A very Blessed Christmas

Christmas has come and gone, and soon it will be a new year! Im not sure if its just me but time just seems to fly by, and no matter how much I try to embrace every second I find myself and my heart getting kinda sad in ways. Having children has brought so much joy to my life, I know they will grow up but its just going by way too fast. Christmas always seems to remind me that one day they just might not be able to be with us during the holidays when they are grown but why do I have to be thinking that now, crystal slow down and just enjoy the present and the future will come in time and when it does embrace it as it comes.

So our Christmas tends to always be busy, I always do my best to try to keep things fair for our families. So Christmas eve we went to my mom and dads and celebrated with my moms side of the family, we always make it a point to go to Church with my grandma its a very nice tradition that we def try to keep. Unfortunatly mikie had a stomach virus so he was not able to celebrate with us which was very sad because he didnt want to miss out, and everyone was bummed when they discovered he was not coming, my cousins especially, they find mike quite entertaining which he def is.

Christmas morning came, our kids were of course awake at 5am and conrad comes into the room and says mom is it ok if we go out into the living room at 6 and I said sure buddy, not even ten min later he comes back in and says can we just go now and I said yes, I had a feeling that the 6 thing wasn't gonna happen but I thought it was sweet of him. So the kids were of course thrilled with the little they got from us and had thankful hearts for what they received which always brings Peace to my heart. As they played I made them all breakfast and thankfully mikie was better and we soon got ready to go to mikies moms for Christmas dinner.

Off to fairfield we went and had a nice dinner and of course more presents which Im always thankful for but sometimes I feel there is toooooo many presents, the kids would never complain but I think I would be content with no presents and just enjoying family time and maybe doing something great like bringing the kids to a children's hospital and bringing toys to the children there, or to a shelter or to the homeless just something more meaningful. I hope for this in our future I want to teach our kids the importance of love and God is love and He is why we celebrate Christmas and why they are still young I want to make an imprint on their little hearts so that when they become adults they will live their lives selflessly.

After all is said and done we had an amazing Christmas and we are truly Blessed. Our family will always know why we celebrate Christmas, and even though we do santa and presents it will always be first and foremost about Jesus, Happy Birthday Jesus!!!!!

Christmas eve already for bed

cute little mugs we picked up for the kiddos

our sweet doggie with her new toys

Its Beginning To Look A lot Like Christmas!

     Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!! I of course love this time of year, the giving and being around loved ones and creating precious moments and of course celebrating Jesus's Birthday!! The weather has been so icy cold the kids keep asking mommy why doesn't it snow here and I say it has happened before maybe before the new year it will again, you never know!


     This morning was breakfast with santa at the kids school, it is something we have been going to ever since Conrad started kindergarten and this is his last year whaaaaaaaaa, such a bitter sweet moment. It was also Mylas first year, well as a student at DH White anyway. I guess if Conrad is not too cool next year he can still come along, man this watching your kids grow up is a lot harder then I thought it was going to be.

      Tonight our town had their annual Christmas tree lighting and boat parade, so we bundled up and headed downtown. Mikie and conrad were off doing boy stuff so I was joined by one of dearest friends and her daughter, my sissy also met up with us. It was very sweet, I love these kinda things its so much fun especially when the weather is somewhat tolerable which tonight it was cold but definitely tolerable.

Conrad and Myla with Santa

Love u my Friend

Oh Christmas tree

Girls waiting for the boat parade to start

Honored to share such a precious moment

My grandmother if i have not said it before i will say it again and again, she is the most amazing woman I know and I will always be thankful that I have been so Blessed to have such a woman to look up to my whole life.

She was nominated for an award for her selflessness and her commitment and dedication for helping others. She truly is an inspiration and when i said to her grandma if anyone deserves this its you and her sweet humble answer was well I don't know about that.

So she invited my sissy and I to join her for the game, and wow!!! I have never been to a pro football game YIKES!!!! I can see how if you are into the the game it would be very exciting, but for me it was soooo much to take in, but the vibes you got from all the cheering and team spirit was pretty awesome, not to mention the most important part getting to see my 90 year old grandmother out on the 50 yard line getting recognized for her selfless giving of her time.

Thank you Grandma for letting me share such a special day with you, I will forever treasure it!

Such a special lady

walking to our seats

waiting to see our grams

A little pre game warm up

gram and some others on the field

Drum line, I wonder if conrads drum teacher is out there on the line today

enjoying the game together

A Vosefski Family Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving one of my most favorite Holidays! This year we spent Thanksgiving with the Vosefski side, sometimes Holidays can be tough well for me anyway because we have to decide between three different places to go. Thankfully all sides of the family understand when we cannot be with them, but my heart always feels bad when we arent with the others.

Mikies dad and girlfriend hosted this years Thanksgiving in their new home, we had alot of fun and more food then you could even imagine. There was the traditional Thanksgiving food and some japanese food, mexican food tons of snacks, pies pies and more pies!

The Vosefski boys of course had to carry on their Gichans dollar poker game. Gichan is Mikies grandfather that he just lost a few weeks ago, he loved to play cards with his boys so I think anytime those boys get together they will keep that tradition alive for their Gichan.

We hope everyone had a Blessed Thanksgiving, Im forever Thankful for this life God has Blessed us with and our amazing family and friends we have it to share with!

I love my hubbys faces lol

Mikies dads Beautiful girfriend Maria, Love her!!!!!

Conrad and Myla with their Bachan

Japanese noodles

Ceviche

Snacks

Uncle Goobie, He is so loveable!

Vosefski boys playing cards

So thankful for these Beautiful Babes

Celebrating 90 years with the most amazing woman

I was Blessed with the opportunity to help host a 90th birthday party for one of the most amazing beautiful woman I know my grandmother. 90 years incredible!!!! she is truly an inspiration, someone I strive to be like everyday of my life. She is one of the most selfless people I know, always giving and always wanting to help out in any way she can. She is always busy helping her Church, and volunteers weekly as a pal at the school, she has taken in people who have needed help and lives with no fear, she loves the Lord with all her heart in return He has Blessed her with one of the biggest hearts. My grandmother lost her husband at a pretty young age, I believe I was about three, she never remarried or ever had a desire to find anyone else. I enjoyed getting to look through all of her old pictures and getting to see her life and the love her and my grandfather shared.  She has been through many trials, has had to say goodbye to alot of people but she keeps going and going strong. She loves to go and see new things, my sister and her family are awesome at bringing her pretty much everywhere they go and they are quite the goers!  My grandmother is the closest woman I know that lives up to the Scripture Proverbs 31:10-31. I love you grandma, thank you for being a true inspiration, I pray that Im half the woman you are so Blessed to have you in my life!

Here are some pictures of the big bash we had for her, I only had pre party pictures unfortunately I was too busy during the party to take pictures but she had a blast visiting with family and friends.

The girls with gram

Such a Beauty

My dad signing her well wishes wall

The beautiful flower wall that amazing melanie did

simple but crafty centerpieces

Mother and daughter having fun

We Love you dad

Cheese

One of her pretty cakes

My crazy brother inlaw, he claims to be grams fave but I beg to differ lol

Myla looses her first tooth

For some reason I get so excited when the kids loose their teeth, especially their first one! I love that jack o lantern look lol. So being a big 5 year old miss Myla is on her way to that look and just in time, fall is here!! After days of her tooth hanging on by a little string it finally came out, which i was glad because i started to fear she would swallow it.  She of course had it all ready for the tooth fairy, but she didn't come Yikes I know but she made up for it the following night, meaning Myla got a bonus!! Here is her Beautiful new smile :)

A very loose tooth

here it is!!!!!

11 Years Blessed

Sept 7 2002 a day I will cherish for my whole life, the day I married my best friend. It may not have typically been my dream wedding but with only a couple months to plan it I would say it turned out very well. You might be wondering why it was planned in just a couple months well......... You guessed it I was pregnant with our son conrad, being only a year out of high school and just received my cosmetology license it was time to get married wow what a whirlwind. I knew that mikie was going to be my husband one day and I had always wanted children, four was my dream at that time,had no idea it would happen this soon in our lives. This was the way it was going to happen for us because of the choices we made, but I wouldn't change a thing!

young love

Best mom and dad ever!!!!!!!

waiting for the bouquet

guys running for the garter

uh oh!!!!!!

Love these gals!

girls getting ready

Thankful to have these girls in my life!

Forever missing you and loving you both grandma and grandpa

cannot believe these boys are 14!!!!!!

Aww

First kiss as husband and wife

Sept 7 20013,We have been through many trials and Blessings the past 11 years, we have our two beautiful children and a Love that continues to grow every single day. We have our ups and downs and of course disagreements but we are a team and we are in this for life! On that day we did not only make a Promise to eachother but we made a Promise to God, marriage is not always easy but it is one of the biggest investments of your life.

Looking back at my life I can only be extremely thankful, Thankful for supporting parents who were behind us even though its not what they probably had envisioned for our lives, well at least not that early. To our amazing friends and family who were also there with us and supporting us on our special day it meant so much to us to have that because honestly mikie and I were terrified!!!!! To this day we are still extremely thankful for the continued love and support from all of our family and friends we could not imagine our lives without all of you in it!!!!

Two new daughters

We were Blessed with an awesome opportunity to host two children from Rio Vistas sister city Tobishima Japan. One might ask how do you get a chance to do something like this, well fortunately for us my brother in law and nephew got the chance to go visit tobishima. Zachery who is my nephew just finished his eighth grade year and was involved in this program and my brother in law got to be one of the chaperones and is now a pretty big part of this program. So we were asked if we would like to be a host family and after we all talked as a family, of course our answer was yes!!!!! We then decided we would host two girls, the main reason for that was Myla has a trundle bed so thats where they would sleep and I just couldn't make two boys sleep in a pink girly room.

The time of them coming came quickly we were scrambling to get our house in tip top shape while getting back into the routine of school and work being crazy busy, whew I was tired and they hadn't even arrived yet. Friday morning came and I felt my self start to worry, I was so afraid things would be awkward and they would be uncomfortable and how in the world are we going to communicate with them, so I just had to Pray and give it to God and have Faith everything would be ok. So after a cram packed day of feeling rushed at work I had to run to the school to get the kiddos out early so we could go to the assembly they were having at River view for the Tobishima students. After the assembly each host family was to be introduced to their kids and then to bring them home and get settled in.

So it was our turn to meet our girls I found myself not being nervous but excited, we now were introduced to honoka, hono for short and momoka, momo for short. The kids of course took to them right away and loved them like they were really their sisters. So off to the house we went, showed them to mylas room and had gifts for them, gifts are a big thing in their culture so I wanted to make sure I had something to give them. After they got settled in we talked for a bit and I think then they discovered how crazy mike was but seemed to Love him like most people do. We were then invited out to my sisters for a big bbq for all the host families and the kiddos. We all had a great time and kuddos to my sis and brother in law for taking on such a big operation, mind you they were hosting eight boys Yikes!!!!!!

It was getting late so back home we went, the girls showered then we tried to chat a little more then off to bed we went. Saturday morning came and we had the whole day to get to do pretty much whatever the girls wanted to do, so we had decided the night before to go bowling and then shopping. So we got up early started making breakfast and miss hono woke up and joined us she ate and hung out for a bit and then started to fall back asleep, so I told her go ahead and go back to sleep. Those poor girls must have been exhausted because they slept until 11:30, so then we had to choose bowling or shopping and of course shopping it was!!!

We took them to the mall and walked around, bought a couple things and asked them what they would like to eat and they said Mcdonalds, mike and I thought that was too cute oh and they Love sprite. After eating we headed back home, the girls went to the room and brought out gifts for us, hono got each of us fans and chopsticks and momo got the kiddos an origami book, paper, some neat paper balls and us some authentic foods. So the girls decided to do some origami with the kiddos, it was really neat to see them learn things about their culture. After that we decided to go hang outside and got a surprise visit from mikes mom, they all wanted to meet the girls and I know the girls enjoyed their company especially since mikes little brother is their age and really connected with them.

That eve we went out to my sis house for pizza, the kids had a great time running around and playing volleyball and just being teenagers. I felt myself starting to feel sad because I knew this experience was coming to an end too fast! After my sis we went back to the house, we were all tired myla fell asleep on my lap the girls got ready for bed,I asked them if they were tired they said yes so I told them its ok to go to sleep not knowing really if they wanted to hang out and talk more. Morning came and I fixed them breakfast, they were all ready to go but I wasn't ready for them to go, we had to have them at the school no later then 9. They went outside with the kids a played with sidewalk chalk, got to meet my dad because he was on his daily walk with his doggie which was cool, and then the time came.

Mikie packed their things into the van and off to the school we went. walking up to the buses I could feel tears start to build up and my heart began to feel heavy because I know we will prob never get to see them again which was so very sad to me. We gave hugs took pictures and gave probably five more hugs, I just felt like I couldn't leave them. After one more hug and wave goodbye it was time to go, as soon as we got in the van the kiddos started to cry which broke my heart, I told them we will write them letters and send pictures as often as possible. This experience has been a Blessing in every way and if you ever get the opportunity to do it I recommend it, I know we will again next year. Praying this program continues on for our kids to experience!

Their uniforms were adorable

myla being crazy while waiting

on our way to the house!

out at my siss house

momo and mymy

hono and mymy

my sis pallet project, pretty awesome!

so fun!

arcade

teacups

the girls did not want to do that

Origami

Learning

Myla trying a japanese pickled plum

she did not like it

new friends