Today....

It's 11:18am and this is how my morning has pretty much been. This little boy won't let me set him down, he's such a momma's boy. But I love it, because....really, I don't want

to set him down. I'd rather hold this sweet boy

then fold the laundry sitting next to me.

LOVE YOU JAX

MUSHY MUSHY

Have I mentioned lately how lucky I am to be married to this man?

Here he is, being his normal self:

Holding his whiny baby so I can blog/look at blogs/have a break.

Watching The Office on dvd because we cut cable so he could buy me a car of my very own!

Wearing his work out clothes so we can get our chizzled bums ready for the "bikini season"

...& you can't see in the pic, but he still has his church socks on...HOTT! ;)

LOVE HIM!

FISHIES!

We just can't seem to stop adding to our family, huh? Scott has pretty much begged to get a dog for the last 3 years. I would love a little puppy, but do I want to potty train a little puppy? No. Do I want to take a little puppy outside for walks in this freezing cold weather? No. Do I want to pick up after another little messy creature? Nope.

So....this is as close to a puppy as Scotty boy is going to get for a while! I love that at the pet store today, he was making it seem like Avery REALLY wanted to take one home...uh huh. But he did get that big old desk sold on craigslist and out of our room, and he did put that bead board up in our kitchen, and he is willing to repaint a room that took us hours to paint, and he does change the poopy diapers when he's home and helps me cook dinner almost every night, even though he's been at school all day long....and I could go on and on about everything he does for me. So getting these two little fishies really isn't going to kill me, especially since he'll be in charge of cleaning out the tank, right? And maybe it'll teach Avery some responsibility with remembering to feed them every day!

Oh and did I mention their names?

NEMO & DOROTHY

Guess who named them! :)

Love my family.

JAXY!

L.O.V.E

this little face!

I can't believe how lucky I am to be this kid's momma.

He's the sweetest little babe.

(and yes! that's carpet you see!! hardwood floors are super cute, but not so comfy for babies playing on the floor, so we got some installed, love it!)

All about my girly

This girl is my best friend.

I spend more time talking to her then I do with anyone else & I love it!!!

LOVE HER!

Oh this girl of ours. She's hilarious!

The things that come out of her mouth make us laugh on a daily basis. She also has her drama queen moments, pretty much every time we turn into our neighborhood, she has a meltdown and says "NO GO HOME!". Yep, that lasts until we're inside and she's distracted with something else!

She FINALLY has a solid routine for bedtime, yes folks, it's taken us 2 years! She goes to bed with saying I love you to everyone, sleep good, and night night. What a sweetie.

She's become such a good big sister, anytime she sees Jax she'll say in a high pitched baby talk voice "Jax so cute", "Jax good boy", "You happy boy?". She let's us know whenever Jax is crying, she'll stop what she's doing and come and tell me, even if I'm holding him.

She has developed a fear of sounds and the dark. She refuses to go into the kitchen if the lights are off. She says, "Scaly monsker ( scary monster).

That's another thing, she substitutes the letter L for R when she's talking, so funny.

She'll toot and say "what's that?"

Some new phrases that make us laugh are:

"Just go away daddy" when she's on the potty, OH YEAH, she's gone pee-pee a few times YAYAYA. But we're not allowed to watch her, she likes her privacy.

"You/I did it!"

"Daddy schoooo-ullll" Every morning when I go to get her, she lets me know where daddy is.

"I miss Ray-Ray"

"I told you ______" Scott was trying to teach her to hold her breath in the bath tub while she goes under water...she kept swallowing and choking on water, and would say "I told you daddy", like "I told you so!!"

"No talk about it mommy" Like, "I don't want to talk about it mommy"

"LISTEN!!"

If she's naughty and I spank her on the bum, she'll say "No hit Avery"

Or if I move her out of the way, she'll say "No push Avery"

There's a ton more that I'll add when I remember. We're just

so lucky that we have her sweet spirit in our home!

LOVE YOU AVE!

Sacrifice

We've learned in the last couple of years that in order to get what we want, we have to work hard and learn to do without. Since starting Law School, we've been racking our brains of things we could do without and ways we could make some moolah in order to be

able to have what we need since we're living off of a very small budget.

Our 2011 is going to be dedicated to: getting out of debt

& getting into better shape physically & spiritually.

So....we decided to do a few things in order to make our goals possible. This may come as a shock, BUT the biggest sacrifice for me personally so far, has been getting rid of cable tv. We came up with a list of things that we could do without to be able to buy a second car

and do a few things to the house & cutting nearly $100!!! (for tv? crazy I know....) out of our budget every month was step number 1. We also decided that even though we don't spend a whole lot eating out, we spend enough that if we didn't spend that money on food and put it towards something else, we could afford other things that we need a whole lot more. Since we've done that, I've noticed a few things. 1: The first few days I was BORED out of my mind, and a little lonely. When both kids are taking naps during the day I HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DO. But, don't worry I found something. 2: Now that we're able to have a second car, I have some more freedom throughout the day to entertain my kiddos & if we run out of something, I can quickly run to the grocery store, I LOVE IT.

To reach our other goal of shaping up, Scott and I have decided that we need to get our family on track with Family Home Evening, family prayer & family scripture reading. We've been slacking HORRIBLY and so we're changing that! We're also working

out every night together after putting Avery to bed...Jax laughs at us as we huff and puff doing jumping

jax and other exercises, but it beats sitting on our bums and watching tv all night!

Another sacrifice that we've thought long and hard about was me getting a part time job. I wasn't too excited about it, but we've made it work so that I only work at night while Scott is home with the kids, and it's pretty minimal hours, so I don't feel like I'm doing too

much or missing out on hanging out with Scott and the babies, PLUS it gives us some extra money to reach our goals and even put some into our savings!

Here's what I've been doing to keep myself busy!

We put bead board up in our dining room, but it still needs caulked and painted, so here's a pic

that shows part of it, I'll post all about our little adventure

with that once it's done!

I saw this really cute tutorial on a blog & decided that it was

easy enough for my non-crafty self to try, I think they

turned out really sweet!!

I got 2 wooden plaques, painted the edges black,

modge-podged a piece of scrapbook paper with the

hand print/foot print & distressed the edges with sandpaper.

Jaxy's little toes at 3 months.

Avery did SO GOOD with black paint on her hand,

I knew she had to try really hard not to

go crazy with it....

I've wanted a chalk board, but didn't want to

spend a lot of time/money on one...so I found

this one at Hobby Lobby for 7.99 (but used a 40% coupon)

and I wanted a different frame, so I bought a piece of scrap book paper and

put it around the original edge.

I LOVE HIM! He is so good at being

excited & happy for me when I'm excited & happy!

Scott loves it, you should too!

I've used it as a grocery list so far,

but I want to start writing our weekly menus

up on it!

I want to try and do something crafty that's

cheap and cute every month, so

if you have any ideas, LET ME KNOW!!

THANKS FOR READING!

We have a new addition!

Meet the newest member of our family!!

Now we can drive in the snow anytime we want!

Snowed in....

We needed to go to an appointment and couldn't open the doors to our car!

Poor little Kia.

Scott had to back it out to where they had started plowing so we could get in.

CRAZY!

I love winter, I like dressing in warm clothes and drinking hot coco.

I think snow is pretty. But I HATE being snowed in. I HATE driving on snowy roads,

especially in a tiny car with my babies.

So, we stay home.

But....we may be getting something to help us out with this

problem pretty soon :)

Until then. I'll hibernate.

ELMO LIVE!

We got tickets to the show in Omaha for Christmas!

(thanks Luke & Britt!!)

Avery had a blast, she couldn't take her eyes off of the stage!

She loved dancing and singing all of her favorite songs.

Anytime someone would exit the stage, she'd ask where they went,

like they weren't coming back, but they did!

She had a blast

&

we had awesome seats!

Hi, my name's Avery and I couldn't take my eyes off the stage

for 1 second!

Nope, not even after the 1oth picture. oh well.

I got to eat $6 popcorn!

Stand up & dance....

And sing & clap to my favorite songs! I knew them all!

And don't forget about Jaxy, he got to enjoy the show too!!

Thanks again!!

Our 2010:

January: We got to play dress up with our little princess!

February: We found out we were having baby #2!

March: We had our family pics taken.

April: Little miss Avery turned 18 months old &

starting going to nursery.

May: My amazing husband graduated from WSU!!

June: Scott & Ave rode a horse for the first time

at Grandma & Grandpa Beus' farm.

July: Scott turned 25!

& we got to get all of the youngest cousins together

to play!

August: We made our big move to Omaha.

September: Avery turned 2!

October: We welcomed our sweet baby Jax into the world

& became a family of 4.

November: We started getting used to having 2 beautiful

babies.

December: We got to fly home to WA & visit family for Christmas.

2010 has been an awesome year. We had so

many changes and challenges, but along with those

came beautiful moments that made everything hard we were going

through worth it.

2011? Well, we're going to take 1 day at a time. Maybe 1 minute at a time.

Life has changed in so many ways,

I think we're still trying to catch our breath.

We are looking forward to seeing what 2011 will bring us!

3 months old!

Wow, since when does 3 months just disappear?

Jax is still the sweetest baby boy I know!

This month was a big one for him.

He got to fly on an airplane & meet all of his family for the first time!

While we were home we learned a few things about Jaxy.

He was a total momma's boy for the first few days,

I knew he loved me, but I got to know exactly how much!

I didn't realize that he has holding positions he prefers, I guess they are natural to me, but

he had everyone learning what he liked pretty quick!

He also started to like laying down, whenever someone would pick him up,

he let us know he wanted to be put back down!

Since we've been home, Jax has started sucking on his hands & wrists

and making the loudest smacking noises, it's so cute!

He notices when I leave a room now, and let's me know he's

waiting impatiently for me!

He has the stiffest legs ever! He stands up and his little head starts bobbling. Or when he's laying down he stretches them out so straight.

He's started drooling like crazy, especially when he's falling asleep.

He farts like an adult, I've had to convince people that it WASN'T me, it's totally him!

He grunts all of the time.

Jaxy, you've turned into a flirty little boy! When he's really excited, he smiles and

looks away and kicks his little legs like crazy!

Jax adores Avery. He stares at her like she is the most amazing thing

he's ever seen! Every time he sees her he smiles, it's so sweet!

WE LOVE YOU!

Aunty Ray-Ray

LOVES to play!

SISTERLY LOOOOOOOVE

Some cute......

Some not so cute.......

LOVE YOU RACHEY BABY!

SANTA BABY!