My Babies

I recently realized just how much Rylee and Jayden really look alike! Everyone tells me that, but they have such different personalities that I just didn't see it. Until I saw these two pictures side by side:

And by the way, how cute is this?

Six Years!!

Last weekend Chad and I celebrated our 6 year anniversary! I woke up Sunday and it suddenly hit me that it had been six years!! We really looked forward to our first anniversary (because the first year of marriage is looong and because we got to go back to Disneyland to celebrate) and our second anniversary (because Rylee was almost due and we were getting ready for a HUGE life change). Somehow third, fourth and fifth got lost in the busyness of life, though, and here we are at six years! It has kind of been one of those "how did that happen" experiences for me.

Anyway, Grandma and Grandpa watched the kids so we could celebrate our special day. Our anniversary date consisted of dinner at Chili's and grocery shopping. (Funny the difference a few years of marriage can make, right?) The funniest part was how excited we were to go grocery shopping without any kids!! Seriously, 25 minutes to get everything we needed and it only took one shopping cart!

So in honor of our big day, I thought it would be fun to post some of my favorite wedding pictures. I thought about putting a picture of us now, but then I realized I don't really want to have that comparison on the internet! (More motivation to get back in shape, right?)

Larsen Life Update

Since I am sitting home sick today I decided to catch up on what's been going on in our lives lately. It has been a couple months since I started my new job doing tech support for a certain consumer electronics company and I am loving it!

It was an intense four weeks of training and another two weeks of "supervised" work, but I can't imagine being ready for the job with anything less. There was so much to learn that I came away from training each night feeling like my brain was numb. The people I talk to throughout the day are great, though, and it is very fulfilling being able to help people the way I do. (I have only had a couple of really upset people, and the other ones are awesome enough to make up for it!) And since I have officially passed training I can proudly wear my new t-shirt:

Adjusting to working at home has been interesting, but it definitely has a lot of benefits. I love being able to come out of the office and be with the kids during my breaks. It is also great to be able to hop out of the backyard pool (or out of bed from an afternoon nap, or off the tramp from jumping with the kids) and roll right into my desk chair 2 minutes before work starts.  My part time schedule is all weekend and evening shifts so we haven't had to use a babysitter since I finished with training. It has been hard to stay locked in the same little room for all that time, though. Especially when I can hear the kids crying or yelling out in the living room and want to run out and hug them better. We had a great babysitter during my training, though, and now the kids get to spend time with Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Mikey. (We are so spoiled to have family close who are always willing to help us out!)

I am loving having the days to just play with the kids, though.  It was nice to be home all day with the kids while I did daycare, but there were still things that we weren't able to do with all the other kids here. We are enjoying all our free-time by going out to lunch with Grandma, making impromptu trips to Wal-Mart to buy random things (that we probably don't really need), and playing with toys in the yard.

These kids are soooo spoiled that they got a trampoline (a hand-me-down from my younger days), a new swing set (from Grandma and Grandpa) and a swimming pool for our yard this summer.

On a less than fun note, I have been sick. Forever. And no one seems to know what is wrong.  :(  For the sake of documenting this time in our lives, I have to have a lumbar puncture tomorrow and a CT scan on Wednesday. After 4 weeks of extremely high fevers, along with a whole host of other problems, Dr. Firth has decided to just test for everything.  (Pneumonia, Mono, Whooping Cough, Meningitis, Tuberculosis, Hantavirus, West Nile and everything else he could think of.)  I'm really hoping that it turns out to be something simple like a random bug that is just taking forever to get rid of. (Although, after all the doctor visits and tests and medications, I might be almost disappointed at something as anticlimactic as that. Not really!) So here's hoping to to no headache from the LP and a fast recovery from whatever this is!