30 Days of Thanks...

Welcome to November... a month full of blessings. First off, we have Thanksgiving. We also have so many awareness causes like March of Dimes and National Prematurity Awareness Month, MOvember (Male Health Awareness), Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month and I am sure there are so many more, but those are what we are personally a part of...

I really enjoyed posting 30 days of Thankfulness last year, and I plan on doing it again this year... since I am a few days behind on several other posts, I will more than likely combine a weeks worth and post at the end of each week...  but to get started, I will post the first three days now...

I am always very thankful for my life and all the things I try not to take for granted, however writing them down really drives it home...

I hope everyone has a wonderful November and can take part in this "challenge" too!

Xoxo
Shylah

Day 3: Thankful for Dean allowing me the last few hours to upload photo's and get caught up on computer stuff. It may seem silly, but I am so behind with my "family" things and doing the things that keep me close to others so far away, that it feels good to even get one overdue thing done! :)

Day 2: Thankful for silly reminders that my children are in fact mine, and that reading the Bernstein Bears (after racing to the library for a specific "lesson") books to them, just as my mom had read to me, brings back such great memories of my mom's loving ways to help me learn a lesson. Tonight, "The Gimmies" and "Those in Need" :) I've been cracking up all week reading my past but enjoying each one even more as the parent!

Day 1: Thankful for the reminder in MOPS tonight about how truly important it is to have the special friends in our lives that are introduced to us and become our safety nets, especially when it comes to being a mom! Annette, Dava, April, Carolyn, Mama Ward (not on FB but also my Mommy, Aunt Terry)... You are just a few I could not live w/out! Thank you for always being there for me when I need you and always offering me laughter, help, advice, vent sessions, tissues, etc. I love you and near or far thankful for you all!!

Pumpkin Patch and Halloween...

Happy (belated) Halloween!!

 

This year's Halloween was very tiring but so much fun. I guess the older your children get and the more involved they get to be, the more you enjoy the fun as a parent.

 

I really miss the days of dressing up and having fun myself, but I would never trade it for the fun I am having with my boys!!! We did miss our friends annual Halloween party this year, and Dean and I were both a little bummed especially since it was a 90's themed party... We could have definitely pulled off Zach Morris and Kelly Kapowski! :)

 

Anyways back to what we actually did...

 

With Jax and Liam both being in school this fall, we had a busy week of dressing up, Halloween parties and running around doing our last minute holiday shopping. At least that made for a  light load in actual laundry!! Jax picked our theme again this year, and I guess he based it on popularity as EVERY. OTHER. KID. ON. THE. BLOCK was dressed the same... we were SUPERHERO'S!!! Jaxon was Spiderman, Liam was Superman and Dean and I took the easy route and just wore superhero t-shirts... (Hey better than nothing and still part of the theme).

 For a week before Halloween, I asked Jax if he wanted to do pumpkins this year. His response each time was that he didn't want to get his hands yucky and that he didn't want to carve or paint pumpkins, and that went for Liam too.

So on Monday around 7 pm he decided that he finally wanted to have a pumpkin... Well that lead to Dean looking for pumpkins on his way home from work, and the boys and I frantically going to each and every store in Albert Lea area only to find that there were no pumpkins sold there or left to purchase. The biggest we found were the micro mini desktop pumpkins and each time we found one, Jax would explain they were much too small to carve and that wouldn't work. There were pumpkin patches in town, but only opened on the weekends with the Saturday before being the last day... Thankfully I found a pumpkin patch about 25 miles from us on Tuesday, and after lunch we ventured out there... It was so much fun. We were missing Dean, but glad that the boys had as much fun as they did, especially with the majority of the pumpkins being picked over already. We stayed there for about 4 hours longer than I anticipated, but I got some great pictures of the boys!!!

So Halloween Eve, we had a very late night carving pumpkins trying to get the boys' done before they actually went to sleep... Just like the last 2 years, the pumpkins also have themes and this year matched the boys costumes!

 

Halloween Day was a full schedule for sure! Liam and I had our class while Jax had his sibling class... then after that we decided to go to a classmates house and have a double play date for the boys... then raced home for naps... and afterwards headed over to yet another classmates house for dinner and trick-or-treating together! Dean luckily got off early enough to have dinner and join us, which we needed all the help we could with 4 kiddies in the dark!!! It was a lot of fun though, and not as cold as we thought it would be, although definitely not our TN trick-or-treating weather... Jax and Liam both had their pumpkins completely filled and then some... Needless to say the last month of me exercising is pretty much pointless now... This candy is going to be here till next year if I don't help them eat some of it right!?!?

All in all, it was another successful year of fun with my boys!!! I can't even imagine next year with Liam actually having an opinion! :)

I've posted two new albums to the right that have the Pumpkin Patch photos as well as all the Halloween Night photos. Please check them out!!

Hope everyone had a fun Halloween as well!

Love,
Shylah

Slacking...

Holy Cow! I was certain I had posted at least one thing after my last... nope. I have several post's that need to be published, but am still working on the edits/photo's etc... I will be uploading a few in the next hour/day before the ones that were started will be posted... therefore, don't think you are missing something if you remember reading a post with an earlier date than the last post you just read!

And with that... Eeek! I've got work to do!!!

And yes I'm aware something has gone completely weird with my blog template/design... still working on that, but it takes HOURS and I'm already so behind!

Xoxo
Shylah

Just another Friday...

 

Dean's view when he pulled onto the job site this morning... :)

Disney World 2012...

Oh my goodness!! I am seriously so behind on this post!

So the second week in October of each year has been dubbed "Ward Disney Vacation" week... This year was no exception and omgosh, so much funnier with two kiddo's to enjoy it with, but especially one that knows what everything is this time around!!!

We had a monthly countdown going for Jax, and by the time we were headed to the airport, he had figured just how many more sleeps and naps he needed before he got to see Mickey!!! It was so cute. We also had Liam pretty excited, but I don't think he really knew what to be excited about. This was Liam's first time to Disney World (after birth), so it was really fun to introduce him to the madness.

For the most part, we planned a pretty relaxing week with the family. The parks are really expensive and this year Jax was an actual ticket holder... so we planned ahead of time what day we would do what park, how many and that was it. We got a little surprise from Nana and Pops, but more on that later. The resort we stay at is super duper fancy, and has any and everything you could think of on the property, and even more so perfect for the little ones. They have putt-putt golf, water parks, a splash zone, playgrounds, daily children's activities, there's even a few bars in between each area lol... Anyways, we figured we would get the most bang for our buck staying at the condo and enjoying the amenities there... the boys both LOVED our "stay here days"... Swimming pools, lazy rivers, a boardwalk... it was perfect.

On our first full day, Harrell told Dean about the new theme at the Disney's Art of Animation Resort. So Dean kind of held out wanting to surprise me on this too, but told me a bit about it so I could prepare Jax after nap. I had NO IDEA IT WAS GONNA BE SO AWESOME! Once again, who had more fun, I'm not sure. This was easily the highlight of my trip. Jax and even Liam were in Disney Cars Heaven! I'm so glad we got to visit this resort, as I had planned on another Disney trip to CA for Jaxon's birthday, and that's just not gonna happen this year... by far the coolest experience (well on the heels of Sesame St. Live when Jax was 2). Please be sure to check out the photos on the right for this part!

Jax ran to each car exclaiming... "It's Lightning... It's Mater!!!! Mommmmeeee it's Guido and Luigi..." Lol. He was SO happy!!!

 

After a day of rest and getting adjusted to the heat again, we planned our park schedule. One of the parks we planned on going to was Epcot and specifically, for the "Food and Wine Festival". This is really why the Wards go to Disney in October now, and now I know why... The past trip we made in 2010, everyone but me went to this festival, as I couldn't really justify spending a fortune to try a whole bunch of foreign foods especially being pregnant. Anyways, Dean talked me into it this year by pointing out how many child friendly things they had that he had forgot about, so I decided while he and the rest of the family pigged out, that Jax, Liam and I would go off and have our own fun.

 

Let me rewind a few days... so the night before we flew out to FL, I decided to give myself an at home pedicure since I would be in pools and flip flops. So I am almost done and decided to use one of those potato peeler/callous remover thingy's. Everything was going fine when I put my foot up on the chair I was sitting on and at the last second (literally I was just going to stop) my left foot slipped with the shaver/razor blade in the center/arch/sole of my foot... Yeah... Dean was actually at the store, so after I got up and didn't fall over and pass out, I texted him to get some band aids/peroxide yada yada... well super long story short (and yes I learned my lesson), I had about a 1 1/2" gash about 3/4" deep in the bottom of my foot. I actually probably could have used a stitch or two. I also learned in FL that "scalping the sole" was a common torture technique used in WWII... Okay back to the story...

So here we are in Epcot, and the smell of all these different country's foods were driving my senses nuts. I didn't want to participate in this... I don't try foods... I am BORING. You know what my favorite thing was? Some fish dish from Singapore... yeah go figure that one out... Well we decided to all take part of this, and bring the boys along doing all the fun things with them along the way. They actually did great and had a lot of fun. There were several rides that Jax really enjoyed as did Liam. During this whole day, I think I tried foods from at least 15 countries, and liked most of what I tried. Everyone else was a little more daring than I was, but I thought I did pretty good for someone who would most certainly die outside of the USA.

So that was our first park day.

Our second day was allotted for Universal Studio's so that Dean and I could do all the roller coasters I didn't ride the year before... well that all changed because not only was I Mrs. Gimpy Gimp (only you would gash your foot the day before walking everywhere)... so I wanted a day to rest... but also we were the four sick Wards who got to spend seven days with the rest of the family, sharing our festering germs. You guessed it... sick, sick and sick. Nana wasn't feeling good, Dean was still up all night coughing, and the boys and I weren't sleeping well because of all the congestion/drainage we had... so we took another day to hang out at the condo.

Two days later and a night shopping at Downtown Disney, we kinda passed on the idea and pushed it off one more day meaning that we would be taking ourselves and two boys to Universal on the busiest day of the week... Well because we loved up on Nana enough, she got too sick to attend "Mickey's Not So Spooky Halloween Party". And because she had already purchased tickets, and they were going to treat Jaxon to this, I got to go in her place. So Harrell, Aunt Sara, Jax and I got dressed up to go trick-or-treating at the Magic Kingdom... COOL! First off, we will NEVER pay to go during the day if we come in Oct. again. The tickets are almost half priced, you get the same amount of time (4pm-12pm), yeah it's a little hard on the kids, but you are one of 25k that gets a portion of 9 TONS OF CANDY!!! This is what they go through each night they do this. (Not every night of course, but still!). Anyways, so we had a ball! Jax even got to dance in the pre-party parade as well as do the Congo line with Goofy! Most importantly, we got a photo that not everyone can say they have. I learned that during Halloween Nights is the ONLY time that all seven of the seven dwarfs are together and photographed together!!! Of course we cut it just a littttle too close... Since Nana was sick, that's all she asked for... one photo! We were the last people in line, and in the standby line, but we got it (as did about 3 more people behind us lol). 

So because I got to do the Magic Kingdom and my ride fix with Jax, and we were out so late the night before, we decided to forgo the adult kid fun at Universal all together and enjoyed our last day as a family just hanging out...

 

The entire trip was a lot of fun, well minus the fact we were missing Rachel and Scott and that I was in so much pain from my foot which I also ended up favoring my left foot and was walking on the side of my foot which only caused another area to be sore... the chlorine in the pool was actually the best thing for that, only I was too afraid to have it burn, so I didn't learn this until day 4... By the time we had to fly back out, I was at least able to somewhat walk!

I look forward to this vacation with the other side of my family each year, and although we were missing some of the crew, we had a really good time and definitely got our Disney fix. Next time it will be even more fun since Liam will be old enough to enjoy more of the park rides!! I love being a part of the Disney Family and sharing so many special memories with my own Ward Family!!!

 

Let the countdown begin till next year...

 

Xoxo

Shylah