JanuANY

We only took advantage of JanuANY at Subway today--the very last day of January! Sad. Can't believe we didn't go more often. But, with all the money we spent at Christmas we didn't really go anywhere this month! ha ha.

Anyway, I finally got some pictures up here.  January, January. I hate this month above all others. I dread it coming.... it drags on for what feels like infinity.....Collin is gone to tournaments every weekend and has matches almost every week....and it always just seems so long and depressing. I think after the holidays it's kind of depressing getting back into real life anyways. Add cold weather, and in our case here in Boise, a 3-week long inversion that literally kept the sun from shining for 3 weeks, it was not my favorite month. Again. But we did survive!

Collin was really gone a lot this month. December and January are the worst as far as wrestling goes. December isn't so bad though because of Christmas break, at least he is out of school for part of the month. He had a tournament every single weekend. 2 were in Nampa, which essentially meant he at least came home by 11:00 on Friday night and left at 7:00 the next morning. Then one was in Utah and one was in Burley. He was gone for 2 or 3 days each time, and for Utah got back at 6:00am Sunday! Those are just the weekends, his week nights all consist of practice or dual meets, and beyond those there's one thing that really drives me crazy--the never-ending texting, emailing, calling, organizing he has to do. You would think after a 12 hour workday Coach could come home and relax--but there's always more to be done. The next tournament to write the itinerary for and solidify arrangements for. I guess a few of these weekends he had 2 or 3 different teams at different tournaments, having to coordinate rides and hotels and such for each team. I think it's crazy. I wish the parents would give his family time some respect. Calling to complain about something at 10:00pm is not what I consider courteous. But he has let it into his life and is stuck with things like this right now. But this being our 9th year of this, nothing new. I really just think it adds to the dragging feeling of January, the fact that I'm pretty much on my own! Although, it's good and bad that this year has been more taxing than usual on Collin. I think he is just tired of the politics. I know, you wouldn't think wrestling has politics. It's so straightforward and fair. You wrestle off for your varsity spot. You either win or you don't. And you would also think the leading team in the district and state would be a close-knit, working-together type of group. Well it's total opposite. Yes, Collin is enjoying success and I know he's happy about that, but he's also learned a lot about what kind of sacrifices some families make to get that success and what it sometimes does to their values and integrity, and sense of being part of a team. I say this is good and bad because in some ways, I know we both feel he is getting ready to move on, to finally take a break from this craziness and try his hand at administration, and help us get ahead financially. Bad because well, he is still a wrestler at heart and a caring coach and I know that even with all the extra crap, it is important to him to lead the boys in a positive way and teach them life lessons and be a good example to them. But enough about that!

Each year that Ashlyn gets older though we have had more fun while Collin's away! There was a week where we were both sick and I think we left the house like twice. Talk about stir crazy. That is not how I like to roll. I need to get out  sometimes! But thanks to Playdoh, paints, crayons, glue and marshmallows, and being able to watch Frozen online, we survived. We have definitely spent a lot of quality time together lately! I actually rounded up some pictures from this month, although since not a lot happened that was picture-worthy there's not a lot to see!

We lucked out and I didn't have mutual on Senior Night. So we came and cheered! CHS has been undefeated in their dual meets this year. Yeah!

Keepin' it real at a tournament in Nampa--duck face forever.

This is to document the thousands of times I day I wiped noses..both hers and mine. Luckily we just had colds but they were big ones! 

Ashlyn finally tried her hand at painting! I bought her a Frozen painting book. She sat and did this for hours, multiple times. So fun! 

And her favorite part....painting every. single. character's face BLACK! why?!? 

One awesome tower made while I cooked my steel cut oats! (I just finally got into these--I have had them for the past 7 days! sooooo good!)

Actually eating dinner, you never know when that will happen.

Trying on Mommy's scarves.... it's best to wear more than one at once apparently

Trying out Lucy's spot in the sun to see if it's really that great! (this was just yesterday--the first time we saw the sun in weeks!!! It was the best!)

We went to a BSU Gymnastics meet and Buster Bronco ended up sitting by us for a while. It took Ashlyn a few minutes to warm up but then she just gave him like 50 high fives and was really sad to see him go. (she kept wailing "Brooooncoo! Come baaaack!")

She has recently become enamored with hair bows. FINALLY! Only took ya 3 years, kid! I am glad she is making sure Daddy's hair is fixed up nice too.

Nothing is greater than the love a dog has for the peanut butter jar! ha ha ha

And as for this last picture.... it is Collin while he was sick! I'm sure he'd love if he knew I shared this with you. Anyway, he got some sort of 24 hour stomach bug --you guessed it--on his ONE day off from school, Martin Luther King Jr. day. Sad, sad. He is not one to be very whiny or grumpy when he's sick.... unless it's stomach sick! Then you better forget even trying to talk to him! He puts on a hood and tries to disappear from the world! I don't blame him, it really does suck! But sadly this was a day my dad was visiting, he didn't get to chat with Collin much! On the other hand, thankfully it was a day my dad was visiting because someone had to take care of Ashlyn while I was teaching for 4 hours that evening. And who better than her beloved Grandpa. Ashlyn is so lucky to have such fabulous grandparents, and it's so fun that my dad has had more business over here lately so we can see him more. Anyways, Collin was of course fine the next day, just in time for school. Poor guy.  Good thing he had plenty of Big Bang Theory to watch while he was curled in a sick little ball. (thanks, Lindy! :)

And is there anything else I should mention? Can't think of it. Like I said Collin's team is really doing well. He is on track to hopefully win state. Post Falls sounds like they will give them a good run for it, like usual. But we'll hope CHS comes out on top! State is in Nampa this year which I am ecstatic about! That means no more wrestling trips, at least until gosh-forsaken, cursed freestyle season is upon us. But we'll deal with that later!

 Other fun things are in the plans for the next few months, and for that I'm very grateful. Yes, we're still hoping to adopt and no, nothing has happened. That's just to let you know since that is the #1 question I get asked by pretty much everyone these days. Gotta love that! Good thing we're so blessed beyond all reason though.

Might as well post something

Well I will take a few minutes and do a little update, I really only update when I have collected a decent amount of pictures today and I don't want to take the time to do that today!

Ashlyn came down with a fever Sunday night, and began coughing a pretty mucus-y cough. Nice. By Monday she had a gross nose and cough and still a fever. That has lasted all week and still today (Friday) I am wiping her nose a lot and she coughs the same. By Wednesday I had caught it too! I swear I have it worse than her. My nose is so stuffed even taking Sudafed (legit, the kind you have to show ID for!) AND DayQuil together it is barely not completely stuffed and gross. I think I have coughed so much in my sleep that now I have a cough and it hurts when I cough. It could be way worse and at least I can still kind of function, but that is what our week has been. Today has been my worse day, feeling-wise. I am hoping Ashlyn is on the mend. The icing on the cake is that Collin has been gone pretty much since Tuesday night. Wednesday they had a match which means he was gone 7:00am-9:30pm. Then Thursday he left for school at 7:00 again and right after school they left for Utah for a tournament and he won't be back until like 3:00am Sunday morning. So Ashlyn and I .... are quarantined and I have no way to leave the house without her! It's not too bad that I feel crappy because I don't really feel like going anywhere anyway. But we are really trying to find things to do. We actually got out of the house yesterday and just went and walked around Fred Meyer and then got Jambas. Something to keep us sane! Tonight my YW girls are coming over for a movie night they planned last week before I was feeling crappy. I cleaned up and Lysol-ed the house and figured it's not a big deal if I'm not feeling 100% because they will still have fun. I just hope all this sickness crap wraps up in the next few days so we can live a little more normal next week. I miss social interaction! I think Ashlyn does too!

I meant to do a wrap-up on 2013, you know, those year-in-review posts that pretty much everyone does on their blog? Well I started thinking about what I would write, and I realized that 2013 wasn't exactly my favorite year. Definitely a super-blessed one in so many ways. But when I thought of most of the big things that happened, they weren't fun ones that I wanted to spend a lot of time reviewing! Knee surgery, ectopic pregnancy, Sonatina Festival, waiting and having to renew our adoption profile, stupid family pictures fail, paying a TON in taxes because our old accountant from the previous year advised us poorly about paying in installments, the garage door breaking literally a week after we paid cash for our new carpet, and I'm sure there are more but I can't think of any. Those were some of the not so fun highlights that I remember. Good ones though are that Collin's team won state! That was definitely awesome. We painted almost our entire interior, and all the doors and got halfway done with replacing the door hardware, also stained our entire back fence and painted our front door and garage door, got new carpet!! This was my best year yet as far as my students succeeding in local competitions and festivals, I had a student chosen for the Certificate of Merit Honors Recital, and had a winner in Sonatina Festival, both for the first time. My spring recital was the best I've ever had. Over all we had so much fun celebrating birthdays, anniversary, spending time together traveling and at the park, swimming, hanging out with friends. We were SO blessed financially even though I always tend to be pretty pessimistic when it comes to money. Things worked out just when we needed them to. I credit most of that to my ever-faithful husband! He really deserves all those blessings, I think they're mostly for him! I am still a work in progress for sure. So here's to looking forward to 2014... there may be some big changes, there may be some exciting traveling, there will be someone turning 3 and someone else turning 30....!!

Harry Potter Baby Shower

Never thought I'd see those 4 words together. But when my sis Tara (just a mild Harry Potter fan....not!) mentioned that she'd love to have a Harry-themed baby shower I was thinking "that is the weirdest thing I've ever heard" . . . until I looked on pinterest and found like, a TON of Harry Potter baby showers! Who knew?!?! Not me! So anyways, Pinterest made our job easy here. Sorry, if you haven't seen or read Harry Potter this won't make any sense to you.

First, a stunning (and slightly creepy) picture of the Momma-to-be

Amazing invites designed by Megan

The front door, platform 9 3/4. Made from paint samples. (thanks, Home Depot!)

The favors

Treat table

Hayley's beautiful banner (if you only knew what it took to get it there! Hayley you are a rock star!!!)

There is another long story behind these golden snitches. But it is not mine to tell..... it's Andrea's! She did a great job with them though. And the banner garland I did.... there was way more but I didn't take any more pictures of it.

Mom did the pretzels.... oh wait, I mean ShopKo did the pretzels..... :) Known as wands here of course.

The best sugar cookies I've ever tasted, made by Hayley

Pumpkin Juice and Butterbeer

Ok yes, we did end up dressing up. At the very last second. Andrea did a great job rounding up outfits for the 3 of us! Although I was mildly insulted when everyone realized I looked like the actual Harry Potter?!?  And the baby Hayley's holding.... ???? We did play Baby Hot Potato so there was a reason it was there! It's just funny!

Tara got to wear the "Sorting Hat" while she opened gifts. She got a lot! Hope you had fun, sis. We love you and are so excited for Baby Siddoway to make her appearance in just a few short weeks!!!

Goals

(*** more posts coming soon below!!***)

I am not big on New Years Resolutions. In fact, I really don't remember setting any for the past many years. I think it's fun to see what other people set as goals, but I feel like setting a bunch of crazy goals for myself once a year and then not being able to follow through with any of them by like, March, is too depressing! That is just my personal experience!

Collin and I set goals together every couple of months. We usually end up writing out new goals for ourselves around the time our routine gets shaken up, like when school gets out, when school gets back in, when wrestling starts, when wrestling ends! (hmmm, now that I think about it, sounds like our lives definitely revolve around the school calendar!!) We usually set about 3 marriage/family goals, and 3 personal goals each. The family goals almost always include some sort of goal for going to bed on time and when/ how long we will read scriptures together. And then whatever else we are feeling the need to work on, like being more kind or attending the temple more or limiting our time with technology. The personal goals usually end up including some sort of exercise goal (more on Collin's than mine, but I try too!), our own scripture study goals, church calling goals, general cleaning up after ourselves or other stuff like that.

Here's our current goal list (which we always tape to our bathroom mirror--and notice the washi tape, how hip am I?!). We didn't do any of these at least the last 2 weeks during the break, but I think we will be getting back into it! Don't judge what you read.... I just felt like sharing some of our goal setting things since it's a new year and all.

If you bothered to read that goal list, you probably noticed "do the checklist" on there..... that is another goal system we have! It looks like this:

I made it like 2 years ago but it has worked pretty well and we still use it. Although, ahem, obviously it hasn't been used this week! (or the last, or the one before that..... probably not since before Thanksgiving, ha ha) But this coming week we will do it again. It's laminated so we just fill our own things in with dry erase markers as we do them. Collin's journal spot hardly ever gets filled in.... and my walk Lucy spots hardly ever get filled in! But it's good to keep trying. This is on our fridge and sometimes when one or both of us is having a good week we have some friendly competition to see if we can both be perfect on it. I'm sure there are more civilized ways to make these but this has worked for us! I'm looking forward to coloring on it starting tomorrow!

And finally, since I'm talking about goals here... this is an awesome paper Collin and I jokingly quote to each other quite often. He was looking through some of his mission stuff (oh man ladies, can I get a "what!" for any of you who have happened to be around when that goes on?! Like 5 hours later...... ha ha just joking I do love to see him so happy and I'm sure you all do too.), and he found the actual paper! It is so vague and really not concrete at all, but hey if nothing else it probably encouraged those missionaries to set more goals! So I will leave you with this thought.

Year In Review

coming....

Christmas Break

First of all:

Fabulous Megan designed these, thanks again!

We had a super fun Christmas break. It ended up feeling like a little long to be gone from home for me. I might be up for staying home for Christmas next year, we will see. But we loved seeing all the family we did. Collin's mom seriously spoiled us and we were fed good, got lots of gifts, and had lots of fun! Collin's bf brother Tyler came up from Arizona to spend the holiday with us too. We all had a good time watching lots of corny Christmas movies, good movies, and Friends!! We were in Utah for 5 days and then headed up to IF for Tara's baby shower for the last 3 days. One week gone total! Again my pictures are random and I will just briefly caption them for you!

We went up to Sundance and snowboarded for the first time in 2 years! It was so fun. Yay for no knee surgeries this year!

The stockings were hung....er...stuffed....

Guess who was Mary in the Christmas Pageant!

Ashlyn was in absolute heaven with her Robertson cousins, as usual. They are so great playing with her. The Christmas play was hilarious.

This was my favorite. We needed a shepherd!

Christmas morning Ashlyn was NOT into anything. She first got mad that she couldn't watch the Dora movie she got in her stocking right away..... then after opening 2 consecutive gifts that were clothes, she lost all interest in Christmas morning. She eventually went down for an early nap. Whatever. The rest of us had fun! :)

We went to Frozen! Best movie! This was Ashlyn's second time to a movie. The first she was like 15 months, we lasted like 10 minutes. I thought for sure she'd love it, but meh. We skipped naptime for it and that was against my better judgement. Live and learn. She was antsy and kind of wandered around between our 4 seats, and we just kept feeding her candy to keep her happy. She had a major meltdown in the car on the way home and it took me like 25 minutes to get her to stop crying once we got back to Nana's. She went to bed early that night!! But anyway, I LOVED Frozen! So, so cute. I bought the soundtrack. :)

BAM! Just Dance with Mom, Ms. Prego, and Collin! This was hilarious. 

Wouldn't be Christmas without some ugly selfies.

These 2 brothers..... looking good. They had a lot of fun together. 

This was early on Christmas morning.....when she was still excited!

All the books she got... we had to stop and read them as she opened them. I love that she is such a book lover. I hope it lasts!

This looks like Collin's in the hospital! ha ha! Don't worry, he's not! Ashlyn came in to drag him out of bed every morning.

Gorgeous girl in her super cute Christmas dress Grandma gave her! We just went to sacrament meeting before we hit the road for Nana's. She looked beautiful!

We had special Christmas hair, of course. I figured Christmas was a good excuse to spend the time on an all-around veil style. Time consuming, but really cute! 

When we got back we had our friends' doggie Carl over for a few days. These 2 dogs would pretty much completely ignore each other.....unless there was a morsel of food to be found. Then they would all-out brawl! Scary, but funny! Anyway, Ashlyn absolutely loved playing with Carl. Unlike Lucy who just lays on the couch all day, he would actually chase her and play with her! She was sad to see him go. 

And I suppose you want to know about gifts..... well this year as usual I got Collin boring crap he needs and he got me something awesome. I'm used to it by now. ;) I asked him what he wanted for Christmas and he said, "to get out of debt." Well, our debt is our mortgage, car payment, 2 small student loans....not anything the $50 each Christmas budget we decided on would cover! So, I got him a bunch of new school clothes, shoes, socks, etc. BORING stuff! But that's what he gets. His birthday's 2 weeks before Christmas so he got some music and books then. The Christmas stuff was pretty lame. But I warned him!

And when I opened my gift.... it was an itinerary for the Europe student trip he's taking kids on this spring. WHA?!?! He signed me up! At first I was beyond pumped because I thought he had gotten enough kids for me to go free. Sadly that wasn't true, it still will cost us money. (want to get OUT of debt, huh?! just joking.) But he had his reasons... he is getting some sort of merit pay bonus and there are a few other ways he figured out to pay it where we wouldn't have to dig into savings at all. AMAZING!!!!!!! I cried when I saw what it was. I have wanted to go on this trip SOOO bad! But only if there was a free way! This is the next best thing I suppose. And it is awesome! The trip is 9 days, to London, Paris, and Barcelona! I am going to try to save my $$$ so we can do the extension which is 2 more nights in ROME! But we will see. Can't be too picky, right! Anyway, that was awesome. So awesome. I am one lucky girl. This is probably the last chance we will have because he isn't planning on doing any more student trips after this. So yay! He also got me some new running clothes, which I was in bad need of. Nice!!

We felt so blessed this Christmas. It was great to spend time with family, and with each other. We are lucky to have such great family and friends. Merry Christmas everyone!