Indoor Fun!

With colder temperatures, although VERY mild for January in Kansas, we've been finding fun things to do indoors. The boys made marshmallow creations (Garrett mostly just ate his marshmallows!), and took laundry basket rides with Daddy!

Baby Jordan is here!

My niece, baby Jordan, is here!! She was born on January 16. She was 6 weeks early, but she's doing well! She was in the NICU for a day, and now in the Special Care Unit. Hopefully she'll be able to go home soon!

Cousins

Here are a few pictures of the Pepper cousins! Gage (5), Garrett (2 1/2), and Kaylee (2 weeks)

Gage's basketball

Gage is playing 5-6 year old basketball at the Bel Aire Rec. It is pretty cute to watch! The kids barely know the concept of the game, and keep forgetting who is on their team, which basket to shoot in, etc. His good friend, Lukas is on his team, so that makes it even more fun for him. Here are a few pictures...

Baby Kaylee

My niece, Kaylee Sue Smith, was born on December 26. This is Obie's sister's baby. April went to the hospital in the early afternoon of the 26th. Garrett went to stay at Grammy's, so Obie, Gage, and I could be up at the hospital to wait for baby Kaylee to be born. After being there about 7 hours, she was finally born at 11:15pm! Since it was so late, we just popped in to take a look at her and went home to bed. The next morning, we went up to visit and got to hold her. She's so tiny, was 6 lbs at birth. Garrett had to wait a few days before he got to meet baby Kaylee, but when he met her, he was so excited to hold his new cousin! Garrett just loves babies. Gage really isn't that interested. I'm so excited to be an aunt again, to another little girl. I have one more niece that should be here within the next 6 weeks. Danna is due at the end of February, but she was a month early with Janae, that we expect she'll deliver baby Jordan early too.

Merry Christmas 2011!

We had several days of Christmas this year, and the boy got lots of new toys! They were really excited this year about Santa coming! Gage got a remote control helicopter and Garrett got a digital Fisher Price camera from Santa. They also got new bikes from Grandma and Grandpa Pepper, a Nintendo DS from Grammy, and lots of other games and toys. We had a nice Christmas break with 11 days off from school. It was so hard coming back yesterday. Now the countdown to Spring Break is on!!!

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Cookies for Santa!

This year we made our own special cookies for Santa! The boys loved getting to help with the baking and frosting. Their favorite part was licking the frosting off of the spoons. It's a good thing Santa is used to kid germs!! This was a fun year, and the boys were really excited. I love the magic of Christmas!

Weight Loss

So I've been really excited lately about my weight loss, and wanted to share it with you all! September 20 I started The 17 Day Diet, that a lady I work with recommended to me. It's a little deceiving, because you can't just diet for 17 days! But it's in 17 day cycles. The first 17 days are fairly restrictive, then the next 17 give you more choices, etc. There are 4 cycles, with number 4 being maintenance. If you get to 3 and aren't done loosing, then you go back to 1 and start over. The main concept is cutting out sugars and "bad" carbs. I eat a lot of chicken and turkey, vegetables, some fruits, yogurt, and "good" carbs such as brown rice. So far, I have lost 23 pounds! I met my original goal, which was to get back to "pre-baby" weight. But then I decided to keep going!! Now I'm shooting for college weight! I have about 17 more pounds to go. It's really exciting being able to dig out my skinny clothes from the back of the closet! I don't have any more clothes back there, so now if I lose more, it means a WHOLE NEW WARDROBE!! Which would be pretty fun, I think! Anyway, I just wanted to share my good news. If you're interested in the diet, you can order the book on Amazon. It's the first thing I've tried that works, and isn't so restrictive that I get sick of it in a week.

Santa's little helpers

It's a tradition in our family for the boys to get matching pajamas to wear on Christmas Eve/Christmas morning. I usually let them open them a couple weeks early so they can wear them for pajama day at school, and so we can get some cute Christmas pictures under the tree! I couldn't find "Christmas" pajamas, so I got them Toy Story jammies. Garrett LOVES Woody. The day after I gave them their jammies, my mom shows up and surprises them with Christmas pajamas! So now they have 2 sets of matching jammies. Here are some of the pictures, also a couple with their buddy Rykyr (CJ and Andrea Webber's son). He is 6 months younger than Garrett. The boys had a great time playing together last night!

Deck the Halls....

Our house is all ready for Christmas, thanks to Santa's 2 cutest little elves! The boys had a lot of fun helping me set up the tree this year! Gage was actually helpful this year. We have a fake tree, and he sorted the branches by color, and helped me put them into the base. Then both boys helped put the ornaments on.