Family Update: It's Been Awhile {Again}

I realize that now that I run a total of 3 blogs....call me crazy or call me organized {or both}...I have a hard time keeping up with this one. I was actually thinking about shutting this one down...but then I reminisced through a few posts and found this one. I realized why I do have the family blog separate from my other blogs. In a way, it's like a diary that my boys, Jake and I can look back on and cherish the memories together. It's a diary to the boys about the young moments they might not remember clearly. So that being said, I am going to keep this family journal of sorts running, though I may not update often, I'll sure try. And I'll link to some posts on my other blogs that pertain to some family stuff so as not to be redundant over here. I do hope you'll follow Style Oyster & Gym Bunny too though.

So my last family update was from January through April...let's go over May through June. I think we actually left off just before my 30th birthday, which was April 14th, and I mentioned Jake having a big surprise planned. Well, go here to see what that surprise ended up being. I was in awe.

Additionally, in April, my dad and his wife Teresa came for a visit. It was such a nice weekend with them and I'm so glad they could make the trip. We don't get to see them often enough.

May was fairly uneventful {in a good way}. We did the normal things around here...work, school, etc. We also found some beach outing opportunities. The best beach trip hands-down was the one where Tanner found a crisp $100 bill on the sand dunes. {Lucky kid, right? The most I had ever found before that was a $20. Now it's $40, since last week at a concert I found two folded up 20s on the sidewalk - Jake and I donated it toward our beer for the concert.}

We did also get a rare Breckin-only weekend. Tanner got to go to Carowinds with Nana & Papa {Jake's parents}, so we spent a weekend just enjoying little Breckin and giving him some special attention. We took him to the Children's Museum, which he just loved. More info and pics from that weekend can be seen here.

June was a big month for us. Tanner graduated the 1st grade and we left the day after to spend a week in Florida visiting Disney World and Sea World. It was awesome. It was nice to have our first family vacation - just the four of us.

I really need to do a separate post for all the pictures from that trip. Five parks in 7 days was a lot of photo opportunities!

And that bring us to July...I feel like this summer has just gone by too fast. Tanner starts back at school in 3 weeks. I have thankfully gotten everything ready to go - being an early bird this year. I quit my 2nd job at the gym the other week...it was just time to be done. The 3am wake-ups three days a week just became to tiresome. And with school starting, I really wanted to be there in the weekday AMs for my boys. Jake and I managed to get to two concerts this month - OAR {a fave band of his} and then a Michael Jackson cover/tribute band at the Windjammer on Isle of Palms. Here we are at OAR:



And with our friends at the Windjammer:

And to end this post, here are some fun random summer pics of the boys:

Until next time!

Friends/Family - if you would like any of the pictures you see of us on the blog, please just right-click on the image and save it to your computer. You are welcome to print at your leisure! They are all high-pixel images. If you do not know my family or me, you probably shouldn't right-click/save or print any of our images. Just saying.

Family Update - Been A While!

I have not posted here since January. I know this is not my main blog, but I feel guilty neglecting it nonetheless. There are so many things to update about since my last post on here.

Let's start with January:

I unexpectedly got laid off from my job at Boeing. It was stressful, but I luckily was able to get on quite a few interviews right away {6 in one week!}. Two weeks later, I had a job offer. I felt so blessed with the job market being what it is right now.

We had a new niece born - Peyton Grace.

February:

I started my new job - it's really cool right now because I actually get to work from home, and not really full-time. But I get paid full-time. They are a Dubai-based plastics manufacturer and wanted to open an office in Charleston to handle the US accounts. I am pretty much on-call and help with setting up the office, check my emails, etc. and am really still waiting on training since my manager has not been back in the US since he hired me. I guess I can just enjoy the free time for now. I also got a second job working at the gym on M, W, F mornings from 4:30-8.

Jake went back to Illinois mid-February to attend his grandfather's funeral. It was a sad time, but it had been a long time coming and we are all so glad he is no longer suffering.

I won tickets on the radio to see Rascal Flatts and The Band Perry {also meet The Band Perry} on Valentine's Day. It made an awesome date for the romantic occasion as we really didn't have much else planned.

March:

March started off on a very sad note. On March 1st, we lost our Tundra. For those of you that don't know, I got her off of Craigslist back in September. She was a Siberian Husky, estimated to be around 6 years old. Right off the bat, I found out she had heartworm. I opted to have it treated, and she was finally done with all of that in December. I thought things would start looking up, and I was able to walk her again, but somewhere around end of January, her breathing started sounding really bad. I stopped walking her as a precaution and waited it out a couple weeks to see if there was improvement. There wasn't so I took her to the vet for a chest x-ray and it looked really bad. They couldn't tell me exactly what it was, so we tried some antibiotics and anti-inflammatory meds to no avail. Her breathing continued to worsen and I ended up telling Jake that we probably had to put her down since she was suffering and we couldn't spend any more money than we already had with an outlook so grim. To our surprise, the vet offered to take her if we relinquished her an they would try some things pro-bono. Unfortunately, I found out later that she did not make it through that weekend. Turned out she had cancer that had spread all throughout her lungs and chest. She was a sweetheart and did not deserve to suffer the way she did. My only solace is that we were able to give her a loving home for the last 6 months of her life.

Later in the month, Jake surprised me by getting a puppy {from a breeder this time}. She is a Boston Bulldog {English Bulldog & Boston Terrier X}. We named her Sugar. She is so sweet and has definitely helped in my grieving. I greatly miss Tundra, but it's nice to have another dog around. She is very playful with the boys and quite a character. I love her so much already.

And now that brings us to April:

I am anxiously awaiting my 30th birthday this Sunday. I know Jake has some sort of surprise planned {he's bad at even keeping that part a secret} and I am excited for the entire weekend - we'll do beach and downtown of course. I am actually looking forward to this decade...I hear it's the best and I plan on approaching it that way.

Tanner has been doing very well in school, much better behaviorally so we are very happy about that. We are finally getting to a good place with all of that. It has been a long road, and I know it's not over, but it is nice to know we are going in a good direction now. He is happy, sweet and maturing more and more each day. We just love him.

Breckin is starting to test us now, but he's two, so of course we expected that. He is still sweet and fun-loving as always and just adored by anyone who cares for him. 

We are looking forward to a summer filled with beach and pool outings, popsicles, play parks, library trips, movies, sleepovers and more.

We also just finished repainting our living room and kitchen- thank the Lord! View that update on my other blog by clicking here.

Thanks for keeping up with us! xoxo

Friends/Family - if you would like any of the pictures you see of us on the blog, please just right-click on the image and save it to your computer. You are welcome to print at your leisure! They are all high-pixel images. If you do not know my family or me, you probably shouldn't right-click/save or print any of our images. Just saying.

30 Days of Me: Day 2

OK, I guess I've slacked a little bit on my 30 Days posts. I started early last month and haven't done one since. My bad.

Well, so Day 2 is: Write about something you love about yourself.

Let me start by saying I think this is the one I was dreading the most. The last thing I want to do is write a whole post about something so vain. But at least it's a far cry from the Day 1 post. I suppose it's actually a healthy thing to be able to look at yourself and actually talk about something you love rather than do what most people tend to do which is openly complain about everything they don't.

So here goes...I would say something I do love about myself is that I'm a very motivated person. It doesn't take much for me to get motivated to attain something I really want.

For example, in terms of fitness...I've been successful in so many of my goals. And I actually LOVE to work out because of it. I'm a mom of two boys (one of which was just born last August) and I'm already back to (less than) my pre-baby weight. I'm also about 25 lbs less than I weighed in high school and 15 lbs less than I was before I got pregnant with Tanner 6 years ago. I'm back in a bikini after Breckin! Perfectly in time for summer, as I promised myself I would be. I know some girls may be reading this and thinking "I hate you, shut up", but I want you all to know that I'm not saying this to be cocky at all. I know that I'm nowhere near perfect and that my body could always use a little work. But the point I'm trying to make is that when I was pregnant with Breckin, I made a goal for myself and I succeeded in attaining it. I motivated myself by honestly probably being a little hard on myself when I looked at my post-baby body in the mirror during my first couple of postpartum months. I don't recommend nor do I think any woman should be too hard on herself after pregnancy. Unfortunately, I'm just one of those people that if I don't push myself hard right away, I will procrastinate and never achieve my goals.

Another thing I'm motivated in is my future career. I'm definitely a person who knows that I want to be my own boss. I've started a cleaning business and plan on eventually making it successful enough that I can just rely on that as my sole income. I've still got a lot of work to do, but believe I am working on it and setting goals for it one at a time.

I also love to motivate other people. I know a lot of people that voice what they want, but need that extra push to go get it. I love to help them realize their personal goals and support them along the way. I believe having a good support system is key in achieving your goals. It's so easy to get discouraged, so sometimes you just need someone cheering you on from the sidelines and encouraging you to keep moving forward. I especially love it when friends ask me health and fitness advice...not only is it incredibly flattering, but I feel confident that I can really help them in that area.

OK, so I hope this post hasn't been sounding like I've been tooting my own horn. Not my intention at all. And for those of you who don't know me in person, I just want to clarify that I do not talk about what I love about myself or go on and on about myself. So I really hope I haven't given off that impression. That's why I really didn't like the subject of this post (ME, lol).

Family Pic Share!

Today, we had our first professional family pics taken since Breckin became a part of our family! Here are some of the best pics:

Family Update - January 2011

I'm going to start a series of little family updates - posts that include little tidbits about each member of my family and the goings-on with them. I have a lot of family and friends on the other side of the continent and I love to try and keep them in the loop as best as I can!

Well, we'll start from the bottom up...
Breckin turned 5 months on January 8th. I can't believe it's almost been half a year already. It definitely is a whirlwind. These precious moments pass all too quickly. We have been enjoying this new personality in our family. He is like Tanner in so many ways, but also still very much his own little person. He is particularly mommy-attached (but I don't mind that too much) and he definitely loves to be heard. He squeals all the time and loves to have plenty of attention (much like big brother). We switched him into cloth diapers this month. I love them. It is going to be so much better for him (and the Earth!) This is what they look like:

I'm getting so into them and plan on ordering more. I just found these ones and I'm ordering them this week:

He is eating cereal already and has started rolling over. He should be sitting very soon! Currently his favorite toys are his Jumperoo and exersaucer.
Tanner is a happy and bouncy little 5-year old. We are signing him up for Spring Baseball this month and he will start in March. We will soon be signing him up for Kindergarten as well! He will be attending Laurel Hill Elementary in Mount Pleasant. He is our little artist - very imaginitive and always drawing pictures (he is quite talented for his age!) He also loves playing games on our new Wii. Since he is at home with me now and not in pre-school, I have been prepping him with Pre-K and Kindergarten workbooks. He is such a little smarty and I know he will enjoy being in school. He is looking forward to warmer weather so he can run around in the sun and go swimming!
Naturally, I would come next in this lineup, however, I feel it's better etiquette to speak about everyone before myself.
Jake will be turning 33 in just under a couple weeks. (He may kill me if he finds out I announced it!) He has been playing on a recreational basketball league this season with a group of friends he usually plays beach volleyball with in the spring and summer. (And he's been catching a few games of beach volleyball when he can too.) He is loving his role as daddy to our two wonderful boys. He is going to take Tanner camping this spring with a group of other dads and their kids from our church, Seacoast. They went on one last winter and had a great time.
And well, me...most of you know the gist of what's going on with me these days (hence, your reading of this blog right now), but basically I'm still trudging through trying to lose my pregnancy weight - less than 5 lbs to go and less than 15 to my goal! I've been doing Insanity and I absolutely love the results it's been giving me. I highly recommend this workout if you are serious about getting in shape! Other than that, I'm enjoying my life as a stay-at-home mom. I am so blessed that I'm able to do this. Of course I'm still working on my cleaning business, but it definitely allows for much more time with my boys. The business is steadily building and I'm thankful for that. I am currently looking for an evening and weekend part-time job. I had an interview at a local gym last week and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for it. I should find out very soon. Like Tanner, I too am looking forward to warmer weather - I've had all the cold weather I can take! It has not felt like South Carolina these past few weeks! I'm so excited to take Breckin to the beach so he can be a little beach bum like his big brother. I'm going to have a blast with them out there this spring and summer and I can't wait!
Well, that's all I've got for now! :)