2011 in Pictures

I'm a bit late with this post, as we are well into January! Better late than never, I guess. I've seen several people utilize this format to do an overview of the year in the life of their family. Most recently I was inspired by my friend, Melanie's recap and decided I needed to jump on the bandwagon. Heaven knows I am so.very.behind in documenting our families adventures that this will help me give ya'll a little something to hold you over until I wade out of my apparent blogging fog.

January 2011

I took a couple of sewing classes that my mom gave me as a Christmas gift. I began learning to sew using her machine, which she also gifted me. I made this apron for my little chefs. I cut out two, but alas only one was/is complete! What a cute little model I have though!

Our school district closed schools for a "snow" day that turned out to include no actual snow and was quite sunny instead. Angel's teacher had assigned homework to make a snowman and so we did, out of paper. We enjoyed making paper snowflakes as well! 

We continued to enjoy Daddy working from home and the blessings of the job God gave him in September 2010 making that possible.

February 2011:

Jeff and I attended a couple's retreat with our Life Bible Study class and enjoyed this opportunity to celebrate Valentines' Day, just the two of us. 

Meme stayed with the boys at home and they had a great time too!

March 2011

We went to the Rodeo, aka "Radio."

And crossed the state borders of Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado for a Spring Break trip for the record books! 1,025 pictures taken, countless miles driven (all by Daddy), and so many firsts to share with our precious boys-all wrapped up in one fabulous trip!

We celebrated Jeff's birthday with a weekend trip to visit friends, but our camera was on the blitz so the few pictures we have are blurry.

April 2011

We kicked off April with some family fun at Opening Day at the ballpark. 

 And also had fun this month at the elementary school's Funky Friday event!

 But of course the most meaningful memories are of Easter and celebrating our Risen Savior! We even used our new dining table and china for the first time for Easter lunch at our house with Gran and Poppa D.

We spent a fun day on the farm with our church's adoption ministry and our boys got dirtier than I have ever seen them. But they were also happy as could be...I guess it's a boy thing!

Also this month, Jonathan and I tagged along on Angel's field trip and Jeff and I attended Aid Sudan's gala.

May 2011

I celebrated my second Mother's Day and was truly blessed by the sweet handmade cuteness my boys' delivered.

 Jonathan graduated from Pre-K!

Angel completed 1st grade and his first research project on penguins. We all went to see all the hard work he had done at Open House.

We went to the zoo with some dear friends and fed the giraffes for the first time! What a way to kick off summer!

Our sweet nephew/cousin Owen was born this month and we also met Bebo Norman (my favorite singer) in person!

June 2011

School officially got out for the summer on June 2 and we began enjoying some fun in the sun and summer play dates. As if Pre-K graduation and kindergarten registration wasn't enough evidence our youngest son was growing up too fast, he lost his first tooth! And his second one followed the next month!

 We celebrated Daddy's 2nd Father's Day with some homemade goodies to display in his home office!

The boys also attended VBS at our church and LOVED the Big Apple Adventure theme.

July 2011

We celebrated Independence Day with a HOT Houston day of family fun and fireworks!

We did Houston Project with our church for the first time as a family of 4! The boys also attended VBS at another church and Angel went forward to show an interest in accepting Jesus as his Lord and Savior. We began discussing his decision at home and prayed with him on August 10, 2011. We are so proud of his decision to follow Jesus! He is already talking about becoming a missionary when he grows up!

 We went to Sea World in San Antonio as a family to celebrate Angel's 8th Birthday!

Daddy even made a special cake for him!

August 2011

We soaked up the last days of summer vacation before the boys went back to school. For the first time they were at the same school and big brother showed his lil' bro the ropes!

I also started working part time as a home study worker this month.  

September 2011

As school got under way we met up with the boys' previous foster mom, Mo, for dinner. She is one of our favorite people and we can't thank her, J, and B enough for caring for and loving our boys.

We went to Dallas to celebrate a big day for the Carpenters! Cousin Clayton was baptized and baby Owen was dedicated.

October 2011

"Fall" arrived and it still felt like summer. Pumpkin patch pictures are just as cute in shorts though. You gotta love the crazy Houston weather. We had a great day at Dewberry Farms the first weekend in October.

Then we celebrated Jonathan's 6 birthday with a trip to the Aquarium

and another special cake made by Daddy.

Angel was Star of the Week in his second grade class and I got to see him present his All About Me poster. It was neat that it fell on the same day as Jonathan's birthday. He got to feel special too.

Meme and Papa gave us tickets to TGR Exotics and we had another day of fall fun!

Angel joined Cub Scouts and is loving having his Daddy as his Den Leader. I am the proud wife of an Eagle Scout, so I'm excited for them to share this special time together!

We had Darth Vader and a Transformer (Bumble Bee) grace us with their presence at our church's fall festival and again at Trunk or Treat at the school. I will not waste my valuable blog space on this soap box, but as the boys get older, I am finding fewer options for appropriate costumes. I may have to start getting creative and make them next year!

November 2011

We kicked off the holiday season in full swing. The rest of the year was a blur of activity. The boys finished up a season of soccer. 

We all went camping with the Boys' Scouts. I utilized some skills I learned at a recent photography class to practice using the manual mode on my camera. I even captured this sweet picture of my two favorite scouts.

I cannot take any credit for this next picture though. It was taken by Brittany Avenue Photography at our Christmas card family photo shoot. If you are on Facebook, we'd love you to vote for their picture for the photographer's Favorite Photo of 2011 contest. 

We celebrated the anniversary of the boys' adoption with a get together at our house.  All the kids enjoyed drawing pictures of the things they are thankful for. It made a very sweet banner.

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house after doing a family walk called the Turkey Dash.

That evening we spent some time with our dear friends, The Mendozas, and their extended family. They already had their Christmas tree up and we got this great family photo next to it.

The next day we had another Thanksgiving with Gran and Poppa D at their house.

We decorated our Christmas tree.

I enjoyed helping decorate a table for our church's women's ministry's annual Dine By Design event with friends from our Life Bible Study class.

December 2011

On December 10, I started my 30th year of life 90 pounds lighter and feeling so much healthier and energetic. Our family also went on a overnight trip to stay on the USS Lexington with the Cub Scouts. It was a lot of fun and I slept on the top bunk of three. That was quite an experience and would not have been possible 90 pounds ago.

The boys loved the church's tour of Bethlehem during the Candy Cane Lane event.

We all enjoyed returning to Santa's Wonderland to see all the pretty lights.

The boys visited Santa at "his house" (The Bass Pro Shop).

We joined up with the three Carpenter boys for a very rowdy pre-Christmas celebration at Gran and Poppa D's house.

Our family enjoyed the Christmas Eve candlelight service at church.

We baked cookies for Santa

and wore new Christmas pajamas.

We had a simple Christmas at home and then the next day started a week long trip I affectionately call the Tour de Tejas. We started out with a fun day of celebrating Christmas with the Albus side of the family. Riding Meme and Papa's gift to the grandkids, a four wheeler, was definitely a highlight! This momma and daddy were scared of our boys' need for speed though!

We went from there to Dallas. We visited the Carpenter clan, some friends, and went to Six Flags.  We then traveled to San Antonio where we enjoyed going to Fiesta Texas. We had a yummy breakfast at the Guenther House and then went to Sea World for the day and watched fireworks on New Year's Eve.

We headed home New Year's day ready to start a whole new year of adventures in 2012.

Merry Christmas, from our family to yours!

"Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.”

Luke 2:11

This Just Pinned

I'm excited to do my first "new format" post! I am not what you would call a trendy girl, in fact I'm quite the opposite. However, there are two trends I have gotten into lately, Facebook and Pinterest. Both are time suckers, so I have to be intentional about how I use them. Pinterest has been really convenient in helping me keep track of interesting things for later use. I use it mostly for tagging recipes, craft tutorials, and activities to do with the boys. I have tried not to get overwhelmed by all the ideas and take them one at a time. It is easy to get overwhelmed and even feel insecure about my abilities as a wife and mother when I see the things others are doing. I know that sounds pathetic, but I'm just keeping it real!

Anyway, I have two ideas, or "pins" to share with you. One is a recipe and one is a craft/decor item. I made this recipe tonight and it was not only a crowd pleaser, but I also snuck veggies in! 2 points for me! I love Broccoli Cheese soup and it just seemed like such a great pre-Thanksgiving meal. I only wish the weather would cooperate and get cooler! We had a party over the weekend and I had left over crudités I wanted to use. This recipe called for broccoli and carrots. I had to google what julienne carrots are. I'm clearly no pro in the kitchen! If I can do this, so can you! It might be easier to use "match stick" carrots if you don't already have baby carrots on hand you need to use. It would save you the chopping, which is always my least favorite part of cooking. I made another minor adjustment to the recipe as it called to puree the soup in its entirety. That much soup wouldn't fit in my blender, so I pureed about half of it and left the rest. I like the actual veggies peeking through too. Anyway, I highly recommend this recipe and my kiddos and hubby gave it 6 thumbs up as well!

Onto the crafts...I am way into crafting. I like to think I get it from my mom, but I am nowhere near as good at it as her. But, I do love doing it and use it as a stress reliever! I have a ton of crafting ideas "pinned" on Pinterest and who knows if I will even get close to making them all. However, I have found sometimes I find 2 or 3 similar "pins" that I end up combining for my own take. In honor of Thanksgiving, I present you with, The Thankful Tree! This was such a fun project and so simple too! I combined it with this idea (another pin) of putting mini pumpkins in a vase with sticks. 

I actually loved the idea so much I shared it with my Sunday School class' women's coordinator, Melanie. We decided to do a women's event and all make the trees for our families to add things they are thankful for. It was a lot of fun and it was so neat to see how each of us took the same materials and made totally unique trees. I cut out the tags on my Cricut so it was super simple. A couple of the ladies found the sticks and I bought the vases for $3 at Garden Ridge. It was a super cheap and very meaningful project with a beautiful end result! Here is a picture of all the ladies with their "trees." Beautiful ladies, with beautiful hearts, and thankfulness overflowing from them! My sweet friend Jackie made the tags tied around the vases. The verse she selected was so appropriate and profound! 

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. Hebrews 13:15 Happy Thanksgiving to you! Enjoy your family and the richness of God's blessings on your life! I know I will! Oh, and happy pining!

A new format and a fresh perspective

Yes, we are still here. I have no good reason for my major blogging hiatus. Other than perhaps I had gotten a bit overwhelmed with trying to keep up with updates and maybe dare I say bored with blogging. I love my family and updating you on all of the fun things we do. But, I think I will give up the idea that every single thing has to be documented on the blog. (Though I do plan to finish and post all the pictures/updates that have been sitting here for 5 months waiting to be published.)

Instead, I've decided to give a broader view of what's going on with our family. No worries, there will still be plenty of adorable pictures of our boys! But, I also want to share more about me and my interests. It may sound selfish, but I think I need a little outlet for talking about the things (other than my family) that I enjoy. I have recently taken sewing and photography classes and continue to enjoy crafting, so I'd like to share what I'm creating. I have also been trying to become a better cook and experimenting with recipes, usually found on Pinterest. If you haven't joined Pinterest, I highly recommend it! So, I think I will join the "This Just Pinned" and "Embrace the Camera" trends to spice things up a bit. I just think it will help me remain engaged in blogging because it will be more enjoyable. Hey, I'm turning 30 next month, so I am entitled to change my mind, but I hope to be more consistent with this new format. Why wait for the New Year to make a resolution, right?!
And because you made it to the end of this non-picture post, a little surprise!

My cuties at "Blueberry Farm," AKA Dewberry Farm

Finally updating

Please forgive me friends and family if in fact you're still checking for an update after my blogging hiatus!  As a gift for your patience I have 5 posts from our Spring Break trip to Keystone, Colorado.  Tons of pictures and a bit of commentary await you!  Just remember to start reading a few posts back and read towards this post.  I hope that makes sense!  Enjoy!

Colorado, the Finale

Our last day in Keystone, Colorado was such a fun finale!  After the snow the night before we knew we had to make another snowman attempt!  This is more like it!

Daddy won major points with the boys when he put his sun glasses on the man of snow!

Of course more snowball warfare occurred between these 3!

After some fun in the snow and a nap we were off to another highlight of our trip, the fondue dinner on top of the mountain!

Jeff explained it to the boys as dinner you cook yourself and they really got into it!

Our family LOVES cheese!

The Bavarian atmosphere was complete with live music!

This induced impromptu dancing between our boys and some random lady sitting behind us!

However, dancing promptly ended when the chocolate began to flow!

Our family during dessert...

and warming up fireside!

The next morning we started the 2 day journey home.  Jeff was really excited to get a picture with Pike's Peak and show it to the boys!

We were all excited to see Texas again

but even more excited to share a little time with the Carpenter clan as we drove through Dallas!  We got to wish Clayton a happy birthday and spend a couple of hours with them before heading home!