Birthday wrapup

I created a tiny slidshow of photos from our little party for Little J - go HERE.

4 years old...

Oh Dear little J.... four short years ago, this very minute, they were showing you to me for the very first time EVER!! You were stubborn and I was finally convinced of it, and we had to visit the O.R. after almost 24 hours of labor... but you arrived none the less, healthy and peaceful.

Happy Birthday little man - you never cease to amaze me. We love you soooo much!!

my favorite things...

Family

Each year for Christmas, my mom gets me a new Willow Tree figurine.
This year's addition is the one above, of a family of four.
And it hits the nail right on the head by saying "Family, A lifetime of love"

I just received this colorful Friends plaque in the mail, from one of the best friends I've ever had.
A true friendship is rare, and precious.
She lives completely across the country from me, and nothing has ever kept us from being "there" for each other.
Some friendships come and go, and some friendships stay and grow.
I'm SO grateful ours has stayed, and grown...

leg godt

wondering what that blog title is?? It's Danish! Lego®, a name constructed out of the Danish expression leg godt, meaning "play well."

Every day when little J wakes, one of his first thoughts is "mommy, I need to play with my Lego's", and we do - A LOT of the day! Both boys love manipulating these little bricks and people and creating with their own hands what their very minds imagine. You can build almost anything out of Lego's.

We are lucky enough to have a Lego® Store at the nearby mall, and today we ventured out to add to their 'guy' collection. Each of the boys made 3 custom Lego people.

Little J's birthday is literally around the corner, and I picked up a silicone cake mold in the shape of a Lego® man. We're just Lego® crazy around here...

Gives life to the age old saying, "if you can imagine it, you can create it"...

and BAM!!

just like Emeril Lagasse... BAM!! yeah, he put ketchup, mustard, and mayo on my pizza... but it was the most amazing plastic pizza ever!! He was really enjoying telling me the fruits/veggies he was adding!!

FINALLY and outdoor day!!!

WOW, after several weeks of 20 degree days we're finally able to enjoy some outdoor time!! Little J was like a caged beast, when we told him he could go outside he was super excited!! Big E, on the other hand, had plenty of outdoor time at school during the day and opted to hang out indoors and check out some of his Christmas stuff that he hadn't even played with yet.

The neighbor's dog is always fun to visit at the fence!!

Aww.... Puppy, we missed you too!!

That's a photo of happiness and excitement!!

skywatch Friday

What a delightful way to wake up this morning... Little J and I got downstairs around 7am and I started my coffee brewing, got his breakfast ready and sat down to check emails and out of the corner of my eye saw an amazing sunrise beginning...

I know there's some blog that actually hosts a skywatch thingy... but this is just me this morning watching a GORGEOUS sunrise!!

you can see (below) how the sun is peeking behind that house down below ours, and the rays of sunshine are stretching into the sky...

And finally... the sun pops up behind that house and its HUGE!! I took more pics, but I'm not that great at sunrises yet.... so that's all that really turned out!

the winds of change

Ahh... serious changes around the BassAckwards household. Stay tuned for updates. It should be as refreshing as this blue sky in this photo. It should relieve stress for ALOT of people in this house... though it may create more work, I think there will be a sweet payoff!!

5 years!

Today marks 5 years for my husband's heart attack and 3-bypass surgery survival! No words can explain how horrified I was to hear the words "you need to come to the hospital quickly, it doesn't look good" from the doctor who called my cellphone at 815am that morning.

He had went in for a routine physical, he asked me to schedule it after having helped a friend move and seemed overly exhausted. The physical threw the doctor a bit of a red flag, so for precaution he scheduled him for a stress test. This exhaustion didn't stop him from playing with our oldest in the back yard and running a relay race with him the night BEFORE the stress test. The stress test did him in, within 5 minutes he had a massive heart attack.

Pure genetics and a fairly sedentary lifestyle (his work is a sit down at a desk type of job). He was slightly overweight, I say slightly because maybe 20#. Otherwise, healthy. So, 815am heart attack, 230pm open heart surgery. There were many obstacles along the way, but the end result is that he's healthy and has a new lease on life. Now we live by the Mediterranean diet, 95% of the time, and he walks almost daily on the treadmill. So far, in the 5 years, he's been told his heart is doing GREAT! We even managed to have a baby almost exactly 1 year after his heart surgery!!

So - 5 years, and his heart is stronger then ever! Whoohoo!

Go GET a CHOLESTEROL TEST! Ask for a lipid profile to show you ALL of your cholesterol and make sure you're healthy!!

We learned alot from the American Heart Assosication books that the nutritionist provided us with after classes we attended. Read up, it's not hard to make some changes and make your heart a healthy heart. We eat this way, our kids eat this way - so we're passing it forward to our kids since genetics (for both of us) plays a MAJOR role in heart health in our families.

almost Wordless Wednesday - My husbands "gift" was MY gift!

My husband is a gifted artist, and for Christmas, he gave me the gift of illustrated portraits of our children.

I posted these framed HERE.

sledding

There have been about 3 Christmas' now where we've visited my mom's house and there's been snow. Two of those were when my oldest brother was alive to enjoy this with his kids. During our visit this year, his kids (daughter photo below - and then one of her with her brother down below all of these) were super excited to see the snow and just decided for old times sake to go sledding in grandma's yard!! 'H' couldn't get enough of it, even though it was about 10-12 degree's there!!

Big E took a couple of turns as well and had fun, then ended up with some battle wounds on his hand and took a break from the fun. Little J and I went down the hill a couple of times and he LOVED it!! Broke my heart that Mike wasn't around to see these kids do this. It's the little things in life that I think about, because the little things were the BIG things to him.

N & H are discussing this next race. There were a couple of times they went down sortof tandem. Either way, they both went down that hill laughing and having such a blast! Over and over and over!!!

There is no description for the windchill. It was BITTER. Big E came in with red hands, little J came in with a red face, and N&H had red faces too!

mountain snow and scenery

We headed to my mom's in the NC Mountains this past weekend for a late Christmas celebration, and we stopped along the way for a few photos here and there...This bench just stood out to me all by itself, in the 10 degree weather.

This bridge is located in a place called Little Switzerland, where a recent ice storm snapped trees in half. It looked like a disaster area when we drove toward it. This particular scenic road was still closed. Here's a youtube that some local guy in that area posted after the ice storm.(yes. he's southern!!)

That is NOT an outhouse... but it makes for a pretty cool picture! From my moms backyard!

Those are gigantic icicles hanging from rocks that were on the drive up on the side of the mountain. The rocks usually drip water, and the water just froze in these gigantic clumps!!

A little birdhouse that looked so inviting and warm for a tiny family of birds, in moms backyard!

click any photo to enlarge

a year in photos

click to enlarge

Our year in photos.... Now, on to 2010!!