February Has Been Tough.....

This month, though the first few days were amazing and spent with family and friends,the rest of it has been tough. The day after Brooke's real birthday she came down with that terrible stomach flu that was going around. My poor princess was so sick. Thankfully, by the grace of God, no one else in our family caught that awful bug. Then about a week later I started to feel a little under the weather and blamed it on allergies and stress. My face started to hurt but I didn't really pay any attention to it...its allergies right? Who knows. The last few weeks up until now have been a blur to me. Now that I'm finally feeling semi normal, I'm starting to re-claim my house and my daily tasks and I'm enjoying them again instead of suffering through them. Below are the fun things we've done this month. I'm so happy to be feeling better and normal again! Bryan and I started a project on our kitchen cabinets and I'm hoping we finish it up tonight. I'll share pictures of that soon. Enjoy the marathon of posts below!

Andrea

Brooke's Primary Talk

On Sunday my sweet Brooke gave her third talk in Primary. She loves being the center of attention and spoke so well and I was so proud of her! Bryan helped her write her talk since I had to teach my Mia Maids that Sunday and needed to focus on preparing my lesson for them. Here is a copy of her talk.

When We Choose The Right We Are Blessed
We are told to love our neighbors. At school I try to be good by helping other people, saying only nice things and sharing. When I'm nice to friends at school they're nice back.
Heavenly Father wants us to take good care of our bodies. I brush my teeth every morning and night and eat healthy food. I had no cavities at my last dental check-up.
We need to pray always. I say my prayers and ask Heavenly Father that I can have happy dreams. And I have happy dreams now.
I know that when I choose the right, Heavenly Father is happy. I enjoy going to church, praying with my family and sharing with my little brother. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Brooke's 6th Birthday!!!!

My sweet Brooke Claire turned 6 on February 7th. It was a whirlwind of a day. I spent the morning making sugar cookies for her class,her cake, and wrapping her presents and taking care of my grumpy 2 year old. Bryan helped me decorate the night before and brought her a special treat for lunch and had a special daddy-daughter lunch date at school with her friends. I took her cookies to her class at 2pm and stayed to volunteer. We came home and Bryan bought pizza from Costco and then we started the birthday festivities! It was a crazy day, but a fun one and I know Brooke felt so special. she loved her new Barbie and Barbie board game, Polly Pocket stuff and her new Ariel nightgown. The day was wonderful and I can't believe I'm a mother of a 6 year old!!!!

The Day After Brooke's Birthday Party.....

......I celebrated my 29th Birthday! It was by far the best birthday I have ever had. I woke up and made breakfast for everyone and then got spoiled rotten the rest of the day by my family. Bryan surprised me with a brand new Nikon camera! I was so very excited because our camera was so ready to retire so I was ecstatic with my new camera. It's perfect because its crazy easy to use, has an 18X wide optical zoom, 12.1 mega pixels and a huge screen to see your images. It's not crazy fancy to where I will need to take a class to learn how to use it but PERFECT for me and our family. LOVE it! Also Bryan bought me a new waffle maker. I had been eyeing it at Costco for months, it makes the best waffles ever. I could not have been more spoiled that day by my family, my parents, in-laws and friends. I felt so loved every time the doorbell rang and it was a neighbor or friend from church wishing me a happy birthday with a fun treat in tow. It was great to spend the day with family and to have a wonderful date with Bryan that night at Carrabas and end the night with the best gelato ever at Frost. I did not want the day to end at all, I totally cried when it was time for bed because I was so sad to have the day come to an end...it was that fantastic! Of course I savored the day and took no pictures of myself but I have been playing around with my new camera so enjoy the cute pictures I have taken so far....and yes Brody loves to play dress-up with his big sister. Don't worry he is still 100 percent boy/monster he just idolizes Brooke and will do anything she tells him too. I wonder how long that will last.
Thank you everyone, my parents, in-laws, family, Bryan, friends, neighbors for making me feel incredibly loved and important that day. I so needed it and it brought me great joy. I love you all and I'm so blessed to be surrounded by such loving wonderful people.

Brooke's Birthday Party

Weeks ago on the 4th my sweet Brooke had her 6th Birthday Party! It was so much fun! We had it over at BounceU and almost her entire Kindergarten class came as well as lots of friends from church. It was great and my mom and dad as well as Bryan's parents came all the way from California to help us celebrate. It was fantastic! I took tons of pictures but I'm only posting these few out of respect of every one's privacy that attended her birthday party.
I made her cute pink gumball cupcakes. I really wanted to do something fancy but since I had guests staying with me and the fact that I had to make 30 cupcakes I played it safe with these cuties. I'm so grateful to those who came to help us celebrate and make my sweet girl feel special. We are set on Barbies, dress-ups, lip gloss, Littlest Pet Shop, Lego's for years! Literally!

More Playroom Progress...

So... Yay! My last and final piece came in (it only took forever) and I'm thrilled. We attempted to mount the t.v. onto the wall last Saturday and well we had the wrong wall mount. I guess our beams are further apart than we had anticipated. Bryan was able to find a different wall mount online and we ordered it and hopefully it comes in soon. Like I had mentioned before this playroom will be in the works for quite some time but it's so nice to have the big purchase done. We still need to push the piece back more and bolt the pieces together. There is so much to be done everywhere in this awkward loft area but I can pretty it up with all the fun stuff I have in mind overtime but for now I'm loving the progress and so is Bryan which makes me happy. I feel bad being pre-occupied with this room and not paying much attention to Brody's. He still LOVES his crib and all of the fun car stuff I bought for his room is still sitting in his closet until he makes the adjustment to his big boy bed. The other day I found him in Brooke's bed pretending to sleep under the covers and I asked him if he wants to try to sleep in his big boy bed tonight and he replied quickly with a "No Mama! I want my cwib!" (crib) So I guess we wait until he is ready.
I took my sweet girl last week to her six month dental check. No cavities again! Yay! I really feel so blessed and lucky that I have not had to deal with any sort of dental cavities or fixes thus far. Brooke does such a fabulous job of maintaining her great dental hygiene...Brody is...working on his and I'm planning on taking him for his first appointment this coming summer. That should be an interesting experience. Brooke makes everything so easy. I literally got to sit in the waiting room and read a magazine and enjoy a nice break while she had her teeth cleaned, had x-rays done and examined. How awesome is that? I remember before I had Brooke. I worked as a dental assistant and I would CRINGE if I saw we had a 5 year old or any child under the age of 10 on the schedule. I would quickly think of how I could manage my 10 minute break or lunch hour during that time so I could prevent assisting and getting my fingers bitten off or thrown up on due to freak hysteria of being at the dentist. Call it mother's intuition or whatever but I fear I will not be as lucky with Brody.
I treated Brooke to some well deserved gelato at Frost ( the greatest Gelato place EVER ) and she indulged in her treat.

Mama's New Toy

I've never had luck with blenders. I think it's because I've never splurged on a REALLY good one. I've bought a few (more like four) in the last 9 years and my guess is they probably were all under $19.99 and were impulse buys at Wal-Mart with the intention of making healthy smoothies for breakfast or something. They were a PAIN in the rear to clean and were probably used once or twice and didn't make the cut in our 8 moves. Our last one (I had just purchased in Utah) didn't survive our flood and I never got around to replacing it when we moved to Arizona almost a year ago.
I was after Christmas browsing Macy's and I saw this gem and it was love at first sight. I REALLY wanted it. I went home and thought about it and decided to go for it. Why not? BEST DECISION EVER....This blender is like the BMW of blenders in my book (I'm sure there are even more fancier better ones out there but in my ok to splurge a little price range this one is the BMW of blenders).
So far I have used this blender at least 3x a week in the last 3 weeks I've had it. It's a breeze to clean. I've been pinning away smoothie recipes ( and a really yummy sounding potato soup recipe) on Pinterest and so far the ones I've tried have been really yummy. The kids have been enjoying the benifits from their mama's new toy too.