The one with the family pictures

We finally got new family pictures taken. My friend Liz took them. She did such an amazing job! Especially considering Ellie was rather grumpy and is pretty much frowning in all of them. She is most definitely my daughter. She's got her scowl down! haha There are just as many pictures of Jon blinking or not looking at the camera as the kids. Seriously he's like a big little kid. Of course it's hard to get all 4 of us looking and smiling at the camera at the same time. So they aren't perfect, but they let our personality shine through, which I totally love.

*picture overload headed your way...

 Remember this photo?... from 2010

We did a remake of it 3 years later. 

 He is such a ham. He kept asking Liz to "take a picture of me"

 We asked him to sit down and this is what he did. Totally posed

 this is my favorite one of these two. So studly! 

 Seriously, his face is awesome!!!

 Jon's face is awesome. And Taegen loves doing this. 

 This is pretty much how she was the entire time. We're lucky we got any shots of her being happy.

I love the progression of these next few. Oh the simple joys in life :) 

 Turns out all she needed was a little bit of food..yummy banana

 MUSCLES!

 Jon was trying to get E to look in the direction of the camera, so he's holding a fruit snack out in front of him. 

*sorry if there are any repeats. I tried to sift through them, but I did this post two different times so it was hard to remember which ones I had already put up. And since there are so many, I probably posted some twice and didn't notice. 

The one where I turn 27

Its weird to me that I'm 27. I use to think that that was old. haha. Of course now that I'm that old, I realize thats not the case. The day was a pretty relaxing day. Jon had school and we decided to not give gifts for birthdays or Christmas right now. Once we get our money back from the move we'll get each other gifts. We wanted to save our money for the expenses of relocating. I heard from all my sisters and my dad. Spent most of the morning on the phone talking to those I love. Then that night we went to the annual Christmas tree lighting and to see Santa on base.

At first I thought this was a real Christmas tree. I was in awe at how big it was. Then as we got closer I realized it was just lights draped over a regular tree. Taegen thought it was great non the less. 

 standing in line to see Santa

 The MWR took pictures and they one they took turned out much better than the one the elf took with my camera. 

 See it's all blurry. But in this one you can see how upset Ellie was. She did not like Santa. Oh and don't mind my posture in both of these pictures. I was hunched over trying to console Ellie. It didn't work.

Taegs with Santa

Before the festivities we went and grabbed some dinner at Popeyes, which I had never been to before. All in all I had a wonderful day. 

The one with Thanksgiving 2013

I didn't take any pictures this year. I know, not smart.

I made some rolls and an apple pie, and Jon smoked some turkeys and we headed over to Sgt D's house. (or as normal civilians would call him, Carlos Duliepre). Carlos and his wife, LaWanda, hosted a wonderful Thanksgiving for some of the soldiers that weren't going home to be with their own families. LaWanda is an awesome cook and she made some delicious food. I will say I was a little surprised with all the different foods she made. She made a lot more than just the traditional Thanksgiving food. There was mashed potatoes, turkey, rolls, dressing (stuffing), green bean casserole, mac and cheese, greens (collard greens that you eat with hot sauce), potato salad, corn, ham, roast beef, salad, candied yams, rice and beans. For dessert: my apple pie, lots of pumpkin pie, pecan pie, chocolate cake, strawberry cake, sweet potato pie and banana pudding. There was no cream pies. The banana pudding was the closest thing they had to a cream pie. I thought that was really odd. My family makes cream pies every Thanksgiving. We LOVE cream pies. In fact, those are really the only kind of pies we make. We're not huge on pumpkin or fruit pies. Jon then informed me that eating cream pies on Thanksgiving is not normal. We asked one of his buddies from upstate NY and he said they don't ever make them on Thanksgiving either. So I don't know if its just my family thats weird, but I sure did miss my cream pies. So the next day I went to the store and got a single serving coconut cream pie for me to enjoy :)

Taegen had a lot of fun with the daughter of one of the other soldiers. She was probably around 16 yrs old, so she probably didn't enjoy the company of a 3 year old as much as he enjoyed it. But she was a good sport about it.
Heres the only picture I have of that day;

Ellie loved the turkey!

We missed spending Thanksgiving with our families, but we had a good day none the less. It was my first time spending a major holiday away from family. Jon spent Thanksgiving in 2011 away at his mechanic AIT. It gave us a little taste of what Christmas will be like this year. Except we'll probably spend more time with just us as a family and less with friends. 

The one about my kids

Heres another update on us and the kids...
We officially only have 38 days left here in SA. I'm excited for this chapter in our lives to be done. Not because I didn't enjoy our time here, I did. I've made some great friends, whom I will miss when we leave. But I'm so excited to get to our next stop, so to speak. This next place that we move will be more permanent than we've ever had during our whole 5 years of marriage. We will be moving and staying there for at least a few years. Jon needs to get some experience under his belt. Once he does, we'll apply for some where thats closer to home. I say this, because chances are we won't end up in UT. We're still looking for jobs. Jon hasn't landed a job yet so we don't know for sure where we will end up.
Jon starts course 12 tomorrow. This course is almost all out processing. He has a 3 day FTX (field training exercise) and thats about all. He'll go get his teeth and eyes checked, do his necessary paper work and that's about it. Christmas break starts on the 18th and he goes back to school for 4 days in January, then we're out of here. Christmas break will consist of a lot of packing and cleaning, oh and of course some Christmas traditions mingled in there as well. :)

-Taegen is having a hard time with bed time lately. We likes to come out of his room after we've put him to bed. He always has some sort of excuse as to why he's not in bed (he needs to pee, which he doesn't, he wants a drink, wants more hugs/kisses, etc). We're trying to work with him on it. Really its just hit or miss on whether he stays in bed or not.
-He's choosing to ignore us when we ask him to do things, and it's beyond infuriating. I'm trying to give him instant gratification (the only thing I've found that some what works on him) when he listens. But I'm not being very consistent. So we're still having issues with him on that one lately. Now that the holiday break is over, I'm going to buckle down and try to be better at it.
-He has no sense of time. Every past tense term (yesterday, last month, week etc) is all "yesterday". If we've ever done something, he says "mom, I played with Axel yesterday". Even though it was last week. Or "my birthday was yesterday". His birthday is in April.
- We were getting ready to take some family pictures and after he gets dressed he says "mom am I handsome now?' Then this morning I was wanting him to get dressed for church and I said "don't you want to look handsome for church" and his response "I'm already handsome" :) Yes, yes he is. Love him.

-Ellie is officially up and walking every where. The beginning of last month she was still crawling and she'd also get up on her knees and rock side to side. But thats it. Now she's running. Or I should say half run half waddle. It's super cute.
- She has a major sweet tooth. If she sees anything that she know is sweet, she freaks out screaming for it.
- She loves her reflection in the dishwasher. She kisses it all the time :)
- LOVES shoes! She'll bring me her shoes if she sees them and want them on. Some times she'll only bring me one and be completely content with walking around with just 1 on.
- Everything she says she says as an expression. Like "WOOOW" "WHOOAA". She holds out the middle letters every time. Very excited/spirited sounding. Its so cute.
- She says nose, wow, whoa, no, mama, dada, ooo and ahhh (when looking at something she likes)
- Loves Taegens super hero toys (iron man, captain america, spider man and hulk)
- Every time we open the fridge, she closes it. Even if we just opened it and still need it open. She'll come from across the room just to close it.
- Loves sitting on the couch.
- She always pulls out the bath tub drain. Literally like 2 minutes into the bath, she's already drained the water.

Now to the fun part..pictures:

E playing with super hero toys

 This is probably the only pic I have of her kneeling. She did this all the time.

 fun times at the park

She gets "up" here and thinks she stuck. She refuses to get down. It looks like she's happy, but really she's yelling at me to help her get down. 

 baby girls got a mullet! 

 She steals my apples every time

 Jon fell asleep on the couch and I couldn't resist snapping a pic of his gloriousness

I love this pic so much! Look how happy they both look

 such a good big brother. He loves taking her down the slide. 

She even does it by herself now. 

We found a little car at the park and both the kids loved it. Taegen even liked pushing Ellie around in it. 

 Not as much as he liked riding in it by himself though. 

 Both kids crashed in the car as soon as we pulled up. So we all took a little nap in the car

 She crawls back here and gets stuck every time! But she loves it non the less. 

 Gettin comfy in the cart.  

 Her two favorite things; shoes and her teddy bear

This was when she was first learning to walk. She even dared walk with something in her hand. 

They have so much fun together

T dancing and Ellie being ornery.

The one with our 5 year anniversary

I can't believe it's already the 26th of Nov and I haven't blogged about our 5 year anniversary yet.

On the 7th, we celebrated our joyous 5 year anniversary. Being that Jon is busy with school we waited until the weekend to celebrate and even then I wouldn't call it that. haha. One doesn't join the military to become rich, so we found a dinner movie theater and we went and saw Thor 2. You sit down and they have menus on the bar like table thats right in front of you. You write down your order and a server comes up and picks it up and shortly after delivers your food to you. It was a really cool experience (since we've never done something like that before). They had all sorts of food: pizzas, burgers, salads, wraps, appetizers, popcorn, cookies, fried pickles, drinks, shakes, etc. Besides the fact that we had to sit in the very front row, we really enjoyed it. Now the next time we do something like that we'll just make sure to not spend so much on food. I was so excited I went a little crazy with what we ordered (pizza, burger, fries, fried pickles, drinks, and popcorn) In my defense, it was my cheat day on my diet so I got to eat it guilt free :)

So crazy that it's already been 5 years. I have 2 beautiful kids

 thanks to this handsome fella

and I honestly feel like the luckiest woman to have all 3 of them in my life. I'm sure the next 5 years will go by just as quickly and be just as great. (Crazy to think that in 5 years T will be 8, Ellie 6 and our last kid will probably have joined our family sometime before then too). 

I love my life! :)

The one with the article on pornography

I don't normally put stuff like this up on my blog. I usually just use it for journaling purposes. But I read this article on FB today about pornography by a guy named Matt Walsh. I've read a few articles of his before and most times they are about controversial issues. So I was not surprised that he chose to write about such a topic. When I read his stuff I never read the comments or post a comment myself. But after reading this article I was rather disgusted. Not for the reason you may think though. Let me explain...

Just yesterday I was having a conversation with my sister about pornography because her ward had a special lesson on it at church. I think it's great to bring the topic out into the open. And let me be clear, I DO NOT like, watch, agree or condone pornography. I agree with the article that it in every way hurts your marriage and is damaging to your brain. I also agree that it is a form of adultery. The author makes some good points through out the article, but I do not agree with the way he "shames" the people who view pornography. If you really want to help someone who watches pornography or even just deter a young person from going down that path, calling names is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. In his article he uses words like: "creeps" "psychotic" "utterly despicable" "smaller" "liar" "sneaky" "shameful" and "pervert" to describe those that watch and/or are addicted to porn. But yet in the same article says "I'm not here to castigate you if you've stumbled". Hmmm.....

I've known men that have had a problem with porn. It's very damaging to them and their families. But let me also point out that it is not only a problem for men. So the fact that this article only mentions men, makes it even more disturbing to me. Pornography is a big problem in our society, (along with so many other things) for men AND women of ALL ages. And I do think it's something that needs to be brought to the attention of the parents today to help prevent young kids from getting involved with it. But please don't use such negative language. Here is a great article with tips on how to talk to your young kids. This is the reason I decided to post this on here. I strongly believe in talking to your kids and being open with them about these types of things. I want my kids to feel comfortable coming to me with questions, so they don't have to turn to the internet. Which could lead to them finding numerous amounts of inappropriate things.

The one where I joined the weight loss competition and update on Jon

I was losing my motivation, yet again in my workout/diet. I was eating really good, running 5 or more times a week yet I wasn't losing any lbs or inches. I don't mind if the number on the scale doesn't go down, as long as I'm still losing inches. But I wasn't. :( I hadn't given up completely, but I was getting rather upset and depressed about it.

I have a goal weight that I want to reach before we go back to Utah, which we just found out could be in December instead of January (I'll elaborate in a minute). So now my time table is even shorter. So when a friend of mine announced that she was doing a 6 week weight loss competition, with a $10 buy in and winner takes all, I just new I had to join. That'll be my motivation to eat good, with no cheating. I could exercise all day long and still not lose any weight. I HAVE to diet if I want results. In fact, I've been sick this past week and haven't been able to exercise at all and I've still lost weight. Exercise of course helps me tone my muscles, but to be honest I still feel like I have a lot of weight to lose before the toning process even starts. I still plan on starting up exercising once I'm better (my cough and stuffy/runny nose are still making my life miserable. But at least my sinus pressure and headaches have stopped)

I don't want to announce how much I've lost since I've started the competition, but I will say that I've lost 12lbs since I started dieting on my own in the beginning of Oct! I haven't measured myself yet but hopefully I'm losing inches too.

A few months back I tried the slow carb diet and it was so hard to do while nursing that I only lasted a couple days. I think I'm going to give it another try. This time I don't have to eat to sustain a milk supply, so I'm hoping it'll be easier. I know it's going to be hard, but this time I have different expectations going in, and kind of know what to expect. Plus I have recipes to follow, which will hopefully make things so much easier for me. I hate eating the same thing day in and day out. So getting some variety I'm hoping will make a difference. I have a friend who lost 20lbs and 2 dress sizes in 1 month doing this. So I know it's possible. I start start tomorrow...wish me luck.

As for when we go home. There is rumor going around that they are going to let them graduate before Christmas break. Of course this is just a rumor and nothing has been confirmed yet. But everyone knows that making them come back from Christmas break for literally 4 days of "school" is just ridiculous! And I say "school" because it's not actually school work. It's mainly just waiting and out processing/paperwork. We're hoping they decide to move up graduation, but I personally don't have my hopes up. Jon does though. He's really ready to be done with school. In fact, he starts course 11 Tuesday. Which means he's no longer even in the school house. Both course 11 and 12 are down at the "field site". I'm not quite sure where that is and what they actually do, but he will no longer be sitting in a classroom. Which he of course is so excited about.
I'm just planning on us not leaving until January. And to be honest, it would be way less stressful. That way we have all of Christmas break to get this packed up and Jon can actually help me. If we leave in Dec I'll have to do most of the packing by myself, with 2 kids running around. Not ideal. But if they do ok the bump up in graduation, that means we'll be giving our 30 days notice to out apartment managers in 2 weeks! Thats just so crazy to me! So we'll know probably in the next couple weeks when we'll actually be leaving. I'm 6's on it and don't really know what one I want.
We're actively looking for a job for Jon now. We're applying for everything we can find. We've only found 3 in UT so far. Two of those told Jon to call back closer to his graduation and hopefully they'll have something (they both want/like to hire people from this school, so they're interested in him, they just don't know if they'll be anything available in 2 months from now). The other jobs we've applied for are literally all over the country: Florida, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Colorado, Alabama. Just about everything we find that he qualifies for, we apply for it. So hopefully he'll find something before we leave. I just don't want to be job-less when we're done. At least not for too long. I realize it may be a little unrealistic to PLAN on him having a job 100% landed before we leave. but it is possible. A lot of people do it. In fact, if they haven't landed a job by graduation, most people have multiple prospects by the time they graduate and get hired on somewhere shortly after. I'm hoping he'll find something before he graduates :)

The one with Halloween

Halloween 2013 was a lot of fun for me since I decided to take on the task of making Ellie's costume. I got the idea online and I just knew I had to do it. I think it turned out great and I'm so proud of myself. And Taegen just loved his Iron man costume. I tried to get him to wear his other full face mask, instead of this Nacho Libre 1/2 mask version, but he insisted on this one.

 trick or treating

 Taegs shooting the bad guys. He's my nacho libre, cowboy Iron Man :)

 They got her first piece of Halloween candy at the store earlier in the day and they LOVED it. 

 In fact, Ellie freaked out when I had to take it away for a second. I think someone has a sweet tooth!

 Then I had to get a little festive for dinner, so we had some mummy dogs. Which were a big hit :)