Where does the time go?!

I was looking at the calendar the today and counted up how many months until Hensley's 2nd birthday and was shocked that there are only 4 months left! 4! When did that happen? My little baby cannot certainly be almost 2! I can tell everyday that she is growing up. She is talking in small sentences and learning new and fun tricks every day. She is really getting along with her big sister Tae and they play so well together. 

We have been filling our days with school, games, yummy food, and outside time on our beautiful days we've been having. Here are some pictures we've taken along the way.

Hensley loves to be involved in all things. Here she is trying to play one of Tae's games, ha!

I was happy to add to my "crunchy" decals recently. Check out the info on extended rear facing if you're interested!

Here is a recent Frontier order. I love being able to order the majority of our household goods online and at a great price!

We took the girls to a local pizza restaurant and they give the kids dough to play with. It's a great thing to keep them entertained while waiting for the food.

Playing at the park.

We made bird seed pine cones for the bounty of birds we have in our yard!

Tae loves when she gets mail from her cousins :)

I captured some of their sweet cuddles <3

We took another warm day to enjoy the zoo. That's the great thing about having a zoo pass. We can go as often as we want. The girls love it!

This was the first time that Tae was brave enough to hold one of the birds herself. She did great!

Picnic with my girls. 

Snacks outside on an 80 degree day in January!

These girls are always up to something....

One of our Valentine crafts we made. It took a lot of effort, but turned out so cute!

They had fun popping some poppers one night before dinner.

Mmm....yum! One of our recent vegan meals. Coconut lime rice with cilantro. Topped with seasoned black beans and cinnamon and turmeric roasted butternut squash and red onions. 

The girls liked making a fort in the living room!

Tae's been drawing a picture and then writing a sentence about it with minimal help from me. She's been increasingly getting better and better! This one says "There's a crab in a shell.".

Mourning is Love with No Place to Go....

Man....we take life for granted don't we? It seems we never think of losing someone and then when we do, we think of a million things we wished we would have done or said (or had not done or said in some cases). In July of last year we unexpectedly lost Aaron's dad. Aaron's dad didn't have the best life. He struggled with addiction and spent a lot of Aaron's younger years lost in his troubles. I wouldn't say that we were necessarily close with his dad, but he was a good guy. He was a good guy stuck in a bad situation. He was so proud of Taelyn. Before he retired, he would show all the guys he worked with pictures of her all the time. Unfortunately, he didn't get to see Hensley but a time or two before he passed. We tried to help, we did. There's one thing about addiction that is so, so hard to understand. If the person will not/cannot help themselves, then they will not get better. Unfortunately, we learned that the hard way. It's so sad to see someone that you love put their addiction above their own family. It's impossible to put yourself in their shoes unless you have been there your self. We are grateful that he is no longer suffering with the loneliness and pain associated with his struggles.

Nine days after the passing of Aaron's dad, Aaron's grandpa passed (dad's dad). We knew that his Grandpa was going. He had been sick a while and was on hospice. We had a lot of time to visit him. To put it out there, we were all kind of relieved when he passed. He had been suffering for some time and it was so hard to see him like that. We knew he would be at peace if he would just let go. We just had no idea that he would go so soon after losing someone else. So, in the matter of two weeks, we had two deaths, two viewings, and two funerals.

Sherry, Aaron's aunt (daughter to Grandpa/sister to dad), had a really tough time. She struggled with the guilt of not being able to help her brother and that she had found him that day. She was also a daddy's girl. She loved her daddy more than words can express. In the coming months Sherry and I would message each other on Facebook just about every day (something we had been doing for several years). We talked about her missing her brother and her dad. I tried as best as I could to help soothe her pain and ease her guilt. Sherry had also lost her mother back in '97 and still had a tough time with that also.

On Saturday, January 24th, our beloved Aunt Sherry did not wake up. We would find out later that day that she had suffered a brain aneurysm. We were all in shock. This was so unexpected. Sherry and I had just messaged each other that Friday and she also had messaged me at about midnight that night. How could this happen? Sherry was like another mother to me. She never had kids of her own and Aaron and his brothers were all she had. We had gotten really close after I had Taelyn. Boy did she love our girls! I couldn't post a thing on Facebook without her "liking" and commenting on it. She tagged herself in pictures of the girls so all her friends could see them. She was so proud of them. She called them her "little sweeties". My heart has just been aching since Saturday. I've been trying to keep myself busy. Trying not to think of the heavy sadness that sits on my heart. My eyes brim with tears with the thought of the girls growing up without her. I'm overcome with guilt when I think about going to bed before having the chance to read and respond to the message she had sent me that night. I start to question God and ask him "why her?" and "why now?", but I stop myself and remember that His reasons (whatever they may be) are enough. We are going to miss her deeply though. I'm already missing the joy she brought to Facebook with her posts and comments. Please keep us in your prayers these coming weeks as we learn how to "do life" without her beautiful soul. Please also say a special prayer for her husband as he has lost his soul mate of over 31 years.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever. Revelation 21:4

Food, zoo trip, and fun times!

Above is the makings of delicious taco soup. It is more like a chili despite the name. I like it better with ground beef, but you can make it with shredded chicken or leave out the meat all together and make it vegetarian. I put all this into a crock pot and it is done in just a few hours. I drain everything but the canned diced tomatoes and I only put in about a cup of the broth. We eat it with cheese, sour cream, and tortilla chips. Yum!

Taelyn has TONS of Legos. Aaron has a lot of fun helping her put together her sets and it is great daddy/daughter time. Our cat Kona loves to sit right in the middle and be a pain as you can see.

It seems like it has been FOREVER since we had warm weather, but this was a week or so before Christmas. I took the girls to the zoo during the day and we had a lot of fun. We were about the only people there and we went right when they were feeding a lot of the animals. It's going to be in the 60's next week, so we are going to go again soon!

Big girl! She is such a good helper and big sister. 

The mama elephant was pregnant here with her second baby. She has since given birth to a little baby girl. We can't wait to see the new baby elephant!

Hensley is quite the daredevil. She likes to run, jump, climb, and just be silly. I think she probably hurts herself at least a dozen times a day!

Above is another Frontier order of mine. That Equal Exchange coffee is amazing! I love that there is a cheaper, easier way for me to get all my favorite natural and organic products.

I made these pumpkin chocolate chip muffins for our annual Cookie Exchange the weekend before Christmas. I used Enjoy Life chocolate chunks. They are by far the best chocolate chips ever!

Oven roasted chickpeas are a great snack. They taste kind of like corn nuts, but are way healthier :)

Look at this beauty! She is growing up so quickly. 

The girls loved walking to get the mail everyday and stomping in the leaves. Silly girls!

Above is Salisbury steak, roasted butternut squash, and mixed vegetables. I use Simply Organic brown gravy mix and it is yummy. I really love cooking and I love being able to provide healthy meals for my family. It's great to be able to have more time to come up with dishes!

Christmas Time!

 Can I just say that we are blessed in more ways than I could ever describe! We had a terrific time leading up to Christmas. This year we had a few less Christmas presents to buy so we used the extra money to "adopt" two foster babies for Christmas. The picture above are the things we were able to donate. It was a great learning experience for Tae and she had a lot of fun deciding which things to buy. We bought them toys of their wish lists and also bought them books, clothes, hat and mittens, and a few other little things. It was so humbling to be able to do this this year and we look forward to doing it again next year!

 Hensley and Tae made these cute little art pieces for the Grandparent's for Christmas. I thought they turned out super cute!

 We went to this place called The North Pole Adventure. It was an indoor space with Santa, elves, reindeer, and they had different activities set up and even had milk and cookies. The girls had a lot of fun!

 Tae making a yoyo with one of Santa's elves!

 Hensley looking on. Look at that crazy hair, ha!

 They had two reindeer and we learned that they loose their antlers every year around Christmas day. Hensley really like them and kept calling them "horsies".

 This was the girls Christmas eve box that they opened. It had new pajamas, hot cocoa, popcorn, and their last advent book to open. 

 Hensley is not a pajama kind of girl, so they lasted long enough to take a picture and then they were off. 

 Santa came!

 The girls had a great time opening up their stockings and Christmas gifts! They even slept in until about 8:30, which was nice for Aaron and I. 

 She had to have some milky after all the hard work of opening up presents :)

 After we finished at home, we packed up and headed to my folks' house. We had brunch with them and my grandparents and then the rest of the gang came over for dinner and more presents. Don't I have a great looking family? This is my 3 sisters, their families, and then my mom and dad. We had a great time with great conversations, yummy food, and awesome presents. I couldn't have asked for a better time!

 Tae modeling with her bird feeder she got for Christmas after she painted it.

Hensley playing with her fishing game she got for Christmas.