So my hubby came home and informed me as of right now he will NOT be deployed!! I am so very happy about this! As I would be proud if he were to deploy, I am so glad he is staying in the States with us! Yes I am so very happy!
On another happy note our house is starting to look like Christmas! The stockings are hung, the lights are starting to go up, and in our van we now only play Christmas music. Yes I love Christmas! It was one of my favorite memories as a child. It was the one day out of the year we all got along for at least 4 hours straight =).
So I will be working very hard the next few weeks getting the house ready for our family that is coming to visit, baking cookies, figuring out Christmas dinner, etc. I will post pictures soon =).
Have a good week all!!

Erin

Well let me tell you, life sure does get busy when you have little ones! I haven't posted in so long. So what is going on with our crew you ask? Well we have decided not to go back home to see our families for Christmas. Instead we are staying here and my husbands family has decided to come visit us =). This makes me so very happy because it means we can enjoy our home for one last Christmas. That's right our last Christmas in our beautiful home and in the summer we will be moving to a new beautiful home.

I have recently found out my husband may be deploying to Afghanistan in March. So what does that mean? Well while hubby is off fighting for our country, I will be here to hold down the fort. That means I will probably be getting the house ready to sell, I will be a single parent for 5+ months, and I will appreciate my husband 100x more when he gets back.

So wish us luck I will post again soon about some Christmas fun! I hope you and yours had a great Thanksgiving!

From My Hart to Yours,

Erin

~I know summer is coming to an end but say it isn't so?! I feel like this month has flown by. I have so much to do before Christmas! I know what you are thinking its not even October yet. Well my hope is to have the inside of our home complete by then. Plus I have decided to make a lot of our kids Christmas gifts this year. So where do I start?! Well I guess I will start by going from room to room and make a list of what needs to be done, then I will make the Christmas to do list.

~I am also looking for a part time job. As I am a stay at home mom and have been for 4 years this may be tricky getting back into the work force. But like my long list of other things it needs to be done! So a job hunting I shall go!

~I wanted to make a list of things I will miss about summer:

10. Barbeque's! (I love the smell of a good BBQ )

9. All of the beautiful colors of the great outdoors

8. Children's laughter while running through a sprinkler

7. Going on picnics with the family

6. Gardening

5. The sun

4. Ice Pops

3. Garage Sales

2. The Beach

1. FLIP FLOPS!

From My Hart to Yours,

Erin

I WON!

~A big thank you goes out to Thrifty Decor Chick! I won a picture from one of her fabulous giveaways! I am so excited to put a bomobob photo in our home! I have needed a picker upper after the past few weeks.
~Lets just start off with my husband thinking he was having a heart attack. That was very scary but I am happy to say after an overnight stay in the hospital it turns out that he just had a severe case of heartburn. Then my porcelain on my crown chipped off my tooth (did I mention it just happened to chip off into my gums) which then = paying the dentist 500+ for it to be repaired, our kids were both sick.
~So with all of my complaining over with the bright side is that my husbands recent stress test went well they said his heart was healthy, My new crown will be in, in a couple of weeks, The kids are both now well and feisty as ever!
~ Isn't it funny how some times when we are in the moment things may not seem like they will get better, but then they do and we are thanking God that they did. I am realizing I need to thank God even when things are not so great, that some times we may not get what we ask for but the Lord knows just what we need.

From My Hart To Yours,

Erin

Got leftovers from your garden?

~ So my wonderful neighbor subscribed to the Woman's Day magazine for me. I started receiving it in the mail a few months ago and was excited about the simple recipes inside. Above is one of the said recipes. Now my kids love fruit but do not care for most vegetables so I thought I would try this since our Zucchini plant has been producing like crazy.

Zucchini Plant

~Guess what it was a success and a new favorite for the family! I never thought I would have to sneak veggies in to my kids diet. Maybe it is one step closer to them trying plain Zucchini ....well maybe ...

Blueberry Extravaganza!

~I am so sorry this post has taken forever and a day to appear on my blog! Life happened but I am finally able to show you what the products were from all of our Blueberry Fun! I have to tell you all that these were the biggest blueberries I have ever seen! Some were almost as big as a Quarter!

~So some of you guessed correctly! We made a Blueberry Pie! It was so yummy and was gone within 24 hours. I am kind of proud of my first blueberry pie and my kiddos of course ate it without any arguing!

Look Ma no hands!

~We also washed and froze a bunch so we could make blueberry pancakes! My hubby loves to make breakfast on the weekends so he made some blueberry pancakes so I could show you all how good they look!

~We made chocolate covered blueberries. However there is no picture because I was to busy eating them to worry about such a thing. Plus we made a lot of muffins! We made blueberry, blueberry banana, blueberry banana chocolate chip and blueberry chocolate chip. I think I have gained five pounds since we went blueberry picking =).

~Last but not least we made blueberry jam! Also a first in the Hart household. It was so easy and is so good. I know I keep saying that these things are all good but how can you go wrong with blueberries?!


~I hope you all enjoyed Blueberry Extravaganza! I also wanted to say hello to all of you who have decided to follow our blog! It has been fun so far and I am excited to learn more about blogging as time goes by. Hope you all had a great Labor Day!

From My Hart to Yours,

Erin

Blueberry Fun

Blueberry Girl

~This Summer my husbands Mom (Grammy Hart as the kids like to call her) came to visit for two weeks. We love all of my husbands family. They are fun, energetic, happy, and best of all they share the same beliefs as we do. So going on, we decided to take a trip to Indiana to visit my husbands aunt and uncle . This then lead to a blueberry picking trip about 3 hours further on to my husbands cousins house. We had a great time!

~I had never seen a blueberry bush up close and personal before so this was a real treat! Especially for the kids who LOVE blueberries. Our son kept running to the plants that had lower blueberries on them and plucking them off, putting them into his little mouth and going "Mmmmm"

Blueberry Boy

Blueberry Girl with her Grammy

We had a great team of blueberry pickers. There was 10 of us all together.

This is my husbands mom, aunt and cousin with their full buckets of blueberries!

Look at all of our blueberries!!

~I hope you enjoyed our little story of blueberry fun. My next post will be on what we did with all of those wonderful blueberries!

From Our Hart to Yours,

Erin

Our Girl

This is "Our Girl ". We will lovingly call her princess here. She says some of the cutest things. Here are some of our favorites:
~Princess "You want to have A TINKER BELL birthday party for meeeee?" (Actually for my birthday =)~

~Princess when the sun was setting "I just want the sun up" talking to her daddy because he can fix anything!~

~When husband was finishing dinner Princess states "Daddy times up your done!"~

~Erin "Princess what do you want for Christmas?" Princess "A tiny, tiny, tiny tree with lots and lots of ornaments and a star on top!"~

~Princess "Daddy makes the money!" Husband "So what does mommy make?" Princess "Daddy makes the money and Mommy makes the KIDS!"~

~Princess at dinner "Mommy you need to get some water so we can cheer !" Erin "I need to get some water so I can be excited like you?" Princess "No mommy we need to cheer!" Erin "Do you mean I need to get some water so we can put our cups together and say cheers?" Princess "Yes Mommy I want to do cheers with you!"~

HAVE A GREAT TUESDAY!

From my Hart to Yours,
Erin

The word "NO"

~So our little monkey, as we will lovingly call him here, knows very few words. Due to ear infections early on our "little"(I emphasize little because he weighs as much as Princess who is 3 1/2) 17 month old can say about 8 words, there may be more but these are the ones we hear most often. Let's see there is "uice" for Juice, "Nattie" for Daddy, "Nonnie" for Mommy, "Ah din" for all done, "Peassse" for Please, "Uh-Oh" he's got that pretty well pegged, and "No" or as he likes to say it, three times in a row like we say it to him "No, No, No". We are tickled pink with all of his "words". Even if we are trying to put him to bed and he says "No!".

~Why is this you ask. Well when I had my first ultrasound we found out a few scary things. My husband was on his way home from a TDY (temporary duty) and the doctor called to tell me our son would have Down Syndrome. No the Dr. did not ask me to come in to talk, he asked me if I was sitting down and then proceeded to tell me over a telephone conversation my bouncing baby boy was going to be sick. I was devastated.

~He then told me the reasons. Our son appeared to have a hole in his heart, the measurement of the back of his neck was too thick, and a shorter than normal femur. He told us we would have to come in for another ultrasound. OK. So what can we do? We went and again he told us these things except now he was telling us there was 1/5 shot he would have Down Syndrome. OK we can work with this I thought that means 4/5 chance he does NOT have it. Plus my husband has a thick neck. So after the Dr. reviewed our options with us: 1: Amniocentesis, which could lead to a miscarriage and still may not be 100% accurate 2: Abortion, we 100% said no as soon as it came out of the mans mouth 3: Just wait and see and monitor him through more ultra sounds. We chose option #3 and I started praying!

~So as our little monkey grew (and so did I). We read up on Down Syndrome. We knew no matter how sick or handicapped our baby would be we would still love him for he was Gods child, a GIFT to us. It was NOT easy going to the ultra sounds. Finding out from the Cardiologist, yes he indeed have a whole in his heart. Our friends and family were supportive. In fact we asked our families how they felt about our situation. Response (well as I type this I am crying), he is their grandson of course they would love him =).

~THE BIG DAY! My Mom had all ready arrived to help out with Princess. So where was our baby boy? Snug as a bug inside of me! He was a week overdue so we decided to go ahead and induce labor...YAY! Well....our baby Boy was born 9lbs 11oz! After many tests, pocking and prodding, monitoring his heart guess who did NOT have Down Syndrome?!! That's right, our little monkey! He did have a tiny whole in his heart (1mm to be exact). The doctors were also concerned about the way his ears turned after he was born (babies born with down syndrome may have ears that turn down) his were turning up but it was still a concern. But guess what? He was just fine! I mean the heart issue was a little concerning but a lot of people are born with that defect and may never know it. GOD IS SO GOOD!

~So now you know why the word "NO" is so good to hear. It will not always give us warm fuzzies as it does now for us (like when he is a teenager), but we will enjoy our toddler and his attempt at communication as long as possible!

From My Hart to Yours,

Erin

God's precious GIFT!

So Big!

~As we live far away from a lot of family and friends I thought it would be fun to share our daily lives through this blog. That is where I came up with "From Our Hart to Yours". For those of you who do not know, we are a military family. So what does that mean you say? Well it means we get to meet new friends in new places every 3 years. It also means that our life is one big adventure! We have met so many great and interesting people over the last 7+ years.
~We do miss our home state of Nebraska but we also have come to realize that home is where the heart (Hart) is! God has always provided us with the means to stay grounded through the good times and the bad. That may have been a new friend to talk to, a phone call from home, or a scripture that we may not have wanted to hear at that moment but it did us good none the less!
~Have a great Tuesday and I hope to have another post soon!

From this Hart to yours,
Erin