St. Patty's Day Run

Hunter, Jay and John ran the 5 mile yesterday along with some other friends. Yes, I said Hunter! I'm so proud of him. They finished in about an hour, Jay and Hunter that is. Of course my brother ran it in about 35... but he is training for a marathon again, so not a surprise that he can do 5 miles rather fast! I decided to stay home this year. Beau and I did a little bike riding and jogging and enjoyed doing NOTHING while watching some tv. It was so nice to just relax. Work has been crazy again, well it never really let up, so it was nice to have a day to relax and enjoy my family! Have a great Sunday everyone!

Beau loses his 2nd tooth!

Beau lost his other bottom tooth last week. Now we wait for both of those to come in and one on top is loose! He's going to have a pretty big gap in the front!

Vacation!

We were able to take a vacation (it's been almost 2 years!) over President's Day Weekend. We flew to Colorado on Thursday morning, Feb 17th and then drove about 2 hours up to Breckenridge. We rented a house with about 15 other adults and children. The group consisted of Jay's college friends, their spouses/significant others and children. Two families live in Colorado and the rest are in Illinois. We had a great time with friends. I think it's really neat to see Jay's friends so close and that we can get together as families now.

The kids getting ready to board the plane at Lambert.

In the rental car on our way!

Haircuts and LOTS of Snow

Jay offered the boys money to get haircuts and they accepted. Hunter wanted to let his grow and Beau did too, but then the money sounded better to them!

The boys made a snowman one Sunday afternoon.

And enjoyed some sledding while being pulled by the four wheeler.

A Happy New Year (few months late)

I should make a News Year's resolution to be a better blogger in 2011, but we'll just have to see what happens with that! I started this post a few weeks after New Year's and now it's February 26th (even though the post date says Jan 15th).

We had a wonderful Christmas with all of our families, spending most of the gatherings in the best place we could think of - our new home! It was great!

We had our first Christmas of 2010 with the Jolliff's on December 11th. The four little boys had a lot of fun opening gifts and being together!

We hosted the Ballance Brunch in early December, about 40 attended! It was wonderful to have all the cousins here, minus a few, and those that traveled from Nashville, TN, Kansas and Oklahoma. We had littles ones too! Such fun to see our basement full of children playing together as if they hadn't missed anything since last year!

Then we had our FIRST Christmas in our new home. It was so great to wake up and watch the boys open gifts and see what Santa had brought. My brother, John, came the night before and spent Christmas day with us, but he was out deer hunting for the early festivities. We fixed lunch and Carl, Jessica, Gigi and Zeb came over. We cooked a turkey and all the fixins'. It was fun and we enjoyed more presents and games.

My dad and sister and family came later in the evening. We opened more presents and enjoyed watching the kids play with their new toys. They all stayed overnight and the guys went hunting the next morning, after church.

Finally, our last Christmas gathering was January 2nd, at our house. We celebrated with my Mom and Mike, John, Amanda, Amy, Phil, Maddy & Ella. My mom and Mike were in Florida for Christmas so we had to wait for their return! Really we just like to spread out the celebrations...We had a lighter lunch with ham, casserole, and lots of appetizers. Later in the evening we had our tradition of won-tons (Grandma Miller started this many years ago) and Amy brought a new appetizer, crab rangoon. YUM!

We enjoyed ALL of the time spent with our families over the holidays!

Merry Christmas!

First Deer Season of 2010

Hunter and Jay spent a lot of time hunting together this weekend. Beau went for a little bit, but he prefers to be inside with me, ha! Really he likes to be out there, but just can't stay for very long. Hunter is dedicated and spent all day Friday and Saturday in the stand. They did not see anything! Sunday was a better day, as Jay saw more deer, but did not have a good shot at any of them. Papa Carl did get a nice buck which Beau proudly posed with...

There is always next season!