Sydney's Birthday-10/3

We celebrated Sydney's birthday with just our family on her actual birthday. Sydney picked out a strawberry cake mix and blue vanilla frosting. Interesting combo!

Sydney and Jonas helping decorate:

of course you got to sample the goods sometimes:

Five candles, one to grow on!

Sydney making a wish and getting ready to blow!

Some of the presents from Mom and Dad. She got the rest at her birthday party. She got a Read-Along book and cd of "Tangled Ever After" and then some fun Disney Princess wall decals to decorate her bedroom!

She says I am four!

A couple days later, we got Aunt Nicole on the phone and Sydney opened the present from her of this fairy which she absolutely adored!

Rockband- 10/1

Here are some fun photos I got of the kids playing Rock Band with Aunt Tessa. (the instruments were disconnected but the kids didn't notice....)

Thought my rocker babies were pretty cute:

Sydney asleep on the potty

Just one cute, random photo. showing how goofy Sydney is. I am so grateful that she doesn't wet the bed. This one night though, it was a little tough to get up and go to the bathroom:

Rest of September's Adventures

So kind of out of order from the last post, as it came before those pictures at the park but it took a little while to get our family portraits back. We were so excited about these pictures! The photographer really did a great job and the kids were pretty good for a couple of shots. We plan on using these pictures for Christmas cards this year. I had lots of fun planning everyone's outfits and shopping for the kids! And they loved getting new special outfits that they didn't get to wear until the day of the shooting!

When we got to the photo shoot location, we had to wait a bit for the photographer to finish with the family he was working on and Sydney said, "I'm ready to do some picturing!" Thought that was pretty cute! Here are some of my faves:

Park Play, Sister visiting

At the end of September, my little sister Tessa flew in for a visit! She's graduated high school early and is staying for about a month and a half. Sydney is loving it and playing with Aunt Tessa any chance she gets. She gets really upset if Tessa goes somewhere and she can't.

We try to get out of the house a few times a week and go do something fun. One day we went to the Water park in Bossier, one of the last days the water was running!

I got some goofy pictures of Sydney in some of the equipment:

Jonas on the potty

So...Jonas has gone a few times on the potty so he definitely has interest in it. He especially loves this Potty book we have and is starting to say his favorite parts! Like "What's that?" "Hooray!" It's really cute! He will sit there for about 10 minutes but his timing is just off. When I ask him if he wants to sit on the potty, he usually says no, unless it's right after I changed his diaper, yeah not good timing for anything to really happen. But one time this past week, he said he needed to go potty while he was in the bath tub and he got out and he did go! So maybe he's ready! We'll just take it slow.

There's the potty he loves so much...

He's also doing great with naming his body parts: ear, nose, eye and teeth and he knows where his tongue, elbow,  toes, and other parts are.

And then of course, a favorite pastime of his.

Sydney's Fun new toys

Sydney got invited to a princess birthday party and since Sydney really wants to be a princess this year for Halloween, we went ahead and bought her a Rapunzel play dress. Needless to say, she loves it :)

Jonas even thought he would try on the braid. (September 8th)

Something we have been working on with Sydney is for her to be able to write her name. She started learning how to spell it out loud a couple months ago. The Y was proving a little tricky for her. To encourage her we told her she could get a Toy Story Jessie Doll if she could write it well on her own once. And here she is! One fine day, she did it! (September 11th)

We are so proud of her!!!

Beginning of September

Oh man, so far behind...going to take this one post at a time.

In early September, my sister Nicole decided to head back to Nevada with her two boys, Brendon and Ross. We had a bunch of fun with them here and Sydney didn't cry until I told her they wouldn't be here for her birthday party. That made her really sad! Before Nicole left though, we decided to have a party for Ross since we would miss his birthday later that month.

So funny, Ross was protective of his cake and when a fly was buzzing around it and he was shouting at it, "get away from my cake!"

Then when it came time to lick the candle, Ross was a little eager for cake so he took a bite out of the candle!

 Cousins!!

Then the next day, we said goodbye to Nicole and also went to Grandma's house as her dog, Zahmese, was getting worse and looking like he didn't have much longer to live. Grandma put him down a week later.

We miss you Nicole, Brendon and Ross!

And a sweet farewell to Zahmese, too. He was suffering and we didn't want that any longer. He was 17 and I have a lot of memories of him, he has been by my grandma's side a long time but seeing her at peace with the decision to put him to sleep set me at rest that it was the right thing.

Posting more later, it will take some time. Lots more photos are already up on my FB page including all of my faves from our recent family photo shoot.

HD wiped but getting back on my feet

Sigh, so at the end of August, I accidentally wiped my HD and then re-installed the Operating System which made it a ton worse. I took it to Geek Squad and thought it would only be a couple weeks. Turns out it will be 8-10 weeks, and this is already after waiting 3 weeks+. I am now having them return it to me so I can send it to a company that will be able to get it done in 2 weeks, or at least quickly tell me there's no use. I was pretty devastated at first. I felt like kicking myself. Just a week before, I had felt the strong urge to back up my files. I pulled out our External HardDrive to find it was broken. Knocked on the floor too many times this summer by the kids. So Brian and I started discussing online backup options. But did nothing. First, BIG foolish mistake.

My computer had all of our photos from when we were dating up to this year. 8 years of photos and memories. I tried to comfort myself that lots of the important photos, wedding, new babies, birthday parties and such, other family members will have copies of and I have uploaded lots of the photos to photo product sites like Snapfish and Shutterfly over the years. But it's also the anguish of all the hours I would spend organizing and naming folders to keep the files easy to handle and sort through. And of course, all the files that might not be anywhere else.

Another huge thing about the wipe, I lost over $1000 worth of commercial-use products I had bought for my digital scrapbooking business. I have been able to contact a lot of stores and they have been graciously letting me download whatever products are still in their store for free or for a small processing fee. I am so grateful. I also have a friend sharing with me the files she knew we both had. It has been a huge blessing because I really needed to keep my business going through this because I could not do my math tutoring. I was borrowing Brian's laptop during the day, trying to design as much as possible and then he needs it at night for his college work. For a little while I pulled out our old computer but it's space and processing speed just couldn't keep up with my design needs. So we finally purchased a new hard drive for me to use in my computer for the time being.

It may turn out that nothing can be saved and I have come to accept that I think. This has been a huge lesson for me in preparedness. I have bought a subscription to online backup and have decided to get a different anti-virus protection and guard better this tool that is more than just an entertainment device in our home but the means of providing our family with the additional income we need so I can stay home. If you count it, I actually have 3 jobs (in addition to being a full-time mommy :) ): I babysit a friend's child, I tutor math online and I do digital scrapbooking design. Wow. Whatever it takes so I can stay home with my kids. I am happy to be able to be the one there when they have questions, when they fall and hurt themselves, and just so I can have the energy for them. I was so stressed when I was the one working full-time, I hated it and with my 3 jobs, even though it sounds crazy busy, I tutor at night after they are asleep and I can stop any time with my designing to attend to their needs and wants. I am grateful for this blessing and hope to be more mindful and aware of issues that could arise in the future. Thank you, thank you, dear husband for so graciously sharing his laptop during this tough time!