Leaves

I love the fall and was so upset when I never went up the canyon and took pictures with the leaves. We had a lot fall in our backyard and so I raked them up and we did an impromptu photo shoot. I love them!!

Brielle turned 2 - can you believe it?

My baby is 2? Parents always say their kids grow up too fast and I cannot believe my little 4 lb 4 oz baby girl is 2 years old and wearing 2T clothing! She is the light of my life and I am so grateful for her. Especially on her birthday I am grateful for her but it is just a little hard thinking about her sweet twin sister who could not join us on earth. Just before her birthday, we found out that she will be having a sister! We are so excited. I didn't think she was going to have a sister and so we are thrilled that she will. She loves giving her baby sister hugs and kisses through mommy's tummy. Just the other day, she said Mama I want my baby sister to come out so I can hold her (of course it was not a perfect sentence, but pretty close). She is so sweet and will be such a great big sister. I love you Brielle and am so grateful that Heavenly Father allowed us to have the miracle of having you in our lives!

This toy is from our good friends the Gentiles who just moved to Ohio. We are going to miss them so much!

We had so many family and friends come and Brielle was so happy to have everyone there. She got some great presents!

Here is Ariah in one of Brielle's birthday present bags.

Brielle, Ariah and Grandma

My sweet mom got Brielle and Ariah these matching outfits and I love them. I love that Ariah is like Brielle's twin. They are the same size so we can dress them like twins. It is so fun!

Yellowstone - September

My parents made it possible for Mike and I to go to Yellowstone together without Brielle. We had a great time. Mike was sick but he tried so hard to not let it hinder our trip and I think we both really enjoyed ourselves overall. Of course we took hundreds of pictures but these were some of my favorites. If you have not been to Yellowstone, plan to go next year. It is so fun and so many beautiful places to see and go. I don't think the pictures need explaining.

Yea I found my camera, pictures to come...

Carving pumpkins

I love carving pumpkins. We have a tradition with my sister and her husband Randall to carve pumpkins every year together. Last year we had some great ones and this year we did too. Here they are from left to right:

1st one - Mike
2nd one - Sharene
3rd one - Shimayne
4th one - Randall

I think it is such a fun tradition and I hope Brielle likes it as much as I do!

Halloween

Sorry I have not posted for a long time. I cannot find my camera! AHHH!! My husband and I went to Yellowstone in September and had a fabulous time while my parents watched Brielle. It was a nice getaway and we got some great pictures which I will post later.

Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. I love decorating for it. I love the fall weather where I can start having hot chocolate and soup whenver I want. I LOVE IT! One of my favorite parts now is dressing up my little girl for Halloween. My sister-in-law Teah got this adorable Dorothy outfit for Brielle and I have been so excited to dress her up in it. She was even cuter than I imagined! Enjoy!

Our last couple of months

So I'm not the kind of mom that likes to let Brielle eat by herself because it causes more of a mess to clean up. But this time I let her eat Mac and Cheese with ketchup (yes it came from my husband, ketchup on Mac and Cheese). Anyway she ate the whole bowl pretty much by herself. She looked just too cute afterward not to take a picture.

I loved this outfit and love that Brielle will smile on cue now for pictures!
Mike got this cute water ball for Brielle for summer. She has loved it. She is sitting in a garbage can lid with some water in it. She had so much fun playing in it.

We had cousins visit for a few weeks this summer. Here is her cousin Tennyson.

Here are Brielle, Ariah and Treytion playing with the ball. What a great investment.
Love these girls and their adorable swimming suits.

Well what can I say about the below pictures....yes they are from the 4th of July and it is September but I just downloaded these. I didn't get any really good ones, but we had a fun 4th of July with family and friends. Here is grandma, Brielle and Ariah.

Brielle with her cute camping chair. She didn't sit in it much but it is a cute chair!

Here is a lot of our group!

Happy 4th of July :)

My wonderful older sister

So this picture is over a year old, but it is still one of my favorites. I blogged about my younger sister and now I need to blog about my older one. I love my older sister. We have always been close because there are two boys in between us so we had to stick together! She has always been so sweet to me and I remember her telling us stories when we were little and reading to us (Shell and I). We are so lucky to live about 5 minutes away from her and her husband right now. It is so fun. We get together almost every week for FHE and that has been so nice. She also babysits for me ALL the time and never lets me compensate her! Brielle absolutely loves her. I'm so thankful for you Shimayne! Thanks for being such an awesome older sister. I love you!!

My amazing younger sister

This is my amazing younger sister, Shelleen. She is so talented in so many ways!

A couple of weeks ago, Shell came down to my house, did all my dishes, cleaned up my front room, mowed my lawn, got laundry done, helped take care of my little girl and made dinner for Mike and I! She is such an angel. She knows that I have a hard time when I am pregnant and so she came down to help us out. She knows how I feel because she has a really hard time when she is pregnant as well so I just wanted to tell her how much I love her and appreciate everything she does for me and my family. Thanks Shell!! You are the best and I'm so grateful you are my sister! I love you!

Saga of pregnancy and my sweet, sweet husband.

So obviously I have not been feeling well lately. It makes me so happy when women feel really good when they are pregnant. I think it is so awesome when it happens, but unfortunately I am not one of those people. I feel sick 95% of the time and I have NO ambition to do ANYTHING. I can't think of anything to eat since NOTHING tastes good or sounds good. I have no energy to clean the house or do any work. I can barely get through the day taking care of Brielle. So how do you feed your kids when you cannot even think of a single thing to eat yourself that you can keep down? It is so hard for me to think of anything to feed her. Any ideas? How do you stop from feeling so incredibly lazy and so incompetent when you are pregnant? Of course I know that being pregnant is important and no one else can take care of this baby but me; however, I feel like other women can handle pregnancy so much better than I can and can actually do things when they are pregnant. How do you do it? How do you find ambition when you don't feel well?

My huband is so sweet. When he comes home, he cleans up and makes dinner for us. He is so loving and thoughtful and I cannot believe what a wonderful man I married. He knows I do not feel well and have no energy but still it has to be hard coming home after a long day to a dirty house with no dinner every night. I'm so sorry honey. We just celebrated our 7th anniversary the other day and it was so great to just be with him and have lunch and go to a movie. We have had 7 wonderful years. I am so blessed to be his wife. I am so lucky he takes such good care of us, especially when I'm pregnant and cannot seem to take care of myself. I love you Mike. Happy Anniversary!

Could it be?

It's true, It's true. Here comes baby #2! I am pregnant with #2 and we could not be more excited! I did have to do in-vitro again but we are so happy it worked. I am about 10 weeks along and have a feeling this pregnancy is going to go much better than the last one!

Brielle

I decided to do a post on telling what Brielle is doing now instead of just pictures. Brielle is almost 21 months and hit the terrible 2 stage about 2 months ago. She can talk a lot which I thought would mean we would not go through a terrible 2 stage because she can say about everything she wants. She can be the sweetest thing but sometimes, like just this second, she just hit me in the face. Any thoughts on controlling this? I put her in time out after she hits me once and I let her know that is wrong and she should not do that again or she will go in timeout and then generally she does not do it again. It is so sad to me when I am just playing with her and she turns around and hits me. What do I do? She also just started throwing things. She will throw things high up into the air and hit me or my computer or another person. It can be a little painful.

She can be so sweet and loving. The other day she grabbed me and gave me a big hug with her arms, not just her head leaning in, and held me for about 20 seconds. I absolutely melted!

She loves motorcycles. She gets so excited every time she sees one on the street. She loved going to the 4th of July parade and seeing the motorcycles that went past her.

She loves to draw but mostly it is with a pen that I have taken out the ink part so she can go free and do what she wants and I don't have to worry about her getting ink all over.

Brielle LOVES her grandma. She fell last week and cut her lip open on the corner of my nightstand. We spent a lot of the day in the ER. The WHOLE TIME she wanted her grandma. My mom was there with me and I couldn't have done it without her. Brielle was very upset anytime I was holding her. She wanted her grandma but she did want me NEAR her.

Brielle loves music and can sing most words to I am a Child of God, I Love to see the Temple, Families Can Be Together Forever, Don't Stop Believing and Teach me to Walk in the Light. I love to hear her sing. It makes me so happy.

Brielle is a great sleeper. She, most nights, will sleep for 12 hours and takes usually a 1.5 hour nap during the day.

She LOVES LOVES LOVES the water, anything to do with water. I will water the garden and she loves sticking her hands out so the water falls on them. She loves bath time and she loves going to the pool. It is definitely a struggle to get her away from water and much screaming is involved, on both her part and my part.

She does not usually walk but runs wherever she goes. She loves to go on walks and I think I may start abandoning the stroller. I just usually push the stroller and hold her hand. She is usually a very good sharer. If someone takes something she had, she will usually just find something else to play with.

She does NOT love to eat. It is a struggle getting her to eat very much of anything except macaroni and cheese (I know healthy right?). If she eats what I think is a good amount, she will throw it all up either right there on the tray or later in the day.

I almost forgot....she is one of the most obedient little girls I know. I'm sure she will not always be this obedient, but 90% of the time she will listen when I tell her to come to me or do something, like close a door or put one of her toys away. I feel so blessed to have such an obedient child!

We absolutely love her and think she is so cute and funny most of the time. We are so blessed to have her in our lives. She is a miracle baby and we are so lucky to have her in our family. I love you Brielle!

Grandma, Grandpa, Brielle and roses

Here are a couple of pictures I took of our roses. I thought they turned out pretty good!!
We ate at the Italian place yesterday and then we took a couple of pictures. Yes we are standing in the middle of a parking lot which is the perfect place for a photo shoot, don't you think? This is Brielle kissing my mom. I thought it turned out sooo cute!!

My parents with Brielle.

My dad and Brielle.