The Olsen's: 2012

Xbox Party.

Nate's birthday started Friday night when Ryan and I took him and his cousin Ben out for dinner at Moxie's. Its always fun and special to do things like this with one child at a time, and we really enjoyed our dinner with the two boys. We sure love Ben and were glad he could come and sleep over as well. I really hope the two cousin's will be best friends forever. Nate was especially happy he got to have two glasses of sprite! Saturday he had his birthday with his friends. He invited 3 friends over to play xbox. They had fun playing Kinect adventures and sonic racing. We're grateful that Nate has such good friends. My friend made him some Xbox cupcakes which were rootbeer flavored and delicious! Thanks Megs! Nate loved them and had two eaten before his friends had one eaten. On Sunday, we had mine and Ryan's immediate families over for supper and dessert. Nate wanted ichi ban so I compromised with a white sauce spaghetti. I messed up on the sauce and had to fix it and there ended up not being enough for anyone to have second's. I'm still not good at feeding lots of people and had moment of frustration where I was really wishing my Momma was here to help me, cause of course she would have known exactly what to do. We had skor cake and apple pie for dessert and did a pinuata for the kids. It was so much fun! We are very blessed with two amazing families! Nate got spoiled, especially by his Grandpa Jim and Penny. The boys had been asking for DS's for Christmas and I flat out told them no, not this year. Well, my Dad found one on sale on Kijiji that came with seven games. I don't know who was more surprised, me or Nate! I think he had a really good weekend! I always hope that my kids feel really special on their Birthdays.

Nathan James

This little guy...

Is 7 years old!

I can hardly believe that my baby is that big! He is such a smart boy and is so much fun to have around. We have enjoyed watching him grow and can't wait to see what the future holds for him.

8 Years.

Ryan and I celebrated our 8 year anniversary on November 28th. Last year we went to Florida for our anniversary so this year we had to do something a little more low key. We planned to go out for dinner and have a night with no children. My amazing Mother in-law took the boys and Hayley, and McKenna was supposed to go to my Brother's, but that morning McKenna had a fever and had puked a few times (this was the start of our never ending sickness, which we're still enduring). So we ended up keeping her and my sister watched her while we went out to eat and then we did all our Christmas shopping for the kids. We picked up McKenna and that was that. Seems like a short way to celebrate 8 years of marriage! It was nice to spend some time together though. We haven't had much time since little Hayley joined our family.

I always joked with Ryan about the 7 year itch, but we did it and made it through our 7th year. I think that's quite an accomplishment! After 7 1/2 years of marriage we were finally able to buy our own house. It feels great! We feel like we're real grown ups now. In all seriousness, Ryan is really an easy guy to be married to. He is such a good Father, and he respects me and treats me way better then I deserve sometimes. I feel like we've accomplished quite a bit together and am excited for our future adventure's together!

Love you lots and lots Ry!

Lately.

I am getting pretty behind on my blog, so I need to do some catching up. First off, we put our tree up on Nov 30th. I never like to put the tree up too early. I'm a firm believer that Christmas shouldn't start until December 1st, but it just so happened that this was the only night we could do it, and it seemed close enough. Its not that I'm a Grinch. Christmas is my most favorite time of year, but I also don't like to drag it out. I can only listen to so much Christmas music and wait so long for Christmas day. So I don't like to think about it until I know there are only 25 days to celebrate it. Seems like plenty of time to me! We had fun watching Frosty the Snowman, decorating the tree, eating fudge and drinking eggnog.

Watching a Movie

Beanie watching the excitement

Ty loves this Santa

A few days after that, came this...

Sick kids. Yuck. Ty and Hayley both now have colds. Guess that comes with the season as well.

On a brighter note...the little miss is getting so big. She loves her Bumbo seat, and we even tried the jolly jumper. She loved it, but is still a little small. She kept leaning over too far. She is getting so good with her hands as well.