Family Time

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend that was filled with lots of family time. Brandon and Whitney came from Arizona with their kids and as always we took advantage of every second we could spend with them. With Kacie and Chris not living down the street from us anymore it is always extra exciting when we get to see and play with them, too. So this made for an ideal 4 days of cousins playing together. This left plenty of time for all of us siblings to catch up and laugh with (and sometimes at) each other. I love my family so much. We snapped some quick family pictures at Thanksgiving dinner. They turned out great, especially considering we just walked outside and had my grandpa snap some pictures. Grandma and Grandpa with their 7 grandchildren.

Mason (4), Brynn (2), Rachel (3), Andrew (1), Chase (1), Cannon (6), Kennedy (4)

This year I am grateful for so much, but I can honestly say that at the very top of that list is my family.

My parents are amazing. Words can't even begin to describe the strength I get from their love and support.

Still to this day, I have to put up with a lot of teasing from my brothers, but I wouldn't have it any other way. And they both have made up for it by marrying the most amazing women and giving me the 2 sisters I never had. For that I can never repay them.

My wonderful husband Scott never ceases to give of himself to serve me and our family. He is the most incredible Dad in the world and every time I watch him with our children my heart melts.

Mason is my sweet boy that will still cuddle up with me and smother me with kisses on a regular basis.

Brynn is my one and only little girl who is always excited to see me even if I've just been in the other room.

I haven't met our baby brother yet, but I feel his little spirit in me every day and am so grateful to a kind Heavenly Father who has sent him to our family.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by those you love.

One of a Kind

Our little Brynnie Bug is growing up so fast and everyday we see more of her individual personality shining through. There are so many things we love about Brynn but certain things she comes up with really seem to make her one-of-a kind. She is very silly these days. She loves to joke and tease and has her own sense of humor. While there are a lot of times she is trying to get a laugh out of us, there are plenty of other times she gets us chuckling unintentionally like when she yells,"Yoo Hoo!" to get someone's attention or when she exclaims, "I obeyed!!" after she does something we asked her to like she's just as surprised she obeyed as we are. It's not just the things Brynn says but how she says them with her tiny little voice through her puckered up lips and sometimes I hear a slight hispanic accent. She has definitely hit an organizational stage which I hope never leaves. She likes to have everything in it's place and is very orderly with her play, lining anything up in rows that she can. She is very quick to help unload the dishwasher and clear the table after a meal, but I do watch her a little closer after I found several plates in the garbage (to her credit we always use paper plates at lunch and she must have not been paying attention that we used real plates this time). Brynn thinks she is one of the big kids so much so that when you ask her how old she is she has changed her answer from 2 to 3 1/2 and will not budge when we try to correct her. Apparently she has done a pretty good job fooling Mason's friends, too, because they often ask Brynn to play with them when they come over, and believe me she can play transformers and star wars with the best of them. Playing isn't the only thing she insists on doing with Mason. Every day when he does his reading time she insists on doing her "reading" as well. She has her own set of flash cards and books we use to practice letters and numbers. She knows all her letters and their sounds and is really good at counting and recognizing numbers. Sometimes I think she honestly believes she can read as she opens books and points to the words and "reads" the story aloud. She is growing up so fast and I need her to slow down. There are times I look at her and just can't believe she is my baby girl. No matter how grown up she gets she will always be my little Bug.

Belly Shot

Okay, I give up. Some people have been giving me a hard time about not posting a belly shot. I'm not usually one to give into peer pressure, but since my family is having family pictures taken this week that will hang on my parents wall for the next year and probably end up on their Christmas card I might as well get over it and post one here first.This picture is the fine work of Mason who asked to take a picture of my big bubble after seeing some pregnancy pictures of his aunt Jenna and Becky who are having babies in February and April respectively, which we are so excited about. I went along with it and let him play around with the camera and snap some pictures. Other than the odd (and less than flattering) angle, missing head, and slight blurriness I felt like he did a fine job and decided to use his picture. Here is the 33 week belly.

32 Weeks

I realized I haven't done any posts about this pregnancy since 20 weeks, so for the sake of updating anyone who cares and to document a little bit about this pregnancy here is a quick 32 week pregnancy post. It is hard to believe that we have already reached the 32 week mark. I'm grateful to have had a very smooth pregnancy so far. I got to have another ultrasound a month ago at 28 weeks to check the position of my placenta (it was covering my cervix at 20 weeks). The placenta had moved, everything looked great, and as a bonus we got to see more of this handsome little guy.

Baby boy at 28 weeks

However, the adjective little was never used to describe him. His measurements showed him to be 29 weeks 5 days rather than the 28 weeks I actually was. This was a big difference from my 20 week ultrasound where he was measuring right on. They don't consider the dates very accurate at this point because babies vary in size further along in the pregnancy so they aren't changing my due date or anything, they just said he is a really big boy. He was over 3 lbs at that time (a month ago), which put him in the 85% for a baby of his gestational age. To hopefully avoid having too huge of a baby we decided to set an induction date for 39 weeks. So January 3rd will be the day unless he decides to come any earlier on his own. So only 7 weeks to go. While I don't feel ready to have this baby yet, my body has started screaming to be done with this pregnancy. The last 2 weeks I have been very uncomfortable. My back aches non-stop (thank you to all my 400 lb patients at work), I rarely get an hour of peace, day or night, without little boy beating my insides to a pulp, I get charlie horses in my legs at night that make my calves sore for days, and I have been getting migraines more and more frequently. Wow, was that enough complaining? Sorry. As far as names, we are stuck and don't really have any serious options at this point, but we're working on it. If you were hoping for a belly shot, sorry, I avoid being in front of a camera at all costs. But don't worry my belly is growing at a steady rate. Mason refers to the bump as my big bubble and Brynn gets frustrated when she tries to snuggle on my lap stating, "it's too big!" as she pushes on my belly. We are so grateful all is well and we are excited to meet our baby brother.

Crocodile Hunter

Mason has become quite enthralled with wildlife recently. A few months ago my mom took him to the Bean Museum at BYU and something inside him came alive. Since then he can't get enough of learning about these animals from all over the world. We have been back to the Bean Museum several times since (love that it's close and free... perfect outing) and every time he finds new animals to learn about. He asks me to read the little plaques in front of the animals over and over until he has them memorized almost word for word, then for the rest of the day he tells us all about that animal. We even caught the reptile show one time when we were there. Mason sat front and center and gave his undivided attention throughout the presentation. He loved the live animals they showed, and even asked if he could have the snake on his shoulders. (If the picture looks a little blurry it's probably because Scott was shaking with fear as he took the picture. He does not share the same love for snakes)

Mason also loves watching shows on the Discovery Channel that show animals in the wild and teach about where they live, what they eat, and how they survive. His favorite animals by far are crocodiles. Sometimes I cringe as I watch a crocodile attack a gazelle and pieces of it's carcass are flying all over, but Mason just watches in awe. He's very accepting of the circle of life.

He also has been intrigued by hunting. One day he requested to make a bow and arrow out of branches from our tree (no idea where he got the idea). He had me set up Brynn's stuffed animals around the house and he went on safari. Don't worry, he's not a poacher, he was living in the wilderness and the animals were attacking him. It was strictly for survival :) He definitely is our little crocodile hunter!

*Funny Mason Comment*

Mason found a deer hunt game on Scott's phone that he likes to play. One day he said to me, "Mom, I want to have a deer birthday party next year. We can all dress up like deer with antlers on our heads and Dad can chase us around with a gun hunting us. Isn't that a great idea?!" I laughed and told him I didn't know if that was a good idea. He then explained, "No, Dad would use a PRETEND gun." Well I certainly hope so.

Halloween Fun

I was never very big on Halloween until we had kids. I love letting my kids choose what they want to be and then putting together their dream costume for them. This year it was no surprise when the costumes started appearing in the stores, that Mason wanted to be optimus prime. It was by far the easiest costume I've ever done and he absolutely loved it.

Brynn on the other hand proved to be quite a bit more work. What's new? Brynn has never loved dressing up near as much as she loves stripping down and I don't think she really understood when I asked her what she wanted to be for Halloween. I actually told Scott about a month ago that I didn't know if she really cared what she was. HA! Who was I kidding? Brynn not have an opinion? Yeah right!! As Halloween approached she started to understand more. She started with the obvious choice of Minnie Mouse. My sister in law found a $1 deal at a garage sale and I was just going to put some finishing touches on it and we would be good to go. But in the weeks before Halloween Brynn became adamant that she wanted to be Captain Hook. When I would try to sway her back to Minnie she would firmly tell me, "I be Captain Hook!" So I began piecing together a Captain Hook costume for her. But, when the night of our first Halloween Party rolled around and I tried to get her dressed in her costume she was not a happy camper. "I don't like it!" was all she would say and we didn't even get all the pieces of the costume on before she started pulling it off.

So what did she want to be? Why a transformer of coarse. She put on Mason's costume and was happy as could be, but obviously that wasn't going to work. We suggested she wear her transformer costume from Mason's party, but she didn't want that, either.
No to Minnie, no to Captain Hook, and no to Transformer. What next? The only thing she wanted to wear that night was her piggy jammas. At this point I was just happy to have her dressed.

So off to our ward party we went with Optimus Prime and a girl in piggy jammas.

We've always carved our pumpkins to match our costumes, but Mason asked if we could make Jack-O-Lanterns this year. You know, the kind with triangle eyes and noses and teeth in their mouth? Scott was more than happy to give up carving optimus prime for a jack-o-lantern face. Brynn's only request was to have a baby pumpkin that she could carry around.

So when Halloween night rolled around Brynn woke up from her nap in a very agreeable mood and decided that she did in fact want to be Minnie. She enthusiastically put on her costume and started practicing her "Trick or Treat!" Can I just say keeping up with this little girl's mood swings is exhausting. You never know what you're going to get from one minute to the next with this little girl.

This was the first year that we have really and truely done Trick or Treating. We went around the ward with our good friends the McCanns and Ferrins.

We could hardly keep up with these boys all night! Mason had so much fun running around with his friends Tanner and Cache.

Brynn and Lydia had fun together, but were definitely worn out by the end of the night.

Happy Halloween... until next year!