Brielle's birthday 2011

Oh these are backwards. I always forget I have to do it backwards. Oh well. Here are all of Brielle's presents. She was lucky enough to have a family birthday party and a friend party.

Here are the friends just about to have cake and ice cream.
We only have two kids not looking in this picture which I think is a HUGE success. We have from left to right: Brielle, Lia Stubbs, Brooklyn, Emma Mouritsen, Gavin Mccullough, Lauren Clark, Ariah Warner, Eliot Farmer and Macy Mccullough.

Brielle with her incredible cake that my friend Brenda Clegg made. It was incredible and sooo yummy! What a beautiful 4-year-old I have!! We colored Tinkerbell, played follow the fairy (follow the leader) and had a treasure hunt. We had a great time.

This is from her family party that we had on Sunday. She got that cute Rapunzel shirt from her incredible primary teachers.

Too bad I didn't get more pictures of the family that came to the party. I get so caught up in everything going on and I forget to take pictures. I can't believe my baby is 4. She is such a sweet wonderful girl. I love her so much and I'm so thankful she survived all she had to go through so she could bring joy to my life each and every day.

Halloween 2011

Happy extremely late Halloween from the prettiest 4-year-old Snow White.
The skeleton is my pumpkin and the bat is Mike's.

This skeleton head is Randall's and the star keeper is Shimayne's. We always have so much fun decorating our pumpkins with Shimayne and Randall and they always turn out so good (in my opinion).

We had two Snow White's this year and I think they are pretty darn cute.

(I already did this post once. Hopefully it will work this time!)

Short post

I did a whole Halloween post and saved it but then I got an error and it never posted. Oh well. This will have to do. I just ran a 5k without stopping!! YAY!!! It wasn't my fastest time ever but I never walked, which is HUGE for me. That's all.

New pictures

I know I'm so far behind on this blog but Mike's dad took these at Mike's brother's wedding and I thought they turned out pretty good so I wanted to share. I sure love my girls in those dresses. Oh I am so lucky to have them. Which is your favorite? First or second?

This was at the actual ceremony where the girls could not be, so it was just Mike and I.

Hopefully I will get a caught up soon!

Yellowstone

My brother's family decided to go to Yellowstone this year and invited us to come with them. We had such a great time. I LOVE YELLOWSTONE! I think it is so beautiful and love to see the different hot springs and geysers. I thought June would be a nice time to go where it would not be too hot or cold. Well I was wrong. It was FREEZING! There was snow in most parts of the park and most people were in coats and gloves and scarves. Here is my dad, mom, Brielle, me, Brooklyn and Shimayne next to the lower falls which is my favorite waterfall. It is so powerful and majestic!

I love this picture of the snow going right down to the water.

Isn't this blue beautiful?

This is one of my favorite pictures of Brooklyn! She was actually so much better on this trip than I thought she was going to be, until the ride home from West Yellowstone where she cried for 4 out of the 6 hours.

This is inside the Yellowstone Inn. My brother Chris on the left with Hudson, Brigham, Annie and Brielle. I love their family so much and we had such a great time. I wish it could have been longer!!

This is one of my favorites. It is called Morning Glory Pool. The colors are amazing, though not as vivid as I remember and on the sign it said that since people throw stuff in there all the time so it is destroying it. So sad...

Another beautiful hot springs. I just accidentally deleted a picture right here which was of some buffalo on our trail. They say to stay 75 feet away and so a whole bunch of us got stuck on a trail going back to the Yellowstone Inn because the buffalo were right by the trail and on it once in a while. It was kind of a funny predicament.

I just love the colors in this water. Just a quick side note, Brielle when asked what her shirt said told her cousin it said "Kiss me I'm reddish." So that is an inside joke in our family now.

Here is Brielle in front of Mammoth Hot Springs which is also really beautiful

There were not a lot of flowers since it was snowing on us most of the time but I thought this one was so pretty.

This pictures of a black bear comes with a great story. We just had a glimpse of a bear where a whole lot of people had pulled over to take pictures and were blocking the road and such. I had just mentioned that I wanted to be the first ones to see a bear so we are not blocking anyone else in the road and we are not fighting to get a good picture. Not 20 minutes later, this was exactly what happened! I was very excited. There was a stream separating us so it was not scary at all.

Here is the cabin we stayed in. It was about 45 minutes outside of West Yellowstone. We drove a lot on this trip but it was so fun. Thanks Chris and Lisa for making this possible!

Happy Anniversary!

Man it has been a long time since I posted. I think today is a good day to do it! We got married 9 years ago today and I remember almost every detail. It was a very HOT August day. I remember getting to the temple about 10 minutes late and seeing the NERVOUS look on Mike's face (He never gets nervous). My nerves instantly dissipated and I couldn't stop smiling thinking about his face. We got married at 8:20 in the morning and I was the 8th bride out of who knows how many for the day. I remember feeling very excited that I got to spend eternity with this man who loved me so much. We had many family members and a few friends there. I remember we were over an hour late for our luncheon because our photographer would not stop taking pictures. I remember I wore white tennis shoes with ribbon laces so I didn't have to walk around in uncomfortable shoes the whole day. I remember my Grandpa Stoddard could no be there because he was not feeling well that day. I remember my younger sister not being endowed yet and how I yearned to have her in the temple with all of my other siblings and me. I remember going to Costco because we needed to get a few things for our honeymoon. I remember getting to the Anniversary Inn (the Lighthouse Room) and falling asleep on the floor playing Phase 10 at 5:00 pm because I had only gotten about 1/2 hour of sleep the previous night. I remember thinking how I had planned and thought about this day my whole life and I could not believe it was actually happening. I remember wishing my parents a happy anniversary because we got married on their 33rd anniversary in the same temple. It was a beautiful day and I am so grateful that I listened to the Spirit who told me Mike was the one I should marry and now we have two beautiful daughters who we love more than anything in this world! Here are 9 things I love about Mike in no particular order:

1. He makes me laugh.

2. He works hard at his job so we can have a nice house, food and clothing.

3. He is a great dad and loves his girls so much.

4. He is one of the most forgiving people I know.

5. He is genuinely a nice guy, which is one of the things that first attracted me to him.

6. He is nice to people, even if they may not deserve it. He always looks for the good in people.

7. He loves me and buys me things all the time.

8. He has a beautiful voice, which I could listen to ALL DAY LONG.

9. He is loyal and I know I can trust him always.

I love you Mike!

P.S. Happy Anniversary to my beautiful parents who I love so much!!

Perfect Video

You may not all think this video is perfect but I sure do. I love everything about it. I love Brielle's singing at the beginning and her feeding Brooklyn and them both waving to me. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Brooklyn from birth to now

Wow - I cannot believe she is already 1 year old. I of course meant to do this post right on our birthdays or that weekend but it has been a month and that is about how often I actually sit down and blog. Here she is the day after her birthday weighing 7 lbs 4 oz. She was 3 pounds heavier than Brielle so I thought she was HUGE! I have a good friend who would disagree otherwise since she had a 10 pound baby.

1 month - Here is Brooklyn at about five weeks sitting next to her new cousin Jaron (who I cut out of the picture; sorry Shell). What a chunk she is. She cried a lot as a baby and didn't sleep well at nights. 2 months - Here is her blessing day which was one of the greatest and worst days of my life. It was a beautiful day until about 6:00 pm when Brielle had her fingers slammed in the door leading to the garage and we spent the next couple of hours at the hospital and the next few months trying to get it healed. What an ordeal. Thankfully Brooklyn's blessing was wonderful and she was good in her dress with no blowouts! We had so many family and friends come. We are so blessed to have such great support nearby.

3 months - She starts smiling and babbling, saying mama here and there. Still not sleeping through the night and screams really, really, really loud a lot of the time.

4 months - Brielle realizes she can make Brooklyn smile. This by all standards is a terrible picture but it gives me such a happy memory I had to put it in. Brielle had not been so nice to Brooklyn when she was a baby (well still has a hard time) but I loved that she made her sister smile in this picture. It makes my heart swell when they play nicely together.

5 months - One of my favs. She has the biggest smile and the most beautiful eyes/eye lashes. I could just eat her up and did nibble on her cheeks everyday. I love those cheeks!

6 months - Starting to be a happier baby. She still cries A LOT but now she can roll so she can get to things faster and that makes everyone happy. We started her on baby food and she didn't want anything to do with it so we started putting rice cereal in bottles to help her sleep better at night. I think it helped a little bit.

7 months - Halloween! Brielle had this same monkey outfit for her 1st real Halloween and I love it just as much on Brooklyn. They make such adorable monkeys.

8 months - Brielle loved hats at this time in her life so she decided to put one on Brooklyn. Pretty cute don't you think? Brooklyn gets her first two teeth (not side by side oddly enough) and starts scooting forward. Still not sleeping all the way through the night.

9 months - the day this photo was taken Brooklyn decides to start crawling. I didn't have a single photo of her this month but I loved this one of her and her dad. She has decided she likes baby food and will finally eat it. She also would smack her lips right before she started nursing which I thought was so cute. Brooklyn also says hmmm....hmmm....hmmm..while eating. She finally sleeps all the way through the night three days after I moved her out of my room. I should have done that six months ago. Oh well. I know better for next time.

10 months - She has two more teeth for a total of four. Three on the bottom (thankfully the one came in between the first two on the bottom) and one on top (on the left side, not in the middle). Still love those big blue eyes and huge smile. I am a much happier mama now that I'm sleeping through the night which makes for happier kids!

This picture makes me laugh every time. We were at the cabin with family/friends and I think she was eating Cheetos? Maybe cheese puffs. Anyway I love this picture and I hope it made you smile as well. She loves to walk along things and goes around in a circle from the Love Sac to couch to couch in our house.

Brooklyn turns 1! YAY!! She doesn't have much hair but now weighs around 18 pounds. She can say Mama, Dada, Hi, Owww, Hello and Go. She took her first steps unassisted five days after her birthday and has never looked back. She loves walking and practically running whenever she can. She has been given many nicknames by both her sister and father and is rarely called Brooklyn but can be known as Bougia, Puggy wuggy, Sheshi, Ku-lu, Ku-tu, Pola bear, Sis, Brook and many other names that Brielle deems fit to bestow upon her. We are so thankful to have Brooklyn in our family. She has been a tough baby but I'm pretty sure that means she will be a great teenager right? We love you Brooklyn! Happy birthday angel!

Other March pictures

This is now my desktop because I love this picture so much of my mom and Brielle. This was taken at Ariah's birthday party.

Here is Brooklyn's cake that she destroyed, I mean ate. Did you know that sprinkles go bad? Well apparently after 8 years they do. I put these colored sprinkles on hers and the other cake and they were disgusting so then I borrowed some blue ones and redid the flowers. It was much better with sprinkles that had not expired. Note to self: Try the sprinkles before you put them on the cake...

Here is the finished product.

I loved this picture of Mike and Brielle. Two of the people I love most in this world.

Birthdays

Brooklyn had her 1st birthday last month and we had a great day celebrating our birthdays. She did exactly what I thought she would with her cake.

She ate her marshmallows first. Then got a little messy and threw it on the ground. Just like all her other food.

Here is her cute cousin Jaron who just celebrated his first birthday last week. He was a happy boy at the party and I loved this picture.

Here is another cousin, Ariah, who also looked really cute. I had to photoshop out the TV in the background because she just looked so

adorable. I don't think I got any great pictures of Brooklyn with all her presents but we had quite the day of celebrating with Ariah's party in the morning, Brooklyn's in the afternoon and mine in the evening. We love March birthdays in our family!!