Vegas Baby!

Once again, I'm a little behind on my posting. It's been a crazy, busy and totally fun month! My mom came out to Portland to hang with us a bit. The last few days she was here, Jason and I ditched her and skipped town to Las Vegas to help Clint Pies ring in the BIG 4-0! The sunshine and slower pace felt great until someone over-served me margaritas and Jason got the flu. Luckily, that was on the very last day we were there :-)

On the plane (one the world's cheapest airline, Spirit Airlines, that we don't recommend) heading to Las Vegas. This was the longest and farthest we have ever been away from the kids together.

Quality grown up time :-)

Doesn't get much better than this ... SUN, margarita and a crossword

Our party of 6 was too big to fit in a cab, so we were "forced" to take a limo. Bummer, huh!

Here are the boys ... Jason, Clint, Ryan and Ben

New House

I'm pretty sure the word is out with just about everyone now. We are moving next month! We are so excited. The house is larger, in a great neighborhood, is literally next door to an outstanding elementary school, park, playground, community pool and a preschool that we will walk to (when weather allows :-). We are so excited to have a guest room for when family comes to visit and a TON of storage space. There is no basement but there are big closets everywhere. 

I'll make a long story short ... the current owners had to re-side the house and we got to pick the new colors when they painted the siding. I think it looks great. There is a ton of painting to do inside (their kids, now all grown, expressed their creativity in several rooms) and we will have to get new carpet because of Jason's pet allergies. Lots to do, but we couldn't be more thrilled.

Our house is scheduled to go on the market April 5. We are spending most of March trying to get it ready to go.

NEW siding and paint :-)

OLD siding and paint

Valentine's Day

Yes, I know it's a tad late. We've been one very busy family this year! Here are some pictures from Valentine's Day ...

Coloring with some heart shaped crayons

The classic candy sorting activity.

Max did a really good job with it!

Valentine's Day breakfast (heart shaped pancakes and "fruit on a stick") as requested by the kiddos.

Mommy and Daddy got them some new dishes for Valentine's Day too. 

Max got Cars and Superman and Alia got Princesses and Minnie Mouse

My handsome little man waiting for his class party to begin.

The gorgeous and festive Alia at her class party.

Yes ... that's ice cream cake! In addition to it being Valentine's Day, it was one of his classmate's birthdays as well. Twice the sugar, hooray!

Valentine's Day approaching ...

Yes, I know I am a complete nerd, but I had to share! Here are some samples of the kids valentines for school this year. I really wanted to come up with non-candy options. I got both ideas and printables from Pinterest! I stacked coupons for the little cars and cleaned out the crayon bin of all of the tiny pieces to make the heart shaped crayons! Woo hoo!

CXWORX Certified!

I was so excited to receive an email on Monday notifying me that I had passed my CXWORX assessment. I filmed my video and sent it in on December 16th so I was starting to get a bit worried. I am now certified in 3 different formats ... BodyPump, BodyCombat and CXWORX and I'm done! I absolutely love these 3 programs and my schedule is feeling quite full. I'm now teaching 4 days a week at 24 Hour Fitness. I teach Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 10am (while the kids are at school), Fridays at 4:30pm and Saturdays at 11am. I can't believe that all that has happened in just the last year and a half!

Uncle Jamie Visits!

My brother came out to visit us for the first time in just over 2 years! It was so nice to have him here and the kids had a blast with him! We took him to the Children's Museum, OMSI and Pump it Up! Alia enjoyed waking him up in the morning and having him make her breakfast!

 My brother also celebrated his 40th birthday in January. We took him out to one of our favorite place, Toro Bravo! Here is a picture I'm sure he'll be thrilled I posted ... enjoying the paella! 

Jason's 40th!

I just realized that I never posted pictures from Jason's "real" 40th birthday! Oops! His actual birthday fell on a Wednesday so we just hung at home and had a little party with the kids. 

We didn't have a 4 or 0 candle so we decided we'll just keep reusing the 39 :-)

That weekend we talked a babysitter (and paid her well) into staying overnight with the kids and we stayed downtown. We had a full 21 hours away!