Missing Grandma & such big boys

I am sorry it has taken so long to get this thing updated!  Life has been extremely busy, as always!  Lot's of things going on at our house and with our family.  From August 2009 until February 16th, 2010, myself and my family were spending a considerable amount of time taking care of and spending time with my Grandma.  She was diagnosed in August with Stage 4 Small Cell Lung Cancer and battled valiantly for 6 months.  Sadly, she passed away peacefully on February 16th.  The last 2 months have been difficult without her in our lives.  She is so deeply missed by us all and has left a huge hole in our lives and our hearts.  Her 75th birthday would have been on April 16th.  My mom, my sister, my aunt, and our friends Dottie & Jeannette and myself, all headed to Lincoln City for the weekend of her birthday to celebrate Grandma and gamble in her memory.  We had a wonderful weekend together with beautiful weather and Grandma watching over us.  We did a beautiful rose memorial on the beach.  We took a dozen roses and each of us took 2.  We placed them in the sand in a row and eventually the ocean start to come in and surround them.  It was beautiful and emotional.  We miss her so very much.

                              Roses in the sand                                         Grandma & Grandpa walking at Relay

Now on to the boys!  They are 3 1/2 years old now and growing more every day!  The things they say and do just make us laugh!  Cameron is about 1 to 1 1/2 inches taller than Daniel now and he seems to have sprouted up out of the blue just recently!  He eats like it is his last meal and continues to ask for 2nd's and 3rd's!  Daniel on the other hand, barely eats anything at all.  So they are both on opposite eating spectrum's right now.  I'm sure that soon enough, Cameron will barely eat anything and Daniel will be eating like crazy! 

They have been set on what their favorite colors are for a while now, and it has become extremely consistent.  Daniel loves the color green and wants his sippy green, his plate green and colors everything with green.  Cameron on the other hand, loves the color purple.  Everything he colors is purple!  They both seem to be right handed as well and are doing very well with their fine motor skills!  I just bought some art projects the other day and one was a beaded pirate necklace!  The beads were fairly large and they did a great job!  I have noticed that they have been more deliberate while coloring to try and stay in the lines!  And the other day, Daniel started to trace his hand all by himself!  Such big boys, growing and doing new things all the time!

And they are FINALLY potty-trained little boys!!!  They wear underwear throughout the day now, except for nap time and bed time of course.  We finally got Daniel to poop in the potty!  That was an achievement in itself, as we had the hardest time getting him to go on the potty!  Such a huge relief to finally have them potty trained!  I am so proud of them and excited every time they go on their own!  Hardly any accidents either, which is great!

And since they are finally potty-trained, we registered the boys for pre-school the other day and they will start in September!  I am so excited for them to experience pre-school and grow and develop and learn!  I think they will have a wonderful time and hope they do well!  They haven't done daycare or pre-school before, so this will be new for them to be in an environment with other kids regularly.  I really hope they do well!  They will go 4 days a week for 3 hours per day.  It is a bit spendy, but a wonderful school that will give them a great start in life! 

The only problem is that Bryan and I will not be able to take them to school the first week!  We will be on a cruise with my parents and my sister and her boyfriend Dustin!  We were supposed to go on a cruise with all of the family and my Grandparents.  It was a surprise that we were supposed to go with Grandma and we were so excited.  Then she got very sick and the cruise got canceled.  We have re-booked the cruise and we will go in her memory.  We will be headed to Mexico on the Royal Caribbean cruise line!  So excited to go!

Bryan and I will also be headed to Reno in May for a 2 night stay at the Peppermill!  I won the 2 night stay at Relay For Life last year and it needs to be used by the end of May 2010.  So we will be headed off for a little alone time and our first big trip somewhere together since our honeymoon 10 1/2 years ago!  It should be fun and we are so excited to go!

Well, that should cover things for a little bit!  I will really try harder to keep up on this better!  It is nice to look back at what is going on, and my entries shouldn't be as long if I update it more often! Have a wonderful day everyone!

Love,
Jen