Our Angel....

Today was a beautiful day, a sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, a nice soft breeze......I felt my Angel's presence today, after all today is his Birthday. Happy Birthday Dalton James, times sure goes so fast. It is hard to imagine that 6 years ago today we saw your precious face for the first and last time. We think of you every....single....day. We love you so much, my oh my do I wish you were here. Today we talked to Dylan about you as we often do, but today was different, Dylan had so many questions. He practiced a few times pronouncing your name, he wanted to know time and time again where you lived, we told him with Jesus in heaven, a far more beautiful place than where we live. He wanted to know how old you were today, we told him 6. His response, 'wow mom he is 6 just like I'm gonna be 5.' He wanted to see you, we showed him pictures of you. 'Aww', he said.

We came to visit you today Dalton, did you hear us singing you the Happy Birthday song?! Dylan didn't want to sing, but as we were walking away from your resting place he yelled, 'Happy Birthday Brother'. It was pretty much the sweetest thing ever, melted your Daddy and I's hearts. We sent you a balloon today Dalton, did it reach you all the way up in heaven? I am sure you saw it, it was bright orange, easily seen in the clear blue sky. I am sure heaven is filled with balloons for your Birthday today, the bright orange one tho was from us! I hope you had lots of yummy Birthday cake, we had a brownie here for you :) We left a balloon at your resting place and a bright colored pin wheel that Dylan just had to take for you. It turned round and round, much like the circle of life does, we know Dalton we will see you again on the other side of heaven. I can't wait to hug and kiss you, for the mean time tho I do those things to Dylan, I really feel you live on thru him.

Please know buddy, you are never and will never be forgotten. We love you more than words can say, you are our first born, the first real testament of your Daddy and I's love, we will cherish you forever and ever.

 My parents are the best, they each sent me beautiful flowers today. My Mom sends specifically colored flowers every single year, each have special meaning! Thank you Mom & Dad!

Happy 6th Birthday Son, we love you so much. You truly are the sunshine in our days!~

We are off to Celebrate!

A little bit of this & a little bit of that....

We are patiently waiting for Spring to be in full force! It is getting close, we keep getting little tastes of it. We have had some fun times with friends and family over the past month and a half or so, celebrating Birthday's and gathering together getting all caught up! Here is our journey in pictures!~
Cozy nap time on Sunday afternoon!

Fun times with Drew & Allison!

 Say Cheese!

 Thanks for coming over to play Lila!

 Happy Birthday Great Grandma Martin!

Dylan had a lot of fun with Kaleigh & Allie!

 Wild rides from Uncle Tony & Uncle Nick!

 Nothing like a mouth full of spray Whip Cream! Too funny!

 I love sitting up playing like a big girl thanks to my new Benik!

 Having a big time conversation with Daddy!

 Happy 1st Birthday Henley!

It's a Sunshine Day!

Do you feel the fresh warm(er) air....we do, Spring is just around the corner!!! But that means that we have to take advantage of playing out in this nice white fluffy snow while we can! The temps have warmed quite a bit compared to what they have been the past few weeks and this has been perfect weather to play outside! Dylan has had some super fun times playing out in the snow, building forts and snowmen and even doing some sledding! Ahh, the joys of being a kid.


We also decided to give a little one on one time with the kids this weekend. While Mommy and Dylan went sledding, Daddy and Danielle had some snuggle time indoors! These times are very important we have learned, this way each child feels that much more important with individual attention from Mom and Dad! We enjoy these times almost as much as we enjoy family time all together

Sunday we decided to give Dylan a little extra special fun play time with Mom and Dad. We did not tell him before hand what we were doing, only that it was a surprise afternoon for him. We hopped in the car and headed into town, all the way he asked where we were going and we said only, 'to the surprise place.' We arrived and told him to look up at the sign...Chuck E Cheese! He was walking in with us and almost like he didn't believe us, he kept asking if he really was getting to go there, priceless! We spent just over 2 hours playing all about, games, taking pictures, shooting hoops and playing football. We had a blast! It was sure a blast from the past for Mom and Dad but seeing the huge smile on Dylan's face and hearing his giggles, those moments sure were priceless! We truly had a wonderful afternoon with our little man!

We then packed up the whole family and headed to the Olive Garden for a Valentine Family Dinner! It was delicious as usual and we were all stuffed! We headed home and finished the last touches on Dylan's Valentines for his school classmates and friends!

Dylan love standing there watching or trying as hard as he could to 'win' a game, but I think his most favorite part was collecting all of the tickets after each game! He had that figured out really quick and was very excited to cash them all in for prizes!!We started making Valentines last Thursday and got them pretty well packaged up. I cut out the names, Dylan stuck the names on them with glue and then we put stickers on the bags and hand wrote out his valentines with his name and their names too. We had a great time and this was a first for Mommy and Dylan making Valentines for his school. He had little Dinosaur valentines and little sticky dinosaur figurines to put in the goodie bags, along with some stickers and individual bags of Gold Fish crackers, yum! We then make goodie bags for his Childcare Teachers as well and Miss Michelle too!

We all awoke this morning and gave big hugs and kisses to each other. It was a Valentines morning filled with love in the air, it was great! Dylan could hardly wait to get his things packed up for school, he was very excited for his big day ahead. I dropped him off and the little stinker didn't even say goodbye to me, thankfully I had already kissed his little head when he took his coat off because I turned around after putting his things down and he was off. It makes my heart so happy to see him so excited for school every day, what a great feeling as a parent!
Valentines for the Childcare Teachers

Valentines for his classmates and friends!!

Valentines from Mommy and Daddy for our two little sweeties!!

Tonight we picked him up and his backpack was stuffed, and I mean stuffed with Valentines. He had these two BIG bags full of cards and candy and goodies from all of his friends. He definitely was feeling the extra love today. It was like Halloween with all of the goodies that he brought home! HA!
'Look Mom, two huge bags FULL of Valentines!!'

This evening we made a really nice dinner at home and relaxed, put the kids in their snugly pj's after nice warm baths and we are cuddled up on the couch. Sadly my little peanut Danielle has to have her 2nd set of ear tubes put in tomorrow in IC. This was very sudden, we are praying for a quick surgery without any hassles, and no more ear pain for our little sweetie. More on that later....We hope this Valentines has found you with the ones you love the most. We hope that you had a smile on your face today feeling the love that surrounds you. We sure felt it, while we feel it every day, today is a special day where there is definitely no un-noticed love in the air! The weather outside has been just beautiful and we are searching our yard to see those little brown spots of grass here and there. Not too much yet, but the warm sunshine feels....ooooh so good!~

Snow Day 2011

We are hunkered down and cuddled up, we welcomed this Snow Day 2011! We took advantage of the Blizzard outside and were prepared for some good ole' family time!
The have been talking of the magnitude of this storm for days now and so we started preparing on Sunday. We stocked up at the grocery store and made preparations to stay home! I packed up my laptop at work, got my ultra necessary work done and brought home what I could do from here. Brad is home this week too! I picked up the kids about 3pm from daycare yesterday and we headed home! The roads on the way home were a bit slippery, but mostly it was a slow drive because of all the blowing snow!

The kids were so good for Mommy on the way home, nice and quiet.

Mom and Dad enjoyed a nice glass of wine, which led to a bottle ;) and the kids enjoyed a movie and Dylan had a whole bowl of popcorn on his lap by 6pm, we were welcoming this down time! By the time we crawled into bed we looked out our bedroom window and the snow was already drifting up to the window ledge! It was incredible. I didn't freak out until Brad said, 'well I hope the window that is directly below us holds from the pressure'. Uh what?! Yikes, I started to panic a little bit just at the thought. It blew and blew all night long, the wind was howling and we already knew we would be home for the day on Wednesday.
We awoke to snow drifted everywhere!! In the middle of the night the town crew came thru with the backhoe because the drifting must have been that bad. We told Dylan he didn't have school and he was excited to stay home....for a minute, until he realized that no school meant that they weren't going to get to celebrate Elmo's Birthday today with their pajama party celebration :( Well a e-mail from the school said it was re-scheduled for Friday, as soon as we told him that his tears quickly dried up. Poor little guy!

I made my own little office on the kitchen table and put on a big pot of coffee for Brad and I. He finally ventured out to tackle the driveway. It was a bit misleading as we could still see small parts of concrete in our driveway, so Brad didn't think he would need the 4wheeler with the blade, he thought he could shovel. Wrong! He started and was quickly ready to bust out the 4wheeler when the neighbor came over with the snow blower. Beau saved the day and a lot of work for us! So Brad went and helped return the favor.

I got a little work done and a couple pictures from co-workers reinforced in my mind why I didn't trek in to work today. Check it out!

So we relaxed all day long. Made egg's and bacon for breakfast/lunch. Dylan had made some special friendship soup at school the other day and he was excited to eat it. So we cooked it up for him for lunch along with his favorite side dish, tator tots! Then we all ventured to the couch for an afternoon nap. Ahhh, we love relaxing family snow days!
We will go play in the snow on a much warmer day little buddy....we promise!

A cozy winter nap!

So although we all had a lot of other things to do today. We were happy to put them aside and we took advantage of the biggest Blizzard of this winter so far and spent the day as a family! 15 inches of snow for what we could measure but with all of the blowing we aren't surprised if we got more than that. Incredible! I hope this Blizzard of 2011 found you hunkered down with the ones you love in a warm and cozy place :)

And we must wish a VERY HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY to my little brother Chase! Happy Birthday brother, enjoy it, be smart and have fun being legal!!! We wish we were there to Celebrate with you.