Thursday, December 26, 2013

Chatter box

Brynlee can talk! The Friday we were in Illinois (the 13th) she just started talking! And she hasn't stopped since she found her voice! Her little noises are so cute now compared to her dinosaur noses like before :) 
At first she couldn't talk without doing funny things with her tongue :)



Illinois trip

I'm way behind on blogging! I just have to many things that I never have the energy to sit and conquer them all. Now, as I sit holding my baby, looking at the mess to clean up from Christmas, I decided now wad the perfect time!

On December 12, we embarked on our first trip with the princess! It was a little rough, I'm not going to lie. Before the trip I was seriously stressed out about the flight. I didn't want to be "that mom" whose baby just cried the whole 3 hours and I had never flown with a baby before so I had no idea what to expect. I did as much research as I could, got some good advice, and tried my best to not panic. The morning we left, Spencer worked a half day and I finished packing. Of course brynlee was so cranky. (Not helping my anxiety!!!) She eventually fell asleep, I finished getting everything together, and mom and grandma headed to get us. Spencer walked in the door and said they were there (cutting it a little close don't you think?!) We heated up leftover chicken noodle soup and headed out the door.

The flight was not bad at all. Right before take off she started crying because she was hungry and tired (I was holding her off until we actually took off to eat so that the pressure wouldn't make her ears pop). Once we took off, she drank her bottle and slept for about an hour and a half. She was perfectly well behaved the whole rest of the flight and I was so relieved!!




When we landed, it was 18* outside.

We met grandma and grandpa, picked up pizza, and went home to get settled in. It was a very relaxed night, Brynlee was so good, and we went to bed decently early.

Brynlee did not sleep so good that night. She was up about a billion times and so her and I both started the next day with very little sleep. Oh. Did I mention we also both woke up sick?? Yeah, that was no fun. That day (Friday) we ate eggs and bacon, went grocery shopping, and got ready for the family party on the Whitley side that night. Grandma made so much good food! The only problem? It was all dessert. It didn't seem like a problem until I was so sick going to bed haha. The party was small and fun. It was awesome being able to introduce Spencer and Brynlee to my relatives and for me to be able to get to know them all as an adult. Brynlee was so good with her usual charm, and chattered away all night. We slept Brynlee on some blankets next to our bed by a space heater that night. She slept a little better, but not much.

Chillin out before the party!



Saturday we got up and None of us felt like eating breakfast (except Spencer of course, because he didn't pig out like mom and I). We got ready to go and headed to the Manary family day of fun! *Let me preface this with how yucky I felt this day. It was the worst day of me being sick and it stinks that it landed on the only day we got to spend with that side of the family.* Anyways. We got to see so many people because Grandma Bea made it into a mini family reunion! That day we had so much yummy food and this time it was all meat, potatoes, and corn casserole....MMMMM!!! We sat around for most of the afternoon and then immediate family went back to my great aunt Lisa's.



I was so tired and not feeling good so when we got there Spencer feel asleep in the rocking chair and Brynlee and I laid down on a bed for a nap. Brynlee slept for like 3 hours!!! Eventually Spencer came went in with Brynlee and I got up. We played some uker and snacked on leftovers. It was awesome. We laughed until we cried!

I started feeling so yucky around 6 and by 7 I was miserable. I asked mom if we could go home and she said no, we were going back to Grandma Bea's house. I might have cried. My aunt Sherri offered to drive us home but I didn't want her to go that far out of her way. It was nicer at grandma's; much calmer and my head didn't hurt as bad. We sat and talked for a couple of hours and heard all kinds of funny childhood stories from mom, grandma, and great grandma. I cried the whole way home. I needed to go to sleep. Spencer was so nice to me (like always) and gave me a big hug, helped me get brynlee to bed and snuggled me to sleep. Brynlee slept 11 hours that night!! Too bad I had to get up 5 TIMES in the night to pee. And at grandpa's house, there is no toilet in the basement so I had to go upstairs every time. Oy!!

Sunday was fun. I was feeling SO MUCH BETTER. We watched polar express in 3D, went to Red Robin in Iowa, went shopping at Younkers for Brynlee, and went home to pack! We had to pack quick so we could stop at great grandpa Joe's to take a 5 generation picture.


Brynlee was being so funny in the way back from Red Robin! I was dying.

It was snowing right as we were leaving for the airport so we decided we needed to kiss in it! :)


We got to the airport around 7 and they were already shutting it down!!! Talk about small town. We said our goodbyes and boarded. Brynlee was being so good... until she peed on me. Had to change her before they even turned off the seatbelt light. She fell asleep at about 8:30 and slept the whole time! She even stayed asleep getting off the plane, buckling her in her car seat, driving home, and putting her in bed. She didn't wake up until 7 the next morning!!!


Was it the most fun trip ever?? No. But it was still really good to see family and I survived both flights with almost no problems!!

Saturday, December 7, 2013

When did this happen??



I can't even believe how big Brynlee is getting...I know she is still small, but compared to her when she was born... it's incredible!!

At this point I have stopped counting in weeks. If I had to make a guess I would say maybe 19...18? But this girl is already 4 months old plus some! When did that happen?? We already had Halloween,  dad's birthday, Thanksgiving, and are 3 weeks away from Christmas!! She went from sleeping all day and laying still to rolling all over and laughing! Holy cow...

Newborn :)
Now!!
Newborn :)
Newborn :)
Now!!
She reaches for everything and puts everything in her mouth!!
She is as long as the crib and wearing big girl shoes!
She is holding her own bottle!
And she is as big as my whole torso PLUS some!
Newborn :)
Now!!
My big girl :)











The temple

I love the temple. Spencer and I used to be so diligent about going once a week for a long time and then life got crazy,  I got pregnant, and we fell out of that habit. I always love the spirit that I feel there. Everyone is so kind and everyone is beautiful.

Yesterday I was having a rough emotional day. I'm positive if I go back to a post last year, about this same time it says almost the same thing. Finals time is the worst and add to it that Spencer always gets sick this time of year makes tensions high and time together short. I didn't know what to do to make it better because there was just too much going on in our lives to do things. A friend of mine made a comment that you just need to keep doing the little things,  which includes going to the temple. I got my mother in law to babysit Brynlee and told Spencer we are going to the temple. He had homework but I knew it was important.

We dropped Brynlee off and headed to our favorite temple night dinner...Lenny's!! So good. (Stapley just north of the 60. You will thank me later) We just did a quick drive through run and headed to the temple. We got to do sealings and it was beautiful. We get to seal families together forever who didn't have the chance to when they were alive.

We were told a story about a woman who was driving her kids to school and they told her to pull over next to the temple. They told her that they saw a bunch of people dressed in all white on top of the temple; women on one side,  men on the other. They told their mother that one man and one woman would come up,  kiss,  and go into heaven together. How amazing! These little children who had never been in the temple before knew what was going on in there and were able to see these sweet Angels being sealed.

I am so glad that I get to give that gift. I get to help a couple stay together for eternity. I like to think that when ( and if haha) I get to heaven,  the people that I helped will come up to me, hug me, and tell me thank you. That they will tell me how happy they are to be together forever and to be with their children too.  It's amazing.

While I was sitting in the temple, I looked over at Spencer and realized that I have him forever. This time in our lives might not be the easiest and I might feel lonely sometimes, but I have the rest of forever to be with him and to be in love with him. He loves me like crazy even if sometimes it's hard for me to see. I am so grateful for the blessing of the temple and the peace it gives in time of need. I am grateful to have a husband who was worthy and still is worthy to take me to the temple. I'm grateful for family that is willing to watch our sweet baby girl while we go to serve in the temple. I'm grateful for the love of my Heavenly Father and my savior Jesus Christ.

If you are reading this and are not a member of my faith, (or of my faith... everyone should go!) I encourage you to go to the open house for the Gilbert, AZ temple. Starting December 30, you can get your tickets on

http://mormontemples.org/gilbert.

They are totally free and they will allow you to walk through the temple and see inside. You will see the beauty that is the temple and feel the spirit of peace while you are there. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them here :).


Friday, December 6, 2013

Secrets

In general, I am a good secret keeper. I am someone you can trust to not tell your secret around. But there is one kind of secret that I am terrible at keeping. Presents!! I  absolutely cannot wait to give people presents. If I buy something for someone, I want to give it to them RIGHT NOW!! For Spencer's birthday I got him this cool ASU jacket... Yeah...I gave it to him the night I bought it. Fathers Day? Got him a sweet new temple tie. Gave it to him the Thursday before father's day (the day I got it).

It's just so exciting!! I guess if one of my flaws is being too excited to give people presents, I can handle that. How in the world am I going to make Christmas fun in my house if I just want to give them their presents early?!

I must be strong. I can do this...

I'm the worst. :)

Baby messes

How in the heck do babies make such big messes?!?! My baby is 4 months old and my house has never been messier. I don't know whether it's because I am to tired to clean it up or what... but her stuff is EVERYWHERE!! Literally, everywhere I look; baby stuff. Holy moly!! I don't think my house has actually been clean since this sweet little tornado was born. I even clan my house more than I ever used to before!! It's unreal. She can't even move yet....




Yeah... and that is just what I can see without getting up of the couch.


I'm not pregnant!!!

Well,  I thought I was. It was actually a bit crazy! Here's the story.

My period was late. On Thanksgiving I was 3 days late. I hadn't told Spencer because really it wasn't that big of a deal yet. It was eating me inside though. I just had this feeling that I was preggo! I eventually told Spencer on Friday the 29th. He didn't freak out as bad as I thought he would, which was good because at that point, I was. Saturday rolls around... still nothing. Great... that night I bought a test. It wouldn't hurt to test. I planned on taking it Sunday morning.
Here's why:
Rewind to last year, Sunday after Thanksgiving. I woke up and still had no period. I took a test. || that's right! Two lines!! We were so thrilled.
Fast forward to this year. Wouldn't that be crazy?! Imagine if I was pregnant again, to find out on the same day!

That Sunday morning, I was sitting feeding Brynlee and said a little prayer. I said,  "Heavenly Father, if you think it's a good idea for us to have another kid right now...I will be ok with that". And I wasn't lying. We said that, since I'm not on birth control but we are preventing, if we got pregnant it was meant to happen. Well I went to get the test a little while later and as I was reaching in the bag, I felt dear Aunt Flo. I ran into the bedroom screaming,  "I'm bleeding!! Spencer I'm bleeding!!"

I was so relieved! I had never been so excited to start my period in my entire life!! It's crazy the difference a  year can make. This time last year, I was ecstatic for the exact opposite reason! I want brynlee to have siblings... just not quite yet! :)

Monday, December 2, 2013

Gross :P

Sunday morning around 6 am Brynlee woke up so I went in to give her back her binky. Right after she fell back asleep, I felt something wet on her blanket. I picked it up an threw it in her dirty laundry thinking, "dang it! She peed through her diaper again". Not the case! All of a sudden I get a HUGE whiff of poop. That's right folks. This girl had her first, full fledged, need-to-to-change-the-sheets-and-probably-throw-out-the-jammies blowout. It was so gross. I had to wake her up, roll her over, undress her, clean her up, and give her a bath. She was not the happiest camper, but once she got in the bath she was happy. I fed her and decided we both needed more sleep. I am ashamed to say that I left the mess in her bed so I could take pictures of it later. We slept on the couch for another 2 and a half hours. Her room smelled ALL DAY. Her jammies (my absolute favorite WHITE ones? Ruined. Oh well. One of many I'm sure!!




Sorry for the yucky pictures! Have to document these things! :)

Mmmm Mmmm

We gave Brynlee her first rice cereal yesterday morning! It was cute :). She started off liking it but that quickly faded to "not-quite-sure-how-I-feel-about-this-but-you-keep-shoving-it-in-my-mouth". Oh well, hopefully she starts eating it a little better. I want to start her on food since I have a feeling we are going to go through formula like crazy...







Brynlee is learning new things!

Brynlee finally rolled over from her back to her belly Saturday night and now she never stops doing it!!
Post roll! Doesn't she look thrilled??
She has also found her toes! She doesn't play with them a lot, but it's really cute when she does!

It's been cute watching her learn to hold her bottle. She go the hang of it really quickly and she actually wants to do it all the time. Even if I'm holding it for her, her hand is always on her bottle.

The bottle is almost bigger than her head! :) My little tiny girl.


Frozen

If any of you have not seen Frozen yet, you need to. It is probably one of my all time favorite movies.

Saturday my whole family went and saw it in the afternoon. Spencer had homework and since I didn't go the day before, they told me I could go with them. We got awesome seats and Brynlee was really good for the whole movie. She was actually doing her funny sounds through the whole short film and beginning of the movie; guess she was enjoying it!! I LOVED IT SO MUCH!! The music was beautiful, the story was amazing, and it was so funny!! After the movie I went to hang out with Grandma and Spencer went to the ASU game...they won!!

A Couple of funny things from Frozen:






Go see it.

Black Thursday Night/Friday

Our Black Friday was actually mainly on Friday this year! We decided we didn't want to support the stores that opened at 6 pm during dinner so we only went to two stores and didn't even leave the house until after 7:30. I left the Hon's house at about 6:30 and headed out to my mom's to make final plans. I had left my wallet there anyways so we decided to go to Kohl's and Wal Mart out by her. Kohl's was crazy and not at the same time. It was weirdly quiet but PACKED with people. Wal Mart was barely crazy anymore. I mean, there was still a crazy line and we were in it for almost an hour just to check out, but it was normal Black Friday Madness. The next morning was when the fun began. Me, Mom, Grandma, Tracie, Jenny, Whitley, and Melanie (I think that's everyone...) met up for breakfast at Village Inn. Whitley and I went to Target with all of them and then split off because we had some time restraints (work and a baby who needed food!). Whitley and I went to Game Stop and Kohl's. Kohl's was still NUTS!!!!! I can't even believe how long we waited in line for. It was nice though, we haven't had time to chat in a while. I got to hear some of her fun newly wed stories and we got to awkwardly hold everything in line because we couldn't find a cart. I ended up with everything that I wanted to get! We headed home and I dropped Whitley off. I was the first one to get to see their apartment....well kinda. I don't actually know who else has seen it but she told me that people keep yelling at her because she hasn't invited anybody to see it yet so she invited me in. It's cute. it's the perfect size for them.

We were going with the Hons to see Frozen at 2:00, but Brynlee fell asleep at like 1:30 and I was exhausted. I told Spencer to go without me and I stayed home and cleaned up, took a nap, and took care of Brynlee. I'm SO SO SO glad I did that. It was nuts at the movie theater from what I heard.

That night we had some friends over that were in town from Utah. Jackson and Celeste are one of our favorite couples to hang out with (of course, they live far far away). They came over after dinner and we decorated gingerbread houses. We still had two kits from LAST Christmas that have been sitting in our pantry and survived a move...we decided it was probably time to use them! It was so fun.

Afterwards we played some Boom Blocks (funnest wii game ever...get it, play it). We literally played from 9-11:30!! It was so fun. We had so many laughs and some yummy ice cream. I wish they lived here...we would totally hang out with them all the time. Spencer loved having one of his best friends come over and I love watching them together. It doesn't hurt that I get along with his wife either!

That day was crazy. So fun though! Spencer crashed. Like, laid down and was out in less than a minute crashed. Luckily, our Saturday would be a lot more chill!

Thanksgiving/Turkey Trot







Thanksgiving came and went faster than I could even enjoy it! 

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving we always do our extended family dinner at the Interstake center in Mesa. It's a huge dinner and always lots of fun. Brynlee made it not so fun that day but I'm pretty sure it was because she was still on that other formula. We got to chat with family and just hang out for a while. We couldn't make it a very late night for two reasons:

  • We are parents now. That means that we don't do anything fun or stay out late or we suffer the consequences in the morning.
  • We had the turkey trot really early the next morning so we needed our sleep
The next morning actually went really smoothly. Brynlee woke up earlier than she had in a while which made the schedule for the day almost perfect. We had to be at the turkey trot by like 7:45 so we got Brynlee all Bundled up in the car seat and got dressed.

I was starving and had a free Chic-fil-a breakfast thing so we went there first. Well, apparently Chic-fil-a doesn't care if you are hungry on Thanksgiving...they are closed. Bummer. We got to the park and it was freezing. I don't know whose idea it is to do that every year anyways *cough* MOM *cough*. Anyways. The one mile race started at 8:15 which is the one that Me, Spencer, Brynlee, and Katy were doing. Katy left us in the dust. Spencer can't really run because of his heart and I just absolutely hate running so we used the stroller for what the name implies and strolled. We finished in 20 minutes. (Katy finished in 12...way to go!)

The rest of the morning was really chill and fun. We got to watch everyone come in from their races at the finish line and watch the little ones at the park (they re-did the park so it kept them entertained for a while. Katy eventually got bored and Spencer took her and Brynlee to the other park for a while). We were there until about 11. One of my favorite parts? Some orthodontist company came around and handed out little bags of kettle corn! I WAS STARVING. It was so good.

After everyone was through, we all got up and climbed on the playground equipment.




Dad was telling me that I was in more danger of hurting myself than Bo was and I decided to prove him wrong.



 We headed home, took showers, and got ready for the day. We headed out to my parent's house to hang out for the afternoon. I helped a little bit in the kitchen and we looked through black Friday ads. Spencer went in and started playing the piano so I followed him (Spencer playing the piano is one of my weaknesses). Brynlee was ready for a nap so I took her in with me and she fell asleep listening to Daddy play...aaaaaaand so did I! haha. When I woke up, Spencer was asleep on the couch behind me, Brynlee was asleep next to me, and the entire rest of the family was eating at the table. They didn't even wait for us!! :) Oh well. We were eating at the Hons at 4 so we told them not to wait. I went in and had a whole plate though...what is Thanksgiving without way too much to eat?! Spencer eventually did too and then we headed to our second meal of the day! We hung out with all of the Greers and it was fun like always. The boys played football, we hung out outside watching, and people were inside watching Harry Potter (apparently there was a marathon on). It was a blast. I left early to go black Friday shopping with my mom and Spencer kept Brynlee! I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was the first time that I had really left her with him for a long period of time. I don't know why I was so nervous...he did GREAT!

All in all, it was a fun Thanksgiving day. I am so grateful for my extended family, my in-law family, and my own little family! I am surrounded by so much love and support and I wouldn't trade it for the world!! We are now officially through November and I can start my excitement and uncontrollable joy of the Christmas season!!!