Brizzys Art Work 2016

Looking over this art work, it makes me laugh, smile, and just love my sweet little daughter.  I love how expressive she is through writing and art.

A picture and sentence she had to do in school when using the word, "near."

Getting excited about her Spring Break trip to "Reeno."

A book she made about her favorite things: Reading . . 

Going to church . . .

Playing soccer . . .

Reading the scriptures . . .

swimming . . .

Helping my mom and giving her hugs . . .

playing basketball.  

Those are a lot of great favorite things.

This was her self evaluation at school.  This little girl is SO hard on herself.  After she filled this out, her teacher told her that she was a model student and excelled at all of those, but she somehow had managed to find a way that she wasn't perfect.  Such a first child.  

A sweet note to her Dad.

Can't believe she drew this cow on her own.  Random and cool.

If you can't read this, she wrote down the lyrics to the Whip nae nae.  Just in case she forgot them.

Self affirmations are important in our house!

And not sure if all 6/7 year olds are like this, but holy cow, she's excited to get baptized.

Practicing writing down her testimony.  

Some of the art work from her art class.  

From her piano recital back in December.

More from art class.

I have about 1,000 of these.  I want to keep all of them (because I know I will want them in the future), but there begins to be an issue of storage.  Also love how she uses the word SO to emphasize her point.

1st grade self portrait.

She loves our family.  And I love her.  I feel so lucky she came to us first.

March 2016

I am WAY behind on my blog posts.  For a while I decided that I wasn't going to post anymore because the website that I used to transfer my blog into a book no longer offered the service so I was bummed and thought maybe a blog was pointless.  But I was looking through old posts last week and realize that I have been bad about documenting my family lately and regardless of what I do with my blog, I love having it to look back and remember events.  So here goes the beginning of catching up with 2016 . . .

Basketball continued into March and Briz continued to be tough.  She got less and less shy about asking for the ball.  Most of the time she would stand right next to her teammate and yell, "Pass!"  over and over again.  

Wembley continued to be a menace at games.  She found friends at every game and followed them around.  As long as she wasn't screaming or running onto the court I was happy.

When Portia came down to visit, Nona bought them each dresses that they were very excited about.  They thought it was fun to put on their dresses and put on a show for us.

Our friends, the Brunos held a concert at the local high school auditorium raising money for Holly's cancer treatment.  I had no idea it was going to be SO nice.  There was so much talent that contributed and I felt bad bringing Wembley because it was way too nice to have a toddler there.  Briz sang as part of a group of girls.  They all sang, This is my Fight Song.  It was sweet and Briz was excited to be a part of it.

I started studying for the National Counseling Exam. Yuck.  It had been way too long since I actually studied and was hard to get back into the swing of things.  I obsessively made notecards for every thing I needed to remember.  I ended up making thousands.

Wembley was feeling a little under the weather one day and she let Briz come home and snuggle with her after school.  My favorite moments.  Wish Dubs would do this more often.

Wembley is very into what she wears.  She has strong opinions.  For a week, she wouldn't take this hat off.  She also insisted on wearing a necklace.

We had spring student conferences for Brizzys class.  She has done awesome and its fun to see her not only do well in school but enjoy it so much.

On our day off of school, I took Briz to masterpiece art studio where she got to paint, stencil, and make things out of clay.  She was in Heaven!

Wembley colors for about 5 seconds before she decides she's done so not quite as fun for her.

Wembley and I went to the library regularly in March, and the first thing she always insisted on doing was sitting down at the computer.  She basically just banged on the computer for a few minutes.

Briz took a lot of selfies.  They're really good! 

On St. Patricks Day I did a scavenger hunt for the girls.  They loved it.

Except Wembley struggled at this time of night.  She was ready for bed.  

After finding the treasure, we made green floats.

Nick decided randomly one Saturday to cut down the huge Maple tree in our front yard.  It was a big tree!  

February Recovery

I got home from Hawaii and was a hermit.  It was so sad.  I felt like I was just out of the loop for almost a month.  But I was pretty miserable.  I was so relieved when I finally started to feel better!  I was able to enjoy my kids a bit more.  Brizzy's basketball season has been a fun one.  And this is one of her latest games.  Wembley is so wild at her games, but she does love cheering for her sister and her Dad (Brizzy's coach).  

We started doing some crafts.  Here we are make a fruit loop rainbow, starting to celebrate St Patricks Day.

Briz has been reading a lot as well.  Must be contagious.  I love seeing her get lost in a book.  This particular day, she was excited about her new books from the school library.  She read for probably a good 2 hours.  First outside, and then came in, grabbed a blanket, laid on the couch and read.

And I started working out again!!!  I can't explain how happy this makes me.  It's been a long few months without really being able to do much.  I'm trying to ease myself into it, which is hard for me.  But I've been doing shorter circuit training workouts at home and then some yoga.  I am excited to start running when my lungs have fully recovered.  But regardless, just happy to move a little bit.  

Wembley has been a challenge lately.  She is extremely vocal and extremely stubborn.  She is starting to get independent and wants to do everything herself.  Her tantrums and meltdowns don't last too long, but man she is loud.  And its really embarrassing in public places because she does sound like she's being tortured.  On this day, I finally had to make her put the basket back because she kept pulling everything off of the shelves and putting them in her basket.  She then walked like 2 feet every 15 minutes.  Taking the basket away resulted in a full fledge tantrum in the grocery store, which then of course resulted in a timeout (even louder screaming).  I love this firey girl, but she makes me tired.  A lot.

I wanted to take advantage of being able to exercise so I forced my girls to go on a long walk.  Brizzy loves being the oldest and pretending she is the mom.

Some silly girls with their sunglasses.