Lil' Dean Fam

I’ve always been one to plan. I’d call myself a Type-A personality, and so would everyone that knows me. The good thing is I married a man who’s a lot the same in that respect. We’ve always been really good about planning things out and thinking them through in advance. We had our son named before he was even conceived. So in planning our lives together, we always planned for me to be a stay-at-home mother; to raise our children full-time. I've always had two dreams in my heart. I wanted to be a mother, and I also wanted to be a teacher. I’ve wanted to be a teacher since a very young age, except for that stint where I wanted to be an airline attendant. Then there was 9-11 and being a full-time traveler didn’t exactly match up with my other goal of being a mother. On the first day of my freshman year at the University, I declared myself an Elementary Education major. When my grandfather paid for my college education, he really wanted me to pursue something which would give me more m...

Ryan turns five years old today! He's been looking forward to his birthday for a long time. We've been celebrating since Saturday. I thought about doing a party at a "place" of some kind this year but he decided he wanted to do it at home and the theme was Super Heroes. It was a lot of fun and I hope all of the kids enjoyed it as much as Ryan (and Evan) did. Ryan getting ready for his friends to come. Ryan doing a Spider man pose. Ryan and Evan posing, Super Hero style, in front of the "Happy Birthday" sign. Evan Ryan and E When the guests first arrived, we had them decorate party hats with Super Hero stickers. Then we put on Spider-Man tattoos. The whole gang with their tattoos and party hats. Superman tag Just like British Bulldog except you do good guys vs. bad guys. Kryptonite hot potato Evan with his party hat. All of the party guests. Isaac, Jackson, Evan, Rylee, Maycee, Curen, William, and Mason. Treasure hunt. Searching for clues. Almo...

One of my friends told me that one thing she isn't good about when it comes to being a Stay At Home Mom, is "staying home". I have to agree that I'm not good at "staying home" either. I like to be out and about. I like to do at least one thing outside of the house per day, preferably BEFORE nap time. One thing we just love to do is go to the park. I love it, the kids love it, and let's face it folks, when you live here, you have to eat up all of the possible outside time that you can.

Our city does a Balloon Festival each summer. I remember last year seeing a couple of balloons up in the sky. This year they promoted it pretty well. So, I got the boys out of bed bright and early Friday morning and took them down to our little park where they were going to set off the balloons. Unfortunately, this week we had some actual weather (haven't had ANY in weeks and weeks) and the balloons were not allowed to fly. I timed it (accidentally) just right though. We got there right when they were starting to blow up the balloons and left as soon as they had all come down. They did it again on Saturday morning but again were unable to launch. If we're here again next year I'll take the boys back and see if the weather will cooperate.