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.

Pretty in Pigtails

This is our couch potato Brielle. She loves watching two things, Finding Nemo and the American Idols singing Don't Stop Believing. We try not to let her watch too much but it definitely happens when I'm trying to make dinner.

I can finally do Brielle's hair in pigtails and I love it. She looks so cute in them. She looks like a little girl instead of a baby. What a cutie!!
Pretty in pink.............

This picture makes me laugh because my older sister had the same face when she was about this age. Love it!

Brielle's first camping trip

So we went on our first camping trip with Brielle. I was really worried about the sleeping part. We had an awesome tent which had a partition. I thought we would just dress her warm and put her in her pack and play like usual when we go anywhere. I was hoping it would work, but it didn't. She went right to sleep because it was so late. We got to bed around 11:30 and then around midnight Brielle woke up screaming. We let her cry for a while but then knew it would be waking up everyone else so we got her and brought her into our bed with us. We gave her milk and hoped she would just go back to sleep. Well with her being in our bed she thought it was playtime! She played for a good hour to hour and a half before she finally would take her bottle again and try to go to sleep. I kept her in our bed because it was cold and it started thundering and lightening. Every time she moved I would wake up. I probably got 2-3 hours of sleep that night. It was crazy. How do you go camping with a little one and get any sleep??

Here is the camper that Mike's dad brought. It was really nice. This is Celeste (Mike's step mom) and Brielle in front of the camper.

This is Brielle in her new camping chair Mike got. She loved it and looked so cute in it!

This was our view. It was so beautiful! We overall had a great time. Brielle loved being outside and she took a good nap so I took a nap as well. Overall it was a lot of fun but I'm just trying to figure out how to get her to sleep better at night. Maybe once she can sleep in a sleeping bag it will be better.

New OB/GYN

Hi All. I'm looking for a new OB/GYN to go to. I went to the Provo OB/GYN clinic before and I would not like to go back. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? If you love your doctor, I would really appreciate it if you would leave the name or clinic of your doctor either in the Utah Valley or in SLC so I can see if they work for me. Thank you so much!!

Easter 2009

I know you are shocked I am posting twice in one month!! Wahoo. I know Easter was over a month ago, but I just got these pictures from Mike's camera and they turned out so cute. My baby is growing up.....

I think this one is one of my favorites. I don't like my arm in it, but she looks so cute!!

Dad's retirement party

For those of you who are not related to me, this may be a very long boring post. So you can skip to the next one....for those of you who might be more interested, we threw a surprise retirement party for my dad. He has been teaching at Union High School for 35 years and is retiring next week. He has taught so many students and we wanted to show him how appreciated he is. We got a pretty good turn out. We would have loved more, but oh well. I did a book of family and students who wrote tributesto him. Now that he knows about it, if you did not write one and would like to, please e-mail me at sharenew@hotmail.com. My goal is to keep getting more people to write a thought, memory or thanks to him to add to his book. Please take a few minutes to write a tribute if you have not. Okay, here we go... The first few pictures are the set up.

We had tacos, taquitos and nachos as well as Spanish rice for the food.
We also had bowls of yummy fruit and some cookies for dessert.

We had a few tables set up to eat on.

Here is the incredible cake that Shell did. There is a little Tabasco sauce in the top left hand corner, a little trinket they got in Mexico on the bottom left corner, a drivers ed car on the right and a chess board in the middle. She also did the colors like the Mexican flag and had cute cougar paw prints on the side. She worked so hard and it looked incredible!! Great job Shell.

These next few pictures are a display table for him.

Here are my mom and dad right after he walked in and was surprised. My mom had even put a picture and article in the Standard (The newspaper in the Uintah Basin). She cut it out as soon as they got it, and so he still didn't know. It was a great surprise party!

My sister Shimayne was in charge of the decorations and I knew as soon as I saw everything she brought why I put her in charge. She did an INCREDIBLE job. They were absolutely perfect.

These are all of the classes that my dad has taught throughout the years. My mom had also done many posters of him doing various things. They were a big hit because many students got to see themselves in the different clubs he was over.

Spanish club....

Here are pictures of him throughout the years and then pictures of our family. My favorite was from January 2008 where there were 6 grandchildren to November 2008 where there were 10 grandchildren.

Chess club. My dad taught all of us to play chess. We love it.

Here are our good friends and my parent's neighbors, the Boggios.

The Weiss's, although that is not any of their last names now.

Shell and Ariah.

My dad, Brielle and Ariah.

Mom, Dad and the Davis's who used to be in our ward and are good friends of our family.

Mike in his wicked awesome sombrero.

The Todds. They were our next door neighbors for many years. We were very sad when they moved away. We love them very much!!

Here are our cute cousins: Aunt Meri, Amy and Susie.

Here is Brielle. She did fairly well for the whole ordeal.

Here again is Shell and her amazing cake.

Here is my dad and our good friend Charles (Chuck) Embleton. He was Donovan's best friend growing up and just part of the family. We love him. He was there at the beginning and stayed until the end and helped clean up. He is a good friend. He goes over and plays chess with my dad quite often. My dad loves that.

Overall the whole thing was a success. My whole family worked so hard, especially my mom, and I think the whole thing was a success and we all had a good time. We love you dad. Thanks for all of your hard work in teaching us not only in the classroom but also at home!!