We Give Thanks

Somehow Thanksgiving is already over, and tomorrow is the 1st of December! The month of November seemed to fly by, but luckily we have some fun photos to remember it by. Tyson and I drove to Anacortes on Tuesday night, Robin came on Wednesday, and we didn't head home until Friday. Needless to say (especially for those of you who have experienced my parent's house) it was a weekend of relaxing, lots of amazing food, my mom busy busy busy in the kitchen, and tons of people coming and going...even though it was just our immediate family. This year we had 19 people in our family gathered together to celebrate Thanksgiving! In a few weeks when Erika has baby Spencer, we will have 20! Quite amazing to think all of those people started with just my two parents.

We have had an interesting year with a new baby, thoughts of the future, and trying to figure out how to best handle the economic difficulties that our country is in, which has greatly affected Robin's career the last couple of years. But no matter how looming things sometimes seem, it was refreshing to sit back and really think about how incredibly blessed we are! We have a beautiful, healthy baby boy, and our entire family is in very good health. Those are things we so often (and never should) take for granted. It seems as though we have been on this adventure for quite some time now, wondering what's "next" and how God will reveal the next steps to take. Honestly, we are a bit weary of being in this wondering/changing/believing in God's faithfulness stage. But at the end of the day, even though we don't feel life has settled into what we anticipated, our marriage and our prayer life and our faith is growing and being strengthened because we are in such a place. God is so good, and we are very thankful this Thanksgiving, and we look forward to Him continuing to walk with us through this journey.

Here are some snapshots of our restful weekend - soaking up family...and quite a bit of food at the same time.

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Bath time at Nana and Papa's!

I absolutely love this face. Doesn't get any better than that.

Football with daddy...and really ready for a nap (hence the droopy eyes).

Turkey carving!

Family dinner, angle 1 (can't fit everyone in one shot anymore ;-)

Family dinner, angle 2!

Tyson and cousin Tyler (they're one week apart) sharing their toys so nicely.

Ty discovering the lego tower that his cousins worked on all afternoon.

The three T's! Tyler, Tyson, and Tevin. Looking like grumpier old men in this picture...so funny.

The absolute picture of the perfect Thanksgiving: dads, their sons, and football. My brother Leif, and son Tevin on the left, Robin and Ty in the middle, and my brother-in-law Bobby with son Tyler. Oh, and my dad, who technically is the reasons all those boys are around!

Yay for family time!

Family and Friends

Good morning! Happy Friday to everyone. In the last couple of weeks we have had the blessing of seeing some family we love and miss, and getting together with some "friends" Tyson's age. Thought I would roll those photos into the same post!

Daisy and Andrew (Robin's sister and brother-in-law) are now living in Roseberg, Oregon, where Andrew is the head pastor at their new church. Between us being pregnant last year, and them moving a couple of times, we haven't seen them since last Thanksgiving!! They had never met Tyson, and we had never met the newest addition to their family: Miss Layla Farhat. FINALLY we were able to get together at Andrew's parents house and introduce the newest cousins!! We have missed Daisy and Andrew a lot, and even though this was a short trip, it was so wonderful to see them and will hold us over until we can spend more time with them around Christmas. Greg and Nina Miller (Daisy's sister-in-law and her husband) are also great friends of ours, and they just had their first baby, Ruby! It was such a blessing to have us all together under one roof even for a brief evening. We tend to take family for granted, and this night we were incredibly thankful for such awesome family relationships. Here are a couple of pictures!

The Schweens with the Millers, and new baby Ruby!!

From left to right: Paul/Sally/Stephen, Nina/Greg, Heidi/Tyson/Robin (holding new niece Layla), Andrew/Daisy/Miriam. So fun!

This week Tyson and I also had the privilege of getting together with some friends, and some play buddies for Ty! Lindsey Robison and Afton Vander Pol are two friends of mine, and are both new moms as well. Afton's son, Cooper, is exactly 2 months younger than Tyson. And Lindsey's daughter, Logan, is 2 months old now! We spend some time together at Afton's house, trying to keep Tyson from dominating all of the toys and banging things on the floor, and generally having a good time to laugh as new moms going through the same funny phase in life. Here are some pictures of the kids!

Cooper on the left, and miss Logan on the right!

Tyson exploring his new space at Afton's house.

...and standing up to anything he can get his sticky hands and feet onto!


All the kids playing on the floor! Well, Logan watched the boys do most of the playing...

Cooper doing his balancing act, Tyson trying not to freak about about being stuck between two little people, and Logan looking a little bit nervous about being next to two crazy boys.

Overall, fun times lately with family and friends! Looking forward to more of that with the holidays coming up. Now time to get ready for the weekend...we love having daddy home :)

Brush brush brush!

"I'm a BIG boy now!" Tyson has officially graduated from "babyhood" - he is getting his teeth brushed! Now that he has all of his first 8 teeth in, it is time to keep them nice and clean with some brushing before bedtime. He loved the toothpaste...

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Mom trying to figure out how to brush such tiny teeth with such a tiny toothbrush! Luckily he liked the taste! (And loves to chew on everything anyway)

"Mom, this is kinda weird...why am I laying on the floor?"

"Hmm, I think maybe I want to do it. I can brush them myself, really."

"See? I can totally do it..."

Finishing Fall

WOW it's been a long time since I updated our blog!!! We have been busy busy busy. Robin works one and a half jobs, and I "work" all day with Tyson, plus another part-time job from home on the side (admin work for a friend's company). Lately, the combination of how much Robin and I are working has been a little bit overwhelming for me. It seems as though there are never enough hours in the day to work, do laundry, fold cloth diapers, make baby food, keep up with a very mobile 9.5 month old...and somewhere in there find time to eat and shower :) All of that is to say, I apologize for the blogging hiatus! I will try to get pictures up more often. The following are just a few of our final fall adventures as we take advantage of the days without rain, and settle in for the cold winter!

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Some snugly time with daddy before bedtime.

Getting ready to go on an evening walk in the new sweater that Grandmommy bought!

We love going on walks - obviously :)

We found a leaf twice the size of Tyson's head, so of course I dragged it around the whole time we were walking (much to Robin's delight).


First time the fam all dressed up to cheer on the Broncos! Monday night football, big game...unfortunately the Broncos couldn't pull of the win. But at least we looked good!

Tyson's jersey is SLIGHTLY too big (as in, it's a 4T), but we managed to keep it on him for a while. Future father/son bonding outfits ;-)

That's all for now! We'll get some more picture updates on here soon. Ty is crawling and climbing and pulling himself up on everything these days, so I'm sure before we know it we'll have some videos of him toddling around the furniture and house! (Though, I'd be ok if that didn't happen for a couple more months! He's already crazy enough without the added chaos of walking and talking :)