Mother's Day

As I look where I am at now, I feel so blessed for the family that I have surrounding me. My husband, Treven, is an incredible man and an amazing father. He strives to make our family's life better. He cares so much for our girls and loves every moment he has with them. The girls are such a blessing in my life and I don't know what I would do without them. I was meant to be a mother and I am loving every minute of it. I am not saying that I don't have those days where I want to pull my hair out and just want to have my own time; I do have those days! But that is part of motherhood. I feel like I am giving pieces of myself to my family and I love that I am able to do that.
This Mother's Day, I am able to reflect at my life and realize that I really am blessed with the wonderful family I do have. I also am so thankful for all the wonderful examples that I have had in my life. My own mother, my sister-in-laws, my sister, my aunts, my cousins, my friends, and so many more. I know of so many great mothers and I thank all of you for all the selfless and kind examples you have been to me!
Happy Mother's Day!
I hope that all made sense. I was rambling on with my thoughts

Try something new...

I realized today that I check my blog and friend's blogs everyday and yet, mine hasn't had a new post in a while! I am going to try and set a goal for myself... Blog every weekend. I really want to get going on it. I feel like this could be my journal and would really help me remember times in my life. So here it is...
For Kim: Substituting is turning out to be a not-so-great situation. This time last year I had jobs almost everyday. This year is a different story. I get maybe 2 calls a month. Anyway, so I am looking for something else. I would have anyway since I would not be subbing during the summer. I have applied to a couple of places. I did get a job but it does not start until the end of June so it is on the back burner. I am trying to get something else before then. We will see if something turns up. I am currently a substitute at a daycare which is working out well and it is definitely helping! I am pretty much thankful for anything I can get right now. Other than the whole work situation, I am gearing up for my first half marathon this Saturday. I am doing it with my mom, sister in law, and cousin. It should be a lot of fun. I am pretty nervous and I plan on going pretty slow and just finish. We are all planning on doing another one in October so I feel like it will be easier to train for. This half marathon has been hard to train for with the weather. I have been doing most of it on a treadmill. One another thing for me, I passed my last certification test so now I can receive my 5 year teaching certificate in Washington State!
For Treven: Treven is loving work still. He received a two dollar raise when he received a promotion to Apparel Lead at Dick's (Lead is right under Manager). He finished the semester out at WSU and will be taking the summer off of school. We are working on filling out all the paperwork for him to gain his residency so he can go full time in the fall. He doesn't know really what to do when he gets home from work now and has time since there is no school work. He is planning on getting some exercise back into his schedule since he now has some time and our apartment complex has a gym.
For Melia: I always say both girls are growing so fast and that is because they are. Melia decided to do gymnastics a little bit ago and did it for about a month, but there was only one other kid in the class so she didn't enjoy it much. She said she wanted to do swim lessons with her cousin, Andrew so we switched her. She is loving it and getting more comfortable in the water. She finally stopped being scared of the depth last week. I think the fact that she doesn't have her glasses on in the water does not help! She has about one month left of swim lessons then our pool opens here at the complex so we figure we can work on it with her there instead of paying $50 bucks a month... at least until I do find a job. :) She is loving Sunbeams at church and has a new friend Elyse from her class and begs to play with her all the time. I love how social she is!
For McKenzie: Well McKenzie is nuts! She has a lot of Treven's reflexes and she isn't scared of doing a lot of things. She jumps off of the ottoman onto the couch, off the couch, off the table onto blankets... she is nuts. If she falls down my parents stairs, she will catch her self on the railing like 2 steps down. It is crazy! She has done that three times. She is talking a lot more in sentences and picking up everything. She said her first prayer tonight with help! Some sentences are, "I want (enter item) too!" and "I love you too". But she will go on with more. She calls Melia "girl" since she can't say Melia. She loves to run, jump, and dance. She loves playing with her cousins, Noah and Beck. Those three are trouble all together! I am thinking of getting McKenzie a hair cut because she has such a mullet! We will see! McKenzie really is growing fast. She is wearing a lot of 2T AND 3T clothes. She is getting interested in going potty on the toilet so we will see if she gets interested enough to get potty trained!
Well that is really all from us. We may be going camping over Memorial Day weekend in California (all depends on my work situation) which will be a blast then we have a family reunion at a lake for a week at the end of June that we can't wait for!
That's it for now! Now on to accomplish my goal... I will be back in a week. :)

Melia and her princess trees

Spring must be starting because there are pink trees everywhere and Melia LOVES them. Whenever she sees one when we are driving she yells. "Those are my favorite!" She calls them her princess trees. On Sunday, we realized there are a ton of them outside the church building. Papa took a picture for her!

A relaxing night

WE ARE OUT OF THE OLD APARTMENT! This picture was taken a couple nights before we moved out. Melia really loves playing Rock band even though she obviously isn't really doing it, but she loves it!

I have been having a few of these "relaxing nights" lately. For those of you who haven't heard, Treven received a promotion to the Fitness department. He is going to be trained to be a CFT or Certified Fitness Trainer, which he is really excited about. Treven also will be considered full time so we receive the wonderful full time benefits. It is so funny that we are so excited about having health insurance... Treven and I haven't been insured for about a year so we are dying to have some insurance! He ALSO is getting a raise of 2 dollar an hour! Everything is going so well at work and he is loving the people he works with and the environment there.

Well back to the reason why I am having a few relaxing nights... a guy named Tim, who Treven works with, broke his ankle about 2 weeks ago so they pulled Treven out of the back stock to cover Tim's area in Apparel. Then Treven got the promotion and WAS supposed to start this upcoming Monday with Fitness. Well another person in Apparel got fired last week unfortunately, so Apparel is short people so Treven has to stay another 2 weeks there to cover until Tim comes back from his injury. So Treven's hours now have shifted. He no longer has the abnormal schedule in retail of 7-4 Monday through Friday. He now has the normal retail schedule and is working a lot of nights. It is nice to have him in the mornings with the girls though. Kind of stinks, but Treven is okay with it. We still get the raise and benefits now so it is all good!I am so proud of all the hard work Treven is putting in both at work and school.

The other day Melia wanted to have a picnic so we took their play food out to the deck and had a play picnic. The girls LOVED it. It will have to be a weekly thing :)

We also started learning out letters with Melia. Each week we are going to do a letter and put the letters and things that begin with that letter on our window. Melia loves it and it really is helping her care about learning her letters! And yes, that is right, Andrew is up there. Melia insisted!

It has been a blast to have Anne right around the corner. Andrew and Melia love playing with each other and we went to the Children's Museum last week with Buffy and Noah as well and the kids absolutely loved it! We took Melia and Andrew to go see Treven's dad's snakes (he breeds and sells them) Melia and Andrew loved it and Andrew actually touched all the snakes along with their chameleon, Sam.

It is so funny to listen to Melia and Andrew talk to each other whenever they are together. In the first couple of days they showed us the difference between boys and girls, Andrew had asked Melia to tell him a story so she continued with telling him about the princess who fell asleep and the prince came and gave her TRUE LOVE'S KISS (she made sure we heard that part) and the princess woke up and they lived HAPPILY EVER AFTER. Andrew then asks, "Where is the dragon?". Melia said, "The prince got him." and continued to start the story over included the dragon part. Then Melia yelled out "And they lived happily ever after!" and Andrew goes, "AND THE DRAGON DIED!". It was awesome! Anne and I just looked at each other and laughed.

McKenzie is growing up so fast. She is becoming more social with everybody lately and is really picking up on words. She stills loved her babies and has to have her baby with the bottle when she goes to bed. She is doing great in the bunk bed and really loves it. Her new thing is to say "WAIT!" when I am saying good night and shutting the door. Then she wants a hug and kiss so I do and then leave again... she continues to say it and I say Kenzie, go to sleep. And she just cracks up laughing. She thinks it is so funny. She also loved Papa. She calls him Pops right now and runs to give him a hug whenever she sees him.

I am getting more sub calls lately so it is nice to have Treven have some days off during the week so I can sub without paying for babysitting. I am still organizing the new apartment. I am getting myself ready for the half marathon I am doing in May... we will see how it goes! This last month, my wonderful old room mate from BYU Idaho, Megan, came up to visit. She has never been to Oregon/Washington and she is thinking of looking for a job up here in the fall. She is in grad school at USC for Social Work. There are zero jobs in California so she is looking elsewhere. After her visit, she definitely is looking up here and wants to move here when she finds that job! We are so excited!

Today we went and saw my brother and his wife go skydiving and it was awesome. It was a beautiful day today and it was nice to be outside for most of the day.

Well back to my relaxing night... sorry for the rambling. Enjoy the pictures.

Preview to the new apartment

We are planning on painting some walls in our bedroom, living room, and kitchen/dining area so this is just so we can show those friends far away what the place looks like!

Girls room

Girls bathroom

Our bedroom

Kitchen :) That door leads to the washer/dryer and wonderful pantry!

Dining room

Hallway

Living room

District Defender of the Month!

I am so proud of Treven and his hard work is starting to pay off at work.

A couple of weeks ago he received Defender of the Month for his store. For those of you who don't know, Treven is an apparel processor at DICK's Sporting Goods.

Well today, all the store managers presented their store Defenders of the Month and explained why the certain person received it. Then they all vote on who will be the District Defender of the Month out of the people nominated from each store. Treven received 5 of the 7 votes (his manager could not vote for him) so that is AWESOME! Now he goes on to be nominated for Regional Defender of the Month.

I am so proud of the hard work he is doing and the awesome father and husband that he is! And we are so thankful for the help of my brother, Brent, getting Treven this job. It has been a real blessing in our lives and an answer to our prayers.

We love him!

New Hair cut for Melia!

I decided to chop Melia's hair to get it all the same length! We did it today and here it is!

Before...

After!

Another after shot