The kids starting to enjoy each other, 

 Timmy can always make her laugh!

Beena enjoying Just dance,
this ended up being the best Christmas present from Papa ever!

So here are a few random pictures of 2011. The year went so fast so I wanted to highlight a few of our favorite moments. I also wanted to show of my new blog design. My amazing Aunt Liz made the most awesome header for it! If you ever need any design work done you can find her at www.ejcdesigns.com. Hope you enjoy the pics. I am gonna try once again to get more consistent with blogging so be on the look out for more! Happy New Year everybody!

Christmas with Beena and Papa before we knew Beena was sick

Another Dancing one! SO much fun!

They love their Beena & Papa

Allanna enjoying her first cupcake

Her pretty birthday outfit

Timmy learned how to make silly faces

And Allanna became a goofball

Camping!

We moved into a house!

Days at the water park

Timmy turned 4!

Timmy's 4th birthday was a monster party

Boat trips with life group

Camping with our life group

Snifferface at the water park

Timmy's first time tubing!

I ran my first half marathon!!!

The start of advent!!!

I love Christmas time!! I enjoy other holidays but Christmas is by far my favorite. Because of this I have tried to make it a tradition for our family to celebrate advent so that we can enjoy every day during this season and stay focused on the real meaning of Christmas. This Christmas I am even more excited than normal for a couple reasons. The first one is that Timmy is old enough to start understanding parts of what it means to be excited about Jesus! Obviously he is not going to understand all of it or really be interested in all the Bible readings but I love knowing that we are getting a chance to show him a love for the Bible and a love for the real meaning of Christmas. Allanna is still to young to understand but she is going to love the crafts, cookies, and watching the candles! The other reason I am looking forward to this time of reflection and anticipation is because I feel as though I have been extremely distracted for the last year. Its been a tough year with everyone's health which should have made me draw closer to God but instead I feel like I have been too busy to really draw near to Him. So I am really excited to have this time of renewed focus. I know that I shouldn't have waited so long  to work on this, But God uses anything He wants to too help us get refocused :o)

I am mainly using two different websites for a list of verses and other activities for advent. Here are the links in case you want to follow along too :o)

http://www.teachingmom.com/features/advent.html
http://www.homeschooled-kids.com/advent.html

So tonight we will be lighting the first candle and will start reading verses about the prophesies of Jesus' birth and his 2nd coming. The kiddos just finished their first craft which they loved. We made little candle holders with empty baby food jars, glue, and tissue paper. They are still drying so I don't have a picture with the candle in it yet but here are a few pics of the kiddos working on them.

Fun with the kiddos

Okay so after the last post I thought it would be nice to show that we really did have a great day still! My kids favorite thing to do, even better than the park, is painting or pretty much doing crafts of any kind! They definitely got my grandma's and my sister's artistic side! So anyways here are some pics of them enjoying some painting time today. We started out painting  a pumpkin and a birdhouse... and then of course ended in all out "finger paint" aka body paint and repainting the kitchen :o) So enjoy these pictures of my future famous artists!

Timmy's masterpiece from yesterday, we used their hands to make a tree.

Allanna's masterpiece, an apple tree

He just discovered he could make a handprint!

My Amazing special boy

So tonight's blog is a little vent on the difficult times that come with being a mommy. Being a parent is such a huge responsibility and such a huge blessing! My baby boy, who is now almost 4, is the sweetest most loving little man ever, but he is also quite a handful. As many of you know we have been aware for awhile that he may be on the autistic spectrum mostly because he is behind in speech... but we have held of on further testing because his doctor thinks he is just a quirky kiddo and that we dont need to be concerned about labeling him at this point. We totally agree with this most days and have seen so much growth in Timmy that most of the time we feel like at this point we are doing whats best for him and just helping him grow up at his own pace in his own way. But in all honesty it is so hard seeing that your baby is not "normal" like other kiddos. One of my favorite shows is Parenthood, and in this show the family has a son who has aspergers, which is a highly functioning autism. Anyways a few weeks ago the mom on the show goes to see how he is doing at his new school and she sees him sitting by himself during lunch and it breaks her heart to see that he is not making friends. And of course I cry during this show every week because I am just starting to totally understand her feelings. For the most part Timmy is growing up so much! He is talking a ton and he is able to understand and answer questions, and he is even able to have almost conversations with people. But then there are nights like tonight where he just has a rough night. And on nights like these I see that he doesn't know how to relate to kids his own age. And kids his age get frustrated with the way he wants to play and then of course that upsets him because he doesn't understand what they are upset at. And its just exhausting as a parent to explain to him over and over things that he just doesn't get yet. So its just one of those emotional nights for me where I just want to see him be able to play with other kids and enjoy himself instead of having to constantly take him out of situations and remind him of the correct way to behave. Its just exhausting for both of us, but luckily he only remembers all of it for a minute where as I get to keep thinking about it all... Wondering if we are doing enough to help him ect. Anyway so that is my vent. I am probably just emotional because I get a little tired when Curty works this much but I just felt like maybe writing a blog would help me. So friends just pray as normal that we have wisdom to raise our little man the way God wants us too!

My Amazing Mother!

Happy Birthday to the best mom ever! 
I just wanted to write a quick blog about my mommy, since tomorrow is her special day! She is the most amazing mom and Beena(grandma)! She is so caring and loving to not only her family but pretty much everyone she comes in contact with! Even through this rough year she is still always ready to give a smile and a hug to everyone. She is a huge helper, her love language, at least how she gives I think is acts of service because she wants to help everyone with everything :o) I know she wishes she could be with me to help with the kiddos everyday... okay maybe not everyday(she still likes her alone time with dad a lot too lol). She finds joy in everything, I think she giggles more than anyone. She loves God and her family more than you can imagine!  Anyways enough bragging about my mom. I cant wait to celebrate her birthday this weekend! Its party time at the Truelove house, watch out!!! Love you mom! 

And these wonderful pictures are done by Elaine Dieball :O)

The end of summer has come...

Well our summer is officially over and we are getting used to our school year schedule. We got to end our summer with another amazing camping trip. This time we went to Hume Lake! It is so neat how despite the craziness of camping with kiddos, it can still be so relaxing. Its so nice to get away to a beautiful place with cooler weather and get to hang out with great friends while the kiddos entertain each other. The trip started out a bit rough when we discovered that Timmy gets carsick... our new van definitely got broken in! The poor guy freaked out because he  is a bit ocd so being covered in puke is a nightmare for him. But after that disaster was done he had a great weekend! He loves being able to run around and play with his "best friends." Allanna loves camping too, she likes to get way messier than Timmy so playing in the dirt is heaven for her. We had our first camping in the rain experience and it wasn't too bad. The nice part about camping with a big group is that we have plenty of stuff... like a tarp to tie over the tables :o)

So now that the camping is done we are settling into a schedule. I had thought this year was going to be quiet but God had other plans. A couple of my friends are letting me watch their adorable children a couple days a week so I can make a little extra money. We love it because it keeps us busy and I get to be creative to keep the kiddos busy. But while I am busy I am determined to finally get this house organized and decorated so I will hopefully be posting some pics soon! Here are a couple camping pics for the time being though!

I love Summertime!

I just love how much fun summer is! During the school year we do lots of fun stuff but we it seems like everything is so scheduled and we are always so busy(and the kids are not even in school yet!). So I just love that every week during the summer is so different, you never know what fun things are going to come up. Yesterday me and the kids went to a waterpark with one of my best friends and her kiddos(and she brought a babysitter to help us keep track of the kids, which was very helpful). I was super excited but I had no idea how the kids would do and honestly was not sure if I should be attempting this adventure without Curtis. But it ended up being so much fun and the kids did really well so it actually wasn't stressful at all! Both of my kiddos have absolutely no fear of water which is good and bad. I love that they enjoy it so much and are content to just stay in the water all day, Allanna would actually start crying everytime I tried to take out of the water, not so cute and yet pretty funny. I dont like that they both want to run everywhere and attempt things that are not meant for their age. Both kids were wanting to climb everything and go down all the slides, even the ones that are way to big. So I definitely got a workout chasing both of them and trying to carry Allanna when she would let me. They loved the floating river, Timmy was wearing his floaties so he loved getting to swim next to me. He was so excited to see the older kids really swim too, every time one would swim by he would yell out "nice swimming." They also loved the wave pool, which had some pretty good size waves actually. I wasn't so sure I loved that part! We stayed at the park for about 4 hours so by the time we were loading into the cars the kiddos were ready for a great nap. Once they woke up we spent an hour with daddy before he left for work and then we headed out for a church barbecue. It was really nice to spend some time with a couple families from our life group. But the kiddos did not last long, they were still a bit tired from the fun day so we left early and came home to all go to bed. So it was just an overall wonderful summer day, even if Curtis couldn't enjoy it with us. I just love that both the kids are at such a fun age and that they are really interacting with us and each other so much! Timmy talks so much now and I love it, I cant wait till Allanna starts talking more its gonna be so precious so hear them talking to each other.
Another highlight of our week was that we got to see Stacy and Andrew for a few minutes as they were on their way home from Sacramento. The kids were so excited to see them. Honestly I think Timmy was more excited to play with their iphones, he is a little obsessed, but he really does love his aunt and uncle too. Allanna was almost friendly, I think she smiled at Stacy a few times :o) But it was really great to see them, we miss them and wish we could see them more! The hard part was when they left Timmy freaked out because he didn't understand that we got to see them but not see Beena and papa(my mom and dad). So that was a bit tough for him to understand. He thinks my parents house is the coolest place ever so he constantly asks to go see them. Hopefully we will get to take another trip soon!