Christmas 2018

Christmas was a wonderful day.  We woke up around 8 a.m. and opened presents for a few hours before heading over to Bri and Ronell's for a lunch.

The girls both got bikes.  Briz had outgrown her old princess bike and Wembley has been doing so well on her balance bike, we're hoping sometime soon she'll be able to take on the bike without pedals.  Taft got a truck walker.  He loved it.  He sat it in happy for at least an hour.

Pops and Grandma Julie came over early in the morning to watch us open presents.  Grandma wanted the kids to show the bums on their new Christmas jammies.

The kids also got a new swing set for the backyard, amongst other things.  From Papa and Nona, they got a new painting easel.  Briz loved her American Girl doll car, wardrobe, and clothes.  She also got some some new wheelies which she loved.  Wembley got some things for her kitchen, and she loved her new dress up wedding dress.

Christmas 2014

This was our first Christmas home and we were pretty excited.  

Christmas Eve was spent getting everything ready for christmas and for our trip to Utah.  

We visited Holland's grave Christmas Eve.  It was the most emotional I've been visiting her in a while.  I was thinking a lot about how much I missed her this Christmas.  It seemed like just being home and having two little girls I was more focused on our family and her absence was really felt.  I think also just having a baby at Christmas reminded me that I never got to have a Christmas with her.  Now, thinking about it, it seems almost silly from an eternal perspective.  But in the moment and with the Holiday season I really felt it.  

Wembley got sick Christmas Eve.  It was so sad.  It was her first time being sick and I was pretty nervous about it.  Right before she went to bed, she vomited.  Her tendency to be dramatic combined with her choking habits made it a scary moment.  But about 30 seconds after she was smiling and giggling.  

This is our living room all decorated Christmas Eve.

Briz slept in until about 7:45 and had already gone downstairs to peak at all of the presents before she came and woke us up.

Brizzy really had three stockings to open: hers, Hollands, and Wembleys.  It took us a LONG time to open presents because we forced her to take her time.

One of Wembley's favorite presents.  A onesie that said: "Ah good sir, I do believe I shat in my pantaloons."  That Santa has a great sense of humor.

Wembley actually enjoyed her stocking much more than I thought she would.  She wanted to play/chew on everything.  She thought the whole thing was really fun.

This picture made all of Nick's family laugh.  Briz looks like a giant elf in this picture.  While she really is growing like a weed, this Christmas tree is just small.  

By that evening, Wembley was feeling much better.  

Papa and Nona came over late morning and watched Briz open up some presents.  We then had a big breakfast.  We quickly headed off to Uncle Mark and Aunt Susie's for some more food and a game of bunco.  We then went home and got ready for the long haul to Utah.

Sunny Days

We've had some sporadic nice weather lately.  It makes me excited for when I can walk for more than 20 minutes!  But in the meantime, we are trying to do fun simple things.

Decided to start Briz on golfing this summer.  We have practiced a bit in our front yard and she is way more into it than I expected.  She gets very focused and spends a lot of time trying to get the ball in the hole.  Might help if we mowed our lawn :)

I love it that she still loves bubbles.  Cheapest and easiest form of entertainment in the sunshine.  I hope she likes bubbles until she is 16.  That's realistic right?

We signed up for the Lake Oswego Lake Run.  And when I say we, I mean Nick and Briz.  I was jealous until I heard how hard the 10k was.  I felt like I got a good enough workout just walking to the finish line.  I was definitely doing my own huffing and puffing and sweating!  I admittedly sort of like freaking people out when they see.  Most places I go people look at me very concerned as if I am about to drop a baby right there.

Nick is a maniac and doesn't train at all.  I am excited for him because he gets to run in two Epic Relays this summer.  He has spent so long working at them, but now he gets to enjoy them.  It will be fun next year when we can run in them together!

The Papworths joined us at the Lake Run.  Briz was a little brokenhearted when she realized that her Dad is not the fastest in the world.   Michael is a running fool.

In between the 10k and the Kids Dash, they had a festival, or as Briz pronounced it, a "Vestibal."  They got balloon animals, face painting, blow up slides, dance party, etc.  

Here they are attempting to pose with their face painting, but they just look like they are in pain.

Getting pumped at the start of the race.  Briz and Ella started out holding hands.

This race was a bit wimpy, it was like 4 blocks of running.  But I was still surprised at how focused Briz was.  I had to prep her before that she wasn't going to win (cause I didn't want to deal with a meltdown afterwards), but she seemed to understand.  Even still, she booked it.  I think she was like the third or fourth kid to finish out of a lot.  Maybe she does have Nick's genes after all.

She wanted a medal, but had to settle for a lousy ribbon.

Here Briz is doing some outdoor painting with some homemade paints.  I love how she wants to be my helper most of the time.  She was getting really frustrated when her painting wasn't as neat as she would have liked, so we worked on doing "messy painting"  with this activity.

Love the sunshine!  Will love it even more in a month or two when this big baby is out of me.

Easter 2014

I think I decided that Easter is my new favorite Holiday.  It's a beautiful time of the year, it's getting warmer outside, flowers and trees are blossoming everywhere, and it smells so good everywhere.  I love talking about the resurrection with our family.  It makes us excited and hopeful to be with Holland again and with each other.  And then of course, I love a lot of Easter candy :)

Papa took Briz on a date to see the Easter Bunny at the mall.  She thought it was a little strange that he had glasses, but still gave him a lot of hugs.

Briz dyed eggs with Nick the day before Easter.  Lots of interesting art work.  They also made sugar cookies.  What a domestic dad.

We had a wonderful ward Easter egg hunt and breakfast the day before as well.  We had a huge turnout, and it was a nice chance to remember the purpose of Easter as there was a small program about the Savior.    

Easter morning was really fun at our house. Papa and Nona came over to join in the festivities.  Before our Easter Egg Hunt, we had a lesson about the Savior's atonement, crucifixion, and resurrection.  Briz and Nick then went on an Easter egg hunt outside, and we opened our Easter baskets. Briz was most excited about her miniature Ariel and the movie, Frozen.  She kept asking, "How did the Easter Bunny know that I wanted these?!"   

You can't quite tell from the picture, but I curled Brizzy's hair before church, and she loved it.  She liked to walk with an extra bounce in her step so her hair would bounce up and down.  I told her she looked like an Easter Princess, and I am pretty sure she took me literally.  

After church, we went to the Cottle family Easter party.  It was fun to see everyone, but by then I was a bit maxed out.  My contractions were really bad that night.  I couldn't stand up without being in quite a bit of pain, and had to get into labor mindset to help with the contractions (that involved a lot of intense breathing and my loud labor moaning).  Strangely enough, still not too worried about anything because there has been no bleeding and the contractions are very irregular.  Just need to learn my lesson and try not to do too much.    I blame Easter.

It's Friiiday night

I am pretty sure when I try to think of titles for my blog posts, about 94%  of the time, they end up being lyrics to rap songs.

We started a tradition a few months ago, in an attempt to avoid sitting around at home on the weekends (this is obviously Nick's idea).  On Friday night, we try to do something fun with Briz.  By the time we all get home from work and school, it doesn't leave us much time, so we usually do something small, like play a game, watch a movie, etc.  And since I've been pregnant, we haven't been as diligent about keeping up the tradition.  But with it getting warmer outside, I get excited about our Friday nights.  I love walking down to the ice cream store, going for bike rides, playing tennis.  Clearly, I can't do any of those things right now, but I get excited thinking about it.

Last Friday, we had a coupon for a frozen yogurt place to try out.  I was laughing looking at our selections of frozen yogurt because it seemed to fit each of us quite well.

Brizzy's chocolate sorbet complete with fruit loops, sprinkles, and gummy bears.  Sick.

Nick's overload of peanut butter and chocolate.  

And my obsession with all things fruity: blackberry sorbet with blueberries and strawberries.  Eating is pretty disappointing these days because I get so full so dang easy.   And not to mention the heartburn.  I have reverted back to my usual pregnancy tactic of carrying around a costco size container of Tums in my purse.  

Life has been much more simple the last few weeks and I'm learning to get used to it and even enjoy it a lot of the time.  But I love having little outings with these two goofballs.

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!