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.

New Biggest Loser Competition

So as you call know, I did a Biggest Loser Competition. I'm thinking of doing another one with Friends. Would any of you want to join? I think we would start on January 2nd, go for 12 weeks and the entry fee would be $15. The jackpot would go to the one who lost the most body percentage which I hope will be a good amount of money depending on who goes in with me on it! What do you think? Any questions or thoughts?

The Biggest Loser

Oh my gosh, I WON! I can't believe it. I'm so excited. It has been a long hard 12 weeks but I am so excited I pushed myself so hard. I still have a long ways to go to get down to my goal weight, but the gift certificate to Anniversary Inn (which was the prize) is going to be so worth it. I'm so excited to have a night or two out with my husband without my kids. I obviously have not done that since Brooklyn was born since I am still nursing. She is finally starting to sleep through the night though so I am stoked! Here are the stats:

Weight lost:
Sharene: 37.8 lbs
Ryan (BIL) 32.8 lbs
Randy (uncle) 40 lbs
Saundra (mom) 21.6 lbs
Shelleen (sister) 20.7 lbs
Meri (aunt) 20.0 lbs
John (dad) 24.5 lbs
Susie (cousin) 11.8 lbs
Mike (husband) 18.6 lbs
Randall (BIL) 5 lbs
Shimayne (sister) 1.5 lbs

Congratulations to all who participated in losing weight! It was so fun to be together and working together towards losing weight. My sister, Shelleen, headed this up with many motivational thoughts and quotes and I appreciate her so much. We are planning to start another one at the beginning of the year. Anyone want to join? We think it will be between $10 and $15 to join! Let me know. Thanks to everyone who has given me encouragement and compliments. I appreciate you all so much. I need it, especially since I am no where close to where I need to be. Here's to keeping the weight off during the holidays! Happy Thanksgiving!

My cute little ones

I love this picture of Brooklyn falling asleep sitting up. Some days I think I could do that too with how little she sleeps at night.
Brooklyn - about 6 months old.

Brielle and her dad love to sail in their pirate ship (our car) to far off places (like the store) and like to talk like pirates...."ARRR We be pirates." She loves it and this is a do-rag that Mike has which Brielle likes to wear.

We went up to Idaho to visit Mike's grandparents and had a great time. Brooklyn absolutely loved Grandpa Glen! I am so mad I did not get pictures of Grandma and Grandpa with our kids...DUH!

This was at the Boise zoo. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for a great weekend!