Trail Riding..

Trail riding. Taking your horse on an adventure on a beautiful and sunny day. What a beautiful, relaxing and adventurous thing to do. My favorite new "Mommy" alone time thing to do as well. My new horse is great on the trail and she is the perfect horse to hop on bareback, bitless and ride down the river bar, which happens to be a couple blocks away from her pasture. I could get lost all day with her, discovering new trails and taking in the scenery, if I had time. I know what I am going to be doing when my kids grow up! Next weekend, my husband and I decided to get a sitter and take our first trail ride together. Granted, he take our 3 year old mare who may be a bit spooky as she is inexperienced, but thats ok! He needs to bond with her anyway! Haha. Here is a cute pic collage I made after our trail ride.

Kids,Horses and Puppies!

Wow, it has been a long time since I last posted! Let me just say I have been a little... busy? Knox is not only walking now, but he is full on running, climbing and getting into everything he can! That boy is full of life! He is such a joy, but he is still the biggest momma's boy ever, meaning he loves me to carry him everywhere I go, sleep with him even at nap time, literally do everything with him. Now, as much as I would love to do all of this, I have two other kiddo's that need attention too, so needless to say, it can be hectic around here! Boy do I love him though, he is so, so sweet.

 On another note, Lexi just got finished with her 7 week ballet session and will start again in April. She loved it, however, I feel that she has too much energy to only do ballet. As much as I have dreams of a little ballerina, so graceful, my daughter's favorite thing to do in ballet class was jump and run. Maybe gymnastics would be good for her, or soccer? I will have to look into that one.

 Everett is reading amazingly now! He is starting to read chapter books, I am so proud of him. I took him to Target on Friday to choose a bunch of new books and he was ecstatic! Makes me so happy to see my first grader developing and learning so quickly all of a sudden. His little charter school has really done wonders as well!

So my love for horses is just growing and growing apparently because somehow I ended up with three of them total as of three weeks ago! I love them all, and they all have their very own special personalities. My new mare is a grey, flea bitten Arabian. She is a beautiful 7 year old mare who was rescued from a feed lot, destined for slaughter. She is still a little scared but warming up to me and I think we are going to have an amazing friendship! Horses are such beautiful and majestic and STRONG animals. I don't see how I lived with out them for so long.Speaking of animals, we are also getting a puppy in a couple months. A Bluetick Hound, who has not been born yet. SO EXCITED! I haven't told the kiddos yet because I know they will be in puppy heaven when they see her, and I want them to be surprised.

Life is going great! Busy, but that is the way I like it. One more thing... I started selling Arbonne, which is an all natural, botanical, plant based AND clinically proven beauty, skin care, and nutrition line. They also have all natural baby products! I will be writing more about Arbonne later but I will add my website which is http://chakra.myarbonne.com. Check it out!! I LOVE this stuff!

XO

Recipes added! Christmas tree success and more..

  Go check out the new recipes added, I now have two recipes added and they are two of my very favorites! The stuffing was something new I tried but it turned out amazing!!! Thanksgiving was lots of fun! We had lots of food, the kids enjoyed everything as well. One thing I forgot to buy was champagne, can't forget that next time! One thing I always suggest at family get-togethers, is playing games. Taboo is especially fun for the holidays, its actually pretty hilarious...especially with a couple drinks in hand.

 Knox took his first five steps today! We are so close to having a walking bebe!

Knox's First Birthday, Thanksgiving Menu and Horse training!

Knox turned one on November 13th, but we had his birthday yesterday. It was really small, just family, but it was so much fun! We resorted to a pirate theme, mainly because I didn't make myself enough time to order the cowboy party stuff I wanted to use and Target had a really cute pirate theme. The kids had fun playing sword fights (eeek) wearing pirate hats and eye patches. I will post some pictures later. Maybe when he turns two we can do the cowboy theme and even have a pony? I would probably enjoy that more than the kiddos!

 Anyway, I can't believe my little guy is already one! He is still a little guy, I will post measurements and stats soon, which I will be doing for all the kids! I love to keep track and look back at how much they have grown!

 As for Thanksgiving... We are having it at our house this year! I am super excited, I love hosting dinner parties and this is the biggest one of the year! My aunt-in-law? is bringing the turkey, mashed potatoes, and the green bean casserole and I will be making my fantastic cranberry apple and sausage stuffing(which I will post a recipe for later),pumpkin pie, a white chocolate,cranberry cheesecake (which I will also be posting in the recipe section!) and a delicious almond, cranberry, blue cheese and goat cheese spinach salad. I can't wait to get started! I will be starting right away and I will definitely be taking pictures.

 As for a Thanksgiving outfit, this is the first year I do not have an outfit planned! I have not bough the kids their outfits either! Atrocious! Hehe.. Hopefully later I will have time to run to the mall and pick something up.


  Tonight we have our second day of horse training for our new horse Trinity. I have not posted about her yet but she is a beautiful registered Paint horse who is three years old. She was never under saddle when we bought her so it is a lot of work and it is expensive but she is learning so incredibly fast! Her trainer is going to be training her to barrel race and I will possibly be in the barrel race competition in January! I will be posting when I find out more, I can't wait!

 Happy Thanksgiving!

Busy...

Wow. Life has been so busy. It is nice to keep busy of course, but I can't wait for things to slow down a bit. Mainly, a lot of things are happening at once. 8 months ago, I had Knox. About 2 months ago, I decided to go back to college and started that full time, yet online (thank God my local college has many online options! You only have to attend for speech, math and English classes). Next semester, however, I am attending a night math class and the semester after that, I should be attending more in person, because Jarred will be off season at work. Then just a month ago, I started working weekends at a spa I worked at before I received my cosmetology license. I absolutely LOVE my job, I love making people feel beautiful and feel good about themselves. It is very therapeutic for me. There is something about raising someones self esteem that I love to do. Plus, doing makeup and hair is just plain FUN and artistic! I love that I only work weekends, because that way, I can still be a stay at home mom during the week and Daddy can watch the kiddos on the weekend. They love their daddy time!

 The problem I am having, however, is that I am not sure which degree I should go for. I have always wanted to emphasize on social behavior and sociology but there is not much money there... so my other option is business. I found that there are many more jobs and options for someone with a masters in business, then a masters in sociology. So I think I will go for my MBA. I want to do what I love, but taking care of my family and making sure that they are all well taken care of and have many privileges are very important to me.

  In other notes, the kids are doing amazing. Knox is 8 months old, an extreme momma's boy and already has 6 teeth he loves to use on whatever and whoever is nearest to him...including my boobs during breastfeeding.. OUCH ... Alexis is 2 and 1/2 years old and she is the most precious little princess, and has such a little princess attitude. She is so, so smart. Exceptionally smart, and soaks up everything like a sponge. She loves Curious George, playing outside and annoying her older brother.  he he.  Everett is 6 years old, and he is starting first grade in the fall!! Oh my goodness, time has flown. I cannot believe I have a first grader on my hands! He loves anything Mario right now. If he could play his Nintendo DS all day long, he would. I tend to make his little butt go outside and get some fresh air every once in a while though. He is also a little smarty pants. He can read most small words and is doing great in math, adding and subtracting numbers below 10. He loves to pretend he is break dancing, I just might start taking him to classes. He is still pretty shy though.

  One last thing to note is that it is our one year wedding anniversary coming up on Monday! I can't believe its already been one year! Our lives are so insanely busy that it just flew by! It just reminds me to take things day by day and enjoy every moment you can. It goes by so fast.

Two kids in diapers.. Need more fluff!

So now that Knox is here we have been using GMD prefolds and thirsties covers on him but he is a pretty heavy wetter and seems to pee right through them really fast. He can fit in the Bumgenius 4.0s but I don't have enough pocket diapers to last both him and lexi for more than a day. So diaper shopping is needed, maybe that can be the majority of Knox's Christmas presents... Considering he is only 4 weeks and won't care about Christmas at all this year! Everett really wants an xbox 360 with kinect so he can play his cars 2 games and I am excited for it so I can play the dance games... :) fun times. Lexi is getting her own wooden kitchen with stainless steel play cookware and wooden food to pretend cook. She will love it, I can't wait to get all of our Christmas shopping done! I do want to get Knox some wooden teethers and maybe his own amber necklace for later. We shall see. Well Goodnight and I will try to figure out how to post pictures on here from my phone. Ughhh I cannot wait to get an iPad!!!

Knox Harper has made his debut... November 13!

So it's been a while since I have posted, we have been sans laptop for a few months now, due to me spilling milk on it whilst cooking pancakes... Yes I was pissed and yes my husband was pretty upset with me for a while but that's another story. I never could figure out how to use blogger on my iPhone and I guess I finally figured it out. Soon however, we will have an iPad that my husband and I are getting each other for Christmas so I am super excited about that, our old laptop was lame anyway :). On to more exciting news, our newest addition to the family has arrived and he is about 3 and 1/2 weeks now. We are so in love and he is so perfect and it is still so surreal that he is here in my arms already. I delivered him at 37 weeks gestation. I never even knew I was in labor, I woke up at around 1:00am with period like cramps and went to the bathroom to find some bloody show and just had a very strong feeling I needed to at least get checked at the hospital. I drove myself there, and I noticed my cramps turned into very consistent and painful contractions and when I finally got checked, they were shocked to see that I was already dialated to a 7 and a bulging bag if waters! I was scared to death because it was so unexpected and I was not prepared but long story short, Knox Harper came into this world at 2:00pm nov 13 with an apgar score of 10 and a great set of lungs! We had a short hospital stay and arrived home with our newest bundle of joy. The first week was rough with a latch on problem with nursing so I had to pump so he could be able to eat and the second week he learned to latch on perfect and has been doing great since. The first week he went from 7lbs to 6.9lbs and on the second week checkup he was 8.5 so he gained about 2lbs! That was a happy day :). Lexi and Everett love their new baby brother. We are lucky to have such wonderful children, they are so good to each other. Christmas is just around the corner and we still haven't fine shopping due to all the new baby craziness! But soon we will get too. Well, as sleep deprived as I am, I feel ready to passout at any moment but I will be updating more often. Also, soo. I will be sewing my own cloth diapers and I'm really excited!