out at home with the kids and just everyday obstacles!! What wonderful parents we have. We also want to thank those who have brought food, called and sent their LOVE! Ya'll are awesome and we Love You!!!
So I just have one request--if you don't mind just keep us in your prayers that we can all get healthy and this run or whatever you want to call it will be over soon!!! March is coming.....

Happy Valentine's Day

Wishing you a wonderful Valentine's Day!!!

A busy boy and a precious girl!

Here are some pictures we thought you'd enjoy of our sweet kids....They keep us on our toes as I am sure you can see. Enjoy! Much Love <3


Jyllian has turned into quite the artist :) I was sooo excited when she started drawing people. And this is developmentally where she should be drawing the arms and legs from the head :) Too funny. So in this picture she drew Grammie, her friend Brook, herself and Cohl. Grammie is much bigger because as Jyllian says "she's big!" and Cohl is small because "he's a baby!" So smart :)

Here is our princess with her new haircut. As you can see she has LOTS of layers now. Its cute...and she still has her curls so I guess thats what important as that is the reason nobody wanted ME to cut her hair in the first place. We will cut it in the summer though to even it all out again. Layers are a pain in the butt :)

Yep Mr. Cohl is now standing--he pulls himself up on EVERYTHING!!!! And he just loves it. He can stand by himself for about 10 seconds but falls over. He can walk alon furniture but is not anywhere close to walking yet!

He loves to play with his toys!

Every time we go into his room to get him from his nap or in the morning this is what we find. He is always standing up, and we are finding it more difficult to get him to lay down for a nap as he is always wanting to PLAY instead :)!!!!

Isn't this face just priceless?!?!?! He is just tooooo CUTE! We love him to pieces ;)

Needless to say we stay pretty busy with these two. There is not too many dull moments. Justin loves it when I put the kids to bed and then I go to bed too--its his down time ;) I'm not sure when I have my down time... We are just loving every minute of it!!!

Our Littlest Boy is 9 Months Old!!

HAPPY 9 MONTH BIRTHDAY COHL!!!

Why is it that when you are pregnant nine months seems to DRAG on and never seems to get here soon enough, but then once you have your child the next nine months flies by! I just don't get it. It is so hard to believe that its been 9 months since I've had Cohl. It truly seems like just yesterday I was in the hospital---wow. Here is a comparison to then and now.

On his "birth" day! He was NOT a happy camper about this whole birth thing :)
The day after he was born--May Day!

Crawling and scooting around

The newest picture of Mr. Cohl--taken this morning

Cohl is doing awesome. He is growing growing growing. I weighed him myself this morning to see what he is at (we don't actually go to his 9 month check-up until the 9th of February) and he weighed in at 17lbs. We'll see how close I am to when the Dr weighs him. He is doing the army crawl--can get up on his knews just prefers not to. He is pulling himself to a stand on almost everything now and will even take a few steps to get to what he wants when he is holding onto a piece of furniture. I've tried to get him to walk by me holding his hands, but he doesn't want to. His newest trick is crawling somewhere and then poping up into sitting looking around to see if anyone is watching and then taking off crawling again. He loves to jump (we put him in his jump-a-roo early in life!) and he loves loves loves to antagonize his sister. I am amazed at how early this starts :) we were seriously thinking we had until at least he was walking but oh no. Its actually pretty funny to watch. Jyllian gets sooo mad. He is into everything. We are just more in love with him every day. Its sad to think we will be planning his first birthday soon.
We've had some changes in our schedule lately as we've had to find a new babysitter--long story but hopefully our new one will work out for the best. So far we love her but there are a lot more kids than we have ever had to deal with. We have been so thankful and blessed to find in home daycares since we've had to put our kids in daycare--we have also been lucky up until now that we've only had our kids or one other at the daycare so the individed attention has always been on our kids which in return has made them even more spoiled than they already were but we were not complaining. The new daycare has one huge advantage and that is that she really sticks to our schedule for Cohl rather than what is easiest for herself which is sooo helpful. We do really like her a lot but it is ALOT more expensive than we have ever had to pay (put it this way we will pay more out in the next 3 months then we did in all of 2008!), and she has 6 other kids besides ours. She has 6 kids under the age of 4, one 4 year old and one 5 year old. She does a great job but it is very chaotic which is why its so great that she keeps to Cohl's schedule. Our old babysitter did not do this and it really messed things up for us when we had him home. So all in all we think its going to be great. We just have to figure out something for the summer--she is wanting us to pay even though we are NOT going to be there, I'm not too happy about this. So we will see what happens.

So for now that is all. I will let you know what Cohl's stats are when we have his Dr apt with his new Dr--our old one that we LOVED moved to Minnesota at the beginning of January so we are now trying someone else. We hope we like him. I'll attach a few more pictures I've taken over the past few weeks and some video coverage :)

Our Little Reader

Jyllian loves to read. She has always loved to be read to but as she has gotten older we have found her countless times "reading" in her room all by herself. For Christmas my dad bought her the Tag Reading System so that the pen will read her the story and she LOVES it. I took a video of her with my phone the other day reading The Wheels on the Bus. You can't here it the best so turn it up and listen--its pretty cute. I think we've got a reader on our hands. Some of her favorite books are Pinkalicious, Fancy Nancy at the Museum and Over the River and through the Woods as well as any Princess stories. As a teacher I am of course thrilled that she is already into reading!!! (PLEASE IGNORE THE MESS ON THE FLOOR :) )

Snow Storm January 23-28

A snowstorm hit on Friday and although we didn't think we would get much out of it but ended up getting over a foot by the time the storm was over Monday afternoon. I guess it was a combination of three separate storms. We were thrilled to get the snow--but we had also been enjoying 60 degree weather the week prior. Crazy Wyoming Weather!!! The storm started Friday and snowed all day Friday, all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday. As you've read in my previous post we went to Playhouse Disney Live on Sunday and were thankful that the roads were okay enough for us to go up to Casper to watch the show. By the time we left it was pretty much a blizzard but luckily we had over 500lbs of railroad ties (we're using them in our backyard for landscaping) in the back of the truck and the the right lane once again was clear so we made it safely home. I was pretty surprised Monday morning when I woke up at 5:00 to find out we did indeed have school. We had about 13 inches of snow by that time and the roads were CRAPPY, even an NO Unnecessary Travel was in effect for in town, but we had school. So I loaded the kids up for daycare and headed out with the truck. Of course this was after Justin unloaded the 500+lbs of railroad ties so that they were not sticking out the back of the truck. We thought we would maybe get out of school early on Monday but no such luck. The wind was supposed to pick up Monday night so maybe no school Tuesday?!!?! Well when I woke up to the phone ringing saying no school (we have a calling tree) I checked the temp outside and it was 29 below zero that was without the windchill. BRRRRRRRRR!!! I was pretty glad for no school. The wind never really picked up but it also never got above zero all day Tuesday. Tuesday night the wind did pick up and we ended up not having school today either. Yay for me!!! I got to spend two days at home with my kids and hubby. We havent gotten to spend days off together in over a month. The wind caused a lot of drifting and we had about a 4 foot drift in our backyard, and when we opened out front door there was a 2 foot drift there. This evening when we went to feed to the dogs we opened the door to go outside from the garage and found yet another drift. Too funny. I am pretty positive that we will have school tomorrow but I sure did enjoy these two days off!!! A nice break from work. Hope you enjoy the pictures of our snow :)

snow drift from garage door
view from our back window of the mountains

Jyllians bike burried

12+ inches of snow

9 inches of snow on Sunday evening

Playhouse Disney Live

In order to make up for not getting to go to Backyardigans Live in December (they ended up canceling the show due to the Economy--BUMMER!) we bought tickets to see Playhouse Disney Live. Jyllian was pretty excited about this and has been talking about it for weeks now. Two of her friends also got tickets with us so we all were going. Of course the weather had to get bad on Friday and continued to snow on Saturday. We were unsure if we were going to get to go or not, but we braved the weather and roads to make it on Sunday afternoon (yesterday). Luckily the right lane of the interstate was clear so we were able to make it there without a problem. We went to the mall, had some lunch, did some shopping and then headed to the Events Center. Wow was there ever a lot of people for such a poopy weather day! We were on the floor and had my battery not died on my camera and had I brought my cellphone in with me I would have gotten some decent pictures....but my camera did die and I did leave my cell in the truck so needless to say I didn't get too many good pictures! I was pretty bummed. But the 2 pictures I did get I will put on here.
Jyllian loved it!!! She was glued. Cohl on the other hand slept through most of it, but was really into it while he was awake. I didn't think he would fall asleep as it was SO loud, and he does not usually fall asleep in my arms (we are lucky that he is such a good sleeper and falls asleep all on his own, unlike his wonderful sister who to this day still has to have us right there with her when she goes to sleep!), but he did. He was amazed by all of the lights and one of his favorite shows to watch is Little Einstiens. The show had Handy Manny and his tools, Pooh, Tiger, Darbie, Little Einsteins, Mickey, Minney and Goofy. Super cute show and well worth the money!!!
Wish I would have gotten better pictures, but oh well we still had a great time :)

Handy Manny and Mr. Lopard (sp?)
Handy Manny and his Tools!

The maillady in the Hundred Acre Woods

First Haircut--UNPLANNED!

So Jyllian got her first haircut today--she is 3 1/2 years old and although we have cut her bangs from time to time we have NEVER cut her actual hair. Well today was the day. Definatly not intentional but Jyllian had other plans :)
We were planning on heading to Casper today to do some shopping but no intentions of getting haircuts! I asked Jyllian to go into the bathroom to get her brush so we could fix her hair. She ran into the bathroom and was in there for a little while but I honestly didn't think anything of it. She came out about 5 minutes later and said "Do you like my hair? Is it pretty?" I said "oh yes very pretty." She says "Is it shorter?" I instantly I asked her what she did. She very proudly says "I cut it! See Mommy!" "OHHHH NOOOOOOO" were my exact words and I ran into the bathroom to see chunks of hair laying on the floor and in the trash can. All I could say was No no no! I looked at her hair and the entire right side was chopped. She had pieces that were about an inch long. Justin came out of the shower and he said he has never had so many emotions all at once--he was mad, but at the same time wanted to cry, but all he could do is laugh. I felt much the same. So needless to say we took her to the mall and got her haircut. She was scared about it, but we told her it would be fine. She was crying and pretty upset with herself. By the time we got to the mall in Casper she was okay with it all. They ended up taking about 2 inches off the length and then layered it to match the "layers" she already put into it herself. It turned out pretty cute, and we will probably cut it again this summer into a bob to even it all out. I do have to say she was pretty proud of herself and she even said "I just wanted my hair short like yours and grammies." Too funny. So here are a few pictures :) ENJOY!

The End of Another Year...

Wow it is hard to believe that 2008 is almost over. One more day and we can say good bye to 2008. The Christmas decorations are put away, and Justin is going back to work and I will be next week...all signs that the end of the Holiday season is here! This time of year kind of makes me sad. I love Christmas and it always seems to go by so quickly. I don't know about you but it seems like the years just fly by anymore. I remember when I was little and in school it seemed like my senior year was never going to get here and now its been almost 10 years since I graduated. How is it possible?? None the less it is over and a new year will begin. If we are blessed with just half as much as we've been in the past year we will be lucky for sure.

We had an awesome Christmas. We were all very spoiled by everyone we know and love. Justin went overboard with me and got me way too much but I sure do love it :) The kids were spoiled once again by Santa and all our family and friends. Jyllian absolutely loved Christmas and opening all of her gifts. Cohl wasn't really sure what it was all about, but did enjoy getting to play with his toys once they were unwrapped. He wasn't really into the whole unwrapping thing but Jyllian was right there to help him out. Cohl even took a nap in the middle of unwrapping presents. Too funny. We were lucky to have my mom and brother spend the night with us on Christmas eve so that they could be here bright and early in the morning to open up the gifts. It took well over an hour for the kids to open theirs and then it was our turn. Fun times. We got my dad a webcam for Christmas this year and although it was a pain for him to get it set up (he has really bad internet connection where he lives) it was well worth it for him to be able to watch the kids open their presents. It was the next best thing to having him here with us. We look forward to the day when we can all be together for the holidays.

After Christmas we headed up to the ranch for Justin's familys Christmas. This is the 3rd year that we have all be able to get together for Christmas at the ranch. It was so nice to see everyone and spend some time together. Jyllian loved being with her cousin Kellan who she doesn't get to see that often. They had a ball running around and chasing each other. Cohl had major stranger anxiety and wouldn't go to anyone except Justin/I. He finally warmed up to some people by the time we left. It was pretty cute though he would wrap his little arms around our necks and burry his face into us. Too cute! Opening presents was a highlight of the trip. Jyllian got lots of clothes as did Cohl and various toys. Her favorite was a book from her Auntie Karyn. After presents Jyllian and Kellan wanted to go outside and play and go sledding so Grandpa Ed pulled them in the sled. After we ate we headed home. We were glad to be back home. We put stuff away, ate some dinner and then played with our new gifts. Justin got me a Wii for Christmas and so we had to play a couple of games of bowling/golf before we went to bed.

All in all we could not have asked for a better Christmas. We have no plans for New Years as Justin has to work both New Years Eve and Day so it will just be me and kids. We will probably go out to dinner and just hang out at the house. Nothing too exciting!

I have enjoyed my Christmas vacation. I am somewhat ready to go back to work...mainly because I miss my kids and partly because the sooner it gets started the sooner it will be over :) I'm already looking forward to my next break--Spring Break in March and then the end of the year. I truly LOVE my job but I also truly LOVE my time home with my kids. Jyllian is anxiously awaiting the start of her school again. We are also thinking of putting her into dance this spring. Cohl has enjoyed being home with his mommy and daddy, but I think he will enjoy being back at daycare and getting the attention he gets from Andie.

Looking back on this past year we have had so many blessing, we can only hope 2009 will be just as good. We hope you all have a very blessed and wonderful 2009!

We love you!!!

Kylea, Justin, Jyllian and Cohl