Christmastime Fun

I have a few weeks off of school so we headed to Colorado for Christmas. Jake has 7 siblings and all of them were going to be in town at the same time so we had a lot of fun people to play with. The kids had tons of fun with cousins, aunts & uncles, we played a lot of fun games and ate a lot of good food.

I thought this pic sums up nicely Dal's feelings about Christmas. He was so happy, excited and content :)

It was also fun for the kids to have a little grandpa & grandma time

Grandma made the kids some really cute coats. Here she is trying Braelyn's on her.

Here they are modeling their cute coats

Both kids enjoyed opening presents. Braelyn seemed more enthralled with the actual unwrapping than with the seeing what was inside :) And Braelyn was our wrapping paper clean- up girl. After someone would unwrap a present she would make sure she picked up every little piece of paper and take it over to the trash bag. It was pretty funny and she was really quick about it :)

Our new hats

Dal had some quality Aunt time. They were so sweet and spent hours and hours playing with him.

The kids also had a lot of fun cousin time

We had some fun park time too

A really special thing was that we got to attend two of our nieces baptisms-
Sabrina...

...& Emily
We were so glad that we were able to be there!

Mason & Braelyn holding hands. They were so cute together!

Family Photo Shoot

A few months ago my sister-in-law Ashlie (who is a very talented photographer) did a little family photo shoot with us. We loved the pics she took so we thought we'd share some of them...

Happy 2nd Birthday Braelyn Rachel!

On December 1st Braelyn turned 2! I can't believe my baby is already 2. I guess that's what everyone says, but it just goes by so fast. We celebrated by getting some yummy Papa Murphy's pizza and then because we aren't really into cake we had cinnastix for her dessert. We still had her blow out a candle in her cinnastix. We all really enjoyed her birthday dinner and dessert :)

When it came time to open her present she wasn't sure what to do with it. She looked at it for a little bit and then she decided to sit on it :) Then her big brother stepped in to show her how it was done.

When she realized she was supposed to tear the paper off she had fun doing that.

She loves her new baby. Anytime we are out anywhere and see a baby (real or doll) she starts yelling "Baby, Baby!" so when she saw her baby she was soooo excited. In this pic Dal decided that he would pretend like he was the dad and she was the mom and they were taking care of their little baby :)

We are all so grateful to have our little B-Rae in the family. There are so many things we love about her...I'll list just a few....

• We love how she gets the most amazing bedhead (until we have to brush her hair :) She seriously gets some amazing volume. I don't know if she moves her head back and forth a lot while she sleeps or what but I have included a few pics of her hair after she woke up from a nap.
  

• We love how she is so sweet and thoughtful. If any of us ever hurt ourselves she'll come up and kiss our owie. She also takes good care of us and her baby.
  
• We love how she loves to help. Like today, after their baths she wanted to help put lotion on Dal's legs and so she did :) Also if she ever spills anything she goes and gets a towel to wipe it up. She also likes to carry her cereal bowl over to the counter (which can be a little scary depending how much is left in it). A couple times she has dumped some milk on herself trying to reach it up to the counter :)
  

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• We love how she loves the moon. Every time day or night that we go outside she looks for the moon and if she can't find it she walks around searching and searching for it.
• We love how every night when we have family scripture time she always requests to sing: Popcorn popping, I love to see the temple, The wise man and the foolish man, Wheels on the bus, I lived in heaven and I am a child of God.
• We love how much she loves and admires her big brother Dal. When we go pick him up from school she runs to him and gives him the biggest hug. She loves to play with him, she loves to wrestle him, and she loves to do everything he does. She is quite the little mimic.
• We love how much she loves to go to Nursery. She can hardly wait to get through Sacrament meeting so that she can get over to the Nursery :)
• We love how she is so energetic and cute
• We love how she always wants to help Daddy cook
• We love how she is full of surprises...like when we went to the park and she starting reading off all of the letters off of a big word game (and we didn't realize she knew any letters) Apparently she was paying closer attention to Super Why then we realized :)
• We love how she gives the best little hugs
  
• We love how she is full so full of life and personality
  

Happy Birthday Braelyn. We love you!

Thanksgiving

We had a nice little Thanksgiving here in Texas just with our little family. I am right in the midst of tests and gettting ready for final exams so we thought it would be best to not try and travel anywhere.

We started out the morning by drawing pictures of things we were grateful for. The first thing that Dal thought of was Jesus so he drew a really cute picture of Jesus :) Then we got distracted with other things, but at least Jesus made the list.

Then we had a nice Thanksgiving dinner thanks to our wonderful chef/daddy/husband Jake. I assisted with whatever I could and we did a lot of prep the day before, but he was the master mind behind it all and it all turned out wonderful. It was funny because I had done some of the shopping and Jake told me cranberriers were on sale so I should get some. I thought he meant real cranberries, because they were also on sale. So I bought some real cranberries. Dal and I tasted one and couldn't believe how awful they tasted. You should have seen Dal's face :) So I made some homemade cranberry sauce (I think the first time I have ever tasted it homemade) and it actually turned out to be pretty tasty and fresh-like.
After our Thanksgiving dinner we went to the park for some football, soccer, and playing at the playground. It was great fun and it was nice to be outside. We got all bundled up because it was supposed to be kind of cold, but once we got out there we ended up shedding all of our warm stuff. We can't believe it's the end of November and the weather is still so nice!

Here is the lovely turkey that Jake baked (that we got for $3.90) (and you can see my homemade cranberry sauce). He threw the pineapples near the end to keep it moist and for aesthetic appeal :)

Here is Braelyn excited and ready to eat
These are the two little sweetie pies that we are so thankful for!

They are so cute and are so much fun.

We are also grateful for moments like these where after I get Braelyn ready for church she goes in Dal's room and puts on a pair of his Lightning McQueen underwear over her tights and dress and then comes in my room to say hi to me :) So funny!

Even though we look forward to the day when we will not be living in an apartment and poor college students, we have so much to be thankful for and feel very blessed.

Help Others That Have Cancer

The other day I was studying and Dal came up to me and told me that he wanted to write a note for me to give to my teacher. I was pretty intrigued with what he would want to write to my teacher. So he got his paper and marker and said "Okay mom I want to write "Help others that have cancer", can you help me spell it?" I was so touched. I thought that was just the cutest thing. I also thought it was really cool that he recognizes that that's what I am going to school to do, not just to get a job, but to help those with cancer. I also think that seeing his Grandma with cancer has helped him understand how important and special it is to help others with cancer. And he feels strongly enough about it that he really wanted to get that message to my teacher :) I just love that sweet boy!

So I took the note to school and gave it to my teacher. He thought it was so cute as did the rest of my class. They were also impressed with his writing skills :) My teacher wrote on the bottom "We Will! Thank you!" and then gave it back to me so that I could keep it. So we have been having such a beautful Fall here. It has been in the 60-70's most of the time. We are loving it. The only exception was a week or so ago we woke up to this....

It had been 75 degrees the day before! This was a morning I had to get up early to go to Lubbock for clincals. Luckily the freeways were clear and all the snow was pretty much gone by later that afternoon. It was quite the crazy storm but we are loving our first Fall in Texas.

Halloween and Grandma Fun Time!

Okay so Dal with his face painted wasn't for Halloween, but I thought this was a good place to stick it in. At the Children's museum that we love to go to they have a little area with a stage, costumes and face paints and the kids can have fun painting their faces (or their parents faces, as both Jake and I have experienced :) Dal had a lot of fun painting his face bright blue.

On Saturday we had the wonderful treat of getting to pick up my mother-in-law from the aiport because she was coming to stay the week with us! We were all so excited! She got there just in time to join us for the ward Trunk-or-Treat.
Dal was Darth Vader and B-Rae and I were super girls

We had a fun evening and got some great candy at the Trunk or Treat.

We also really enjoyed that whole week that Grandma Harris got to be here with us. Her and Dal spent hours playing legos, her and Braelyn read lots of books and both kids enjoyed lots of fun Grandma time. We also enjoyed her wonderful company...we had fun chatting time, she made us some yummy food, she got up early with the kids and let us sleep, and she did lots of dishes. She was so sweet! We loved having her here so much and hope we get another week with Grandma soon :)