Beautiful Day

If you follow the weather in ND, you would know these are from a while back.  They are from the last warm day we had here in ND.  Now it is bitterly cold, most days 10 degrees BELOW zero, and the ground is covered in snow and ice.  

Not sure....I asked nate to pose, and this is what he did.

Playing

Sweet Sam 

Taking off his aids

Sam, someone's behind you....

Getting a brother picture is so hard when you're 3 and 10 months old

sweet boy

Well life has been good here, busy as always, but good.  Nate has his last day of school today before the 2 week break.  I work the holiday, and then we are hoping to head to SD to spend some time with family.  James is ecstatic to see cousins again.  

We will be in SD for Sam's birthday.  I can't believe he turns ONE.  It is unreal to me that my little baby is growing up so fast.  

I found out this week that I will being school to become a  Certified Nurse Midwife this spring.  I am so very excited.  I can't wait to begin!

Well hopefully I can update again soon.  Life just hasn't seemed to slow down, and I'm not sure that it will :)

12 Months of Love

So, in case you hadn't realized it, Sam turns 1 in a few short weeks!  I can't believe my baby is getting so big.  It seems like yesterday we were bringing him home on that cold December afternoon (making sure we made it home in time for the vikings game of course).  Here are 12 of my favorite pictures from the last year.  I love you Samuel Steven.

Christmas Eve 2012, 5 days before you arrived

My beautiful baby boy, 6 days new.  You posed beautiful for these photos done by Megan Morgan. 

1 month old, and already quite the temper 

2 month old sweetie

3 months old and quite the charmer

4 month old beautiful baby boy

5 months old playing at the park with your bro

6 month old flirt

7 month old silly goose

8 month old future viking :)

9 month old stinker
this is how most of your pictures would look if I took them daily, with you aids in you mouth

10 month old love bug

11 month old brave boy

This brings us to now.  2 weeks before your first birthday.  Stop growing baby boy.  I need you to stay my baby just a bit longer.

Same Age

Samuel Steven
10 Months

James Peter
10 Months

so very busy

wrestling with add

"come here Sam, mom wants a picture"

Well, as you can probably guess these boys have been keeping me BUSY!  I feel like I wake up and start running and before I know it the day is done, and it's time for bed!  Life has been good, though.  

Sam started to crawl and he now pulls himself up onto things and will walk along furniture.  He eats absolutely everything (except mushrooms, he HATES those)  He still only has 4 teeth, but I sense a few more are ready to come through.  He is determined, feisty, and stubborn, but we still kind like him.  

James is still loving AWANA every week.  He loves his friends and socializing there.  He had a blast trick-or-treating yesterday.  He thought it was so great that everyone was just giving him candy.  We went to a couple of retirement homes and they were handing out boatloads of candy. Hope you enjoy a few pics of our growing boys.  

busy busy busy

Brothers 

My Baby is getting SO BIG

I told James to pretend daddy was tickling him, and I finally got him to smile normally!

Oh, Mr Sam, STOP GROWING!

Trying to sign "more"

On the move

Where Sam's hearing aids are most of the time 

So Life has been crazy busy lately.  Nate is well into his 3rd year of teaching, and it's going well.  He is coaching girls volleyball, and his team is currently undefeated! They are actually a pretty good team.  They boys and I have attended a few games, and I was quite impressed!  Nate has also decided to take some masters level classes at the college.  He's taking a deaf education class right now.  He started the class a few weeks late, so he working on catching up right now. 

I finished my statistics class a few weeks ago, and I'm now getting everything ready to send in my application to Frontier.  I'm so nervous excited.  I'm feel more and more ready to begin this new adventure!  I know that in 2 years when I'm done, it will feel like it just flew by.  

They boys are getting so big!  James has been doing AWANA on Wednesday nights, and he LOVES it.  He cries whenever he sees us at the door to come get him, and begs to stay "just one more minute."  He loves church and the interaction with other kids.  He is officially completely potty trained! PTL!!!  We've had a few accidents, but for the most part, he's been diaper free for a month.  James has also been OBSESSED with motorcycles lately. He can hear one coming from a mile away.  Every time he hears/sees one he says Grandpa Steve is going to take him on a motorcycle ride.  

Sam turned 9 months old last week, and I'm in such denial that he is almost 1!  I really don't know where the time has gone.  He started army crawling last week, and has been scooting around the house like crazy.  He still hasn't figured out how to use his knees, but I think it wont' be too long.  We had his audiology appointment this week, and they tested his hearing without his aids, and he tested very similarly as he did with his ABR that we did a 2 months.  We've been having difficulty keeping his aids in lately, because all he wants to do is eat them. I even made him a super cute hate to help keep them on, but he just rips that off too.  Hopefully we will be out of this phase soon.