Nick and Briz

I don't love taking pictures of myself when I'm pregnant.  But I still want to capture a lot of   moments of our family, so I end up with a lot of pictures of Nick and Briz.  It ends up being really sweet, because I feel like I can really see a lot of their relationship through the pics I take.

Briz has been very sweet to her parents lately.  I get a little worried at times about how close she is to  us/how aware of us she is.  But I'm also hopeful that with a little sister, that will change things some.  I always knew that for our family, we needed more kids, and if nothing else, to help Briz.  But in the meantime, I love the cuddles and all of our sweet times together.

Briz loves letters  and reading, but she doesn't seem to love math so much.  Nick, determined to turn her into a businesswoman, has taken it upon himself to try to teach her math.  Here he is doing some addition with his freakishly long fingers.  He turns everything into fun for Briz.

This is a face he makes all of the time, when he gets all excited with Briz.  Pretty scary.  He turns everything with Briz into a fun game.

Nick is growing his hair out right now as well.  I love it.  It looks a little bit like a 90's AC Slater haircut when he doesn't style it.  Nick's got a lot of hair, so it can get pretty big.  But I am encouraging him to grow it out as long as possible.  I told him that he can grow it out to his shoulders, and then I can cut my hair, and everyone in our family can have the same hairdo.  He wasn't a big fan of the idea.

A game of Twister one night.

Dad was pooped after and mad at me for taking his picture.

Briz was devastated that she lost.  Losing is not her strong suit.

Reviewing right hand and left hand.  She seems to know them very well when we practice piano, but in Twister, she was struggling.

From my Camelia bush in my backyard.  Love all of the flowers blooming in the spring.  Normally I go a little more crazy and am picking flowers/planting flowers every day, but cutting them down from my yard once was ambitious enough for now.

It has been sunny and warm every day, and I am trying to take advantage of it the best I can.  We decided to paint Brizzy's birdhouse outside.

She thought it was so fun!  I love this age and how she gets excited about literally everything.

Briz giving her Dad some cuddles.  She was most likely sad about some sort of injury.  She gets about 10 "owies" a day.  It is really funny though because half of those are oddly similar to some of my physical problems, i.e. "Mom, I have a really bad headache;" "it just hurts really bad when I bend over;" "my arms just itch really bad."  Hmmm. Curious.

Briz looks so much like her Dad.  Her hair is darker than its ever been and so I keep freaking out about how much they look alike lately.  

Can you tell Briz likes her Dad a little from this picture?  Doing some wrestling with the Papworths. 

Briz went out one morning after the birdhouse had dried, got a chair from the backyard, and hung it on our apple tree.  She is so proud.  Every day she asks why Birds aren't going inside.  I haven't yet broken the news that its a ridiculously small birdhouse, mostly for decoration.

We like to visit Holland's grave around Easter, and we figured next Sunday would be busy enough, so we went this last Sunday.  Briz was so excited to bring her some pictures.  Briz doesn't really remember Holland, but she loves the idea of her.  In particular, she loves to tell people that she has two sisters!  

Briz and Dad talking about death and life while searching for some pine cones.  Briz always has a lot of questions, many of which she has asked before.  I love watching her little brain figure out these complicated matters of life.  And I also love watching her get excited about Heavenly Father's plan for our family.

She drew Holly her very own Easter basket.  And she drew clouds with each of their names on them to show that they will be together in heaven.

Some more cuddles with Dad.  Nick can't get enough, particularly since I only let him touch me if he is willing to scratch me :)

And in baby news, my itching has started to get bad.  Ugh.  There was a tiny tiny part of me that thought maybe I would be spared this time.  The worst part about it is the lack of sleep.  I have been pretty good about not drinking caffeine this pregnancy, but that just went out the window.   I plan on  hooking up a diet dr. pepper IV.  Also, my belly is huge!  I feel like a giant waddling whale.  My belly is so big, I can't believe I have another 8 weeks.  And yes, my waddle is embarrassing.  Most of the time my belly and southern regions hurt so bad that I can't move them at all, so I walk with my feet about 4 feet apart, facing outwards, and just moving my arms.   But the positive side of that, is I discovered today that I can rest my food on my belly now.  I get to take advantage of that for a whole 2 months!