Christmas

While we were in Illinois we had a small Christmas with my side of the family. It was fun to see all the kids opening presents and enjoying them. Chris and Lisa gave Mike and I this beautiful picture of the Salt Lake Temple where we were married and etched in the clouds a Christus and also our names, date and temple we were sealed in. What a great gift! Oh and Brooklyn is eating my shirt.

We were in charge of our Weight Family Christmas Party and did Polar Express theme. It was a lot of work because we had Cafe Rio for dinner (homemade) but it turned out really cute and I think everyone had a good time. Brielle was so excited to sit on Santa's lap and get a present.

Brooklyn didn't mind being on Santa's lap either. We had a great Christmas morning at home and then went up to Mike's dad's house for dinner. Brielle got a lot of books for Christmas and many other fun things, including a new trampoline which we will set up once it stops snowing.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays and stopped to think about our Savior and the life he led and gave for us.

Siblings

I LOVE MY FAMILY. I cannot get enough of them. I really love being around them and it is so hard to leave when it comes time to part. I'm lucky to live very near my sisters and we get together often but I only see my brothers maybe once a year. My siblings are beautiful, smart, funny and talented in many ways. I am so thankful to have been raised in such an incredible family with incredible parents and incredible siblings. I have had the opportunity to get to know my siblings very closely at different times of my life and feel really close to each one. Shimayne (my oldest sister on the left) and I have been close my whole life. She was very excited to get a sister after two boys. Now we live 5 minutes from each other and get together most weeks for FHE or playing games. I love her so much. She is so talented in music, singing and playing the piano. She is incredible with my children and they love her so much. Chris, 2nd from left, lives in Minnesota and is a urologist. We were never really close growing up, nor were we close after he got off his mission, but once he met his wife Lisa, and she and I got along really well, did we start to get close. After he was married and graduated from USU, he moved to SLC to go to the U for medical school. I lived in SLC at the time going to LDS Business College and had the opportunity to go over to their apartment a lot to hang out and babysit and I LOVED it. He is so smart. He is a great speaker and I love hearing him talk and tell stories. He is a lot like my Uncle Ron who is one of the most amazing men I know. I miss having Chris and his family live near by. Donovan, middle, of course lives in Illinois and he and I got really close when Shimayne and Chris left on their missions. We stayed up late numerous nights talking and I remember one of the hardest days of my life was when Donovan flew to the Dominican Republic for his mission. I missed him terribly. Donovan is one of the most selfless people I know. He is an incredible father to his children and is a peacemaker. I wish they lived closer too. I love him and am grateful for his influence in my life.
Shelleen, my younger sister, and I did not get along AT ALL growing up. I remember my mom trying everything she could think of to get us to stop fighting, all to no avail. We have very different personalities and had a hard time figuring each other out. We fought a lot. When she finally moved out of my room, once my older siblings moved out, we finally figured out how to get along. Then we started sharing clothes and kind of liking each other. Finally we learned to love each other and we are best friends now. She lives just 45 minutes away and we generally will see each other once a week. After she got married, they moved to Nebraska and that was really hard for me. I'm so glad they moved back and that her kids decide to come to this world as soon as I am pregnant with mine. Some days I don't know what I would do without her. She was always a tom boy growing up and now she is so domestic and doing so many crafty things at home. I have to admit I'm a little jealous of her skills. She is beautiful and so quick witted. I wished I had her wit. She is so fun to be around and I love her.

Sorry this is a long post - just a lot of reflection today. My parents are amazing. My dad has worked so hard for us. He was a teacher and so of course had to have another job. He risked his life everyday being a driver's ed teacher. He worked generally from 6 in the morning until 6 at night and then a lot of Saturday mornings. He then fulfilled many church responsibilities on Sundays so I didn't see him much on those days either. There are not many men in this world who love their wives as much as my dad loves my mom. He would do anything for her and it was a great example to me of the kind of man I wanted to marry. My dad can fix anything and he saved us so much money fixing things that most people would have to call a repair man for. My dad loves the outdoors and I have gone to many places inside and outside of Utah thanks to him. I love my dad very much. My mom is probably the most selfless person I know and one of the most Christ-like. She is so calm, sweet, loving, thoughtful, compassionate and just amazing in every way. I feel like my mom and I have always been close. I hope with all my heart I have the same relationship with my daughters. I can never say enough about how much I love my mom and how much she does for every single person around her. Every one who knows her says how caring and selfless she is. She constantly has people over for dinner and takes dinner to those to who need it. She always seems to know what I need either emotionally or physically and provides for it. Whenever I don't feel well, I want my mom because she knows how to make me better. Brielle loves her and always wants to be around her. I don't blame her. I do too! I love my mom so much and hope to be just like her! There is my family and I LOVE THEM.

Illinois

My family, including my parents and siblings and their families, all went to Illinois for my brother and his family's big weekend. We started off with taking pictures Saturday morning.
We could not get Brooklyn to smile for the real photographer but I can get her to smile if I am taking it. I love this one of Brooklyn with her dad.

Here is my entire immediate family with their families. It was not such a great spot to take the picture and the other place we tried didn't work out, but we were all together and we had a great weekend together.

Then at 1:30 pm, my brother Donovan received his doctorate degree in History. He has worked really hard getting his degree as well as being a great dad to five kids. He is amazing!! Way to go Donovan!!!

At 5:00 on Saturday evening Donovan's oldest son, Trey, was baptized. I tried to get a picture with this post in the right area but could not. Anyway, it was great.

Then on Sunday morning Donovan's daughter, Eden, was blessed. It was such a fun weekend. Donovan and Teah had worked really hard to make it all nice and flow easy and it really did. It was so fun to have all my siblings together. I love them so much and love to be around them and their spouses. We have a lot of fun together. We came home on Monday, so the trip was short and sweet. Thankfully we had my parents on the flights we were on and it made all the difference in the world with our kids. Thanks mom and dad!

November

Thankful - There were so many posts on blogs and Facebook about being thankful and I'm so grateful to each of you for reminding me of things that I am grateful for. I attended a funeral on January 8th of my aunts brother who died at a massive heart attack at the young age of 47. He left behind a beautiful wife and three children with the youngest only 9 and the oldest 19. It really hit me hard how fragile life is. He went to church and started having pain, collapsed, was rushed to the hospital and was pronounced dead not long after. Do we take the time to let our loved ones know how much we love them every day? Even just on our way to church? I hope I am better and loving more and nagging less. I am so grateful for my family, especially my husband and children. They are my life and unfortunately I am short on patience way more than I should be. Look at these faces? I am so blessed to have them and I hope I can be as good of a mom to them as my mom is to me. I am so thankful to have wonderful parents who love each other and love me. One of the few pictures I have both girls smiling. They were having fun trying on hats. I wish I could get them to smile like this when they are dressed up and have a cute background. Someday...

These are dresses that Mike got for the girls from Sears. I love them. They look so cute.
My kids have the funniest sleeping positions. Do yours too? If you haven't seen my other post on Brielle's sleeping positions, you should go back and look. She is hilarious. This one made me laugh with the pillow on her head.

Apparently Brooklyn can sleep anywhere. She has fallen asleep on the floor sitting up, in her chair just after eating and in Mike's arms sitting up when we were trying to get family pictures taken.

How did I get so lucky?

Halloween - I know I'm too late, but I'm doing it anyway

Brielle was Cinderella (although I forgot the black thing that goes around her neck). She loved being a princess and she looked so cute and so excited about it.

Brooklyn was our cute girl monkey. She is pretty darn adorable.
I posted this one for my sister, Shimayne. She loves Brooklyn's face in this one. Me too. It makes me laugh.

Here are our pumpkins this year. We got a lot of compliments. We love carving them with our family. What a great tradition. From left to right is mine (Haunted castle), Mike's (wolf howling), Phil, Mike's brother (pirate skull), Randall (happy face) and Shimayne's (Devilish Diva).

I love Halloween and putting up decorations for it. Brielle really enjoyed it this year as well. Even though it was a rainy day, we still had a great time and got in some trick or treating between down pours.

Brielle's birthday

For Brielle's birthday, it was a Friday and so both Mike and I took it off and just spent the day with her. It was so fun. We took her to Pirate Island which she loves. Shell, Ariah and Jaron came with us. It was fun. After that we took her to Jump On It which is another favorite place.
This is a fun little machine. It takes them on an amusement park ride. Brielle and Ariah love it

The day after her birthday was when we had a Pirate Princess Party. I attempted a treasure chest cake and failed miserably. Oh well. If I try it in the future, I know some things to change.

Brielle loved her pirate princess party. She loves both of them, so we just combined them. I think some of my family thought we were weird, but Brielle had fun! I cannot believe she is 3 already. Where does the time go?

She ran off with quite a loot this year. We had many family members and friends that came and celebrated with us, although many couldn't stay for long, we appreciated them coming.

Oh how I love Brielle. She is the joy of my life. She is so funny and makes me laugh everyday. She says things that are far beyond her 3 years of age and I forget many times that she is just a little kid, until she does something that a 3-year-old does which drives me crazy. She is leaning to be softer with Brooklyn and now likes that she can actually play with her and give her toys to play with. She loves to look at books and most of the time will not go to bed when I put her in bed but looks at books for the next hour or so. She always sleeps with a little lamp on at night and completely melts down if we turn it off, so we leave it on all the time. She loves puzzles and baby dolls. Brielle loves to go anywhere away from home. She often will cry when we are headed home after playing at a playground or at someone else's house and say how she doesn't want to go home. I hope that changes in the future. We love our Brielle so much. She is such a joy and so sweet to other kids around her, for the most part. She was so excited to go to primary that I told her she needed to not wear a diaper to primary because they don't like changing diapers (which is true right??!?!?) so she potty trained herself. It has been so nice. I'm so glad she finally decided to do it. She still does not have a lot of hair and it is kind of thin so it is hard to do things with it but I think she is beautiful and marvel everyday that I have been blessed with such a beautiful, fun, sweet angel daughter.

Catch up - Arches - Oct 2010

I love Arches! I love everything about it except for the heat. So we decided to go down in October and it was perfect. We just did an out and back trip because the girls don't sleep well and we didn't want to spend money on a hotel night in which we would sleep worse, so we went down and back on a Saturday with Mike's family.

Here is Brielle with North Window. She did so great and loved hiking and seeing all the arches.
My girls and I at north and south window. Brooklyn who I was really worried about because she cries a lot also did fabulous. She loved being in the pack facing out.

Phil, Mike's brother, and Brielle looking out from Double Arch.

I think this is such a great picture. Mike and Brooklyn at Sand Dune Arch.

This is Brielle at Sand Dune Arch. Of course this was her favorite! We had a fabulous day and I classify it as an almost perfect day.