A little update...

Brekken is 15 months now. Last week we had his check up, and he is 23.10 lbs, and 31 inches tall. He is loving to be outside. He wakes up (starving), so he walks around pointing at food, and goes over to his high chair wanting in, until we feed him. Then as soon as he gets done, he usually goes to find his shoes and brings them to me or Mike. It's pretty cute! He loves his little mickey that Marlee got for him, and she has a big Mickey, so they walk around with them playing together. He loves trucks, outdoors, balls and babies...yes, babies. He does have a big sister after all. :)

Marlee is now 4 and a few months, and we just got around to having her checkup. She is 41 inches tall, and 38 pounds. She is loving her doll house stuff, babies and playing pretend...anything. She plays mail man, doctor, teacher, if she sees something on tv, or in real life shortly after we are playing it. She is so sweet to Brekken. She takes care of him. We also got a trampoline that Santa brought us, but just got it put up, and she wants to jump on it every minute of the day.

 Playing peek a boo.

They are also loving the sprinklers, and the pool, although we haven't gotten the pool out as much yet.

Brekken

In a few days Brekken will be 14 months old. It doesn't even seem possible that he will be that old. :) But the past two weeks have been a major growth spurt for him. He has started walking, learned to wave bye (I think he def. coulda done this earlier but we never did it really), started blowing kisses, and blowing on his food and toys to make them work. It has been really fun to see all the fun things he has learned in the past few weeks, because while we all know our kids learn every day, you can't always see what they picked up. :)

He mainly only says mama, dada, and no. Although I am pretty sure he has been trying to say dog, Razzle (our dogs name), and I have heard him say ball, and a few other words, but right now his brain is all about the physical activities he is learning. I am sure one of these days those will slow down and he will pick up talking at a rapid rate. :)

He loves to be outside, loves to play with Marlee, doesn't really play with baby toys...he wants the big kid stuff. He is usually a very happy, mild tempered little man, but he can throw a fit when he thinks he needs to, and he will def "yell" at you if you aren't doing things the way he would like.

My favorite (not being mean) is when the door is open for something, and it's not time for him to go outside, but he really wants to, so he crawls as fast as he can over to the door (usually while I am shutting it), and while he is crawling he is yelling at me the whole time. It makes me feel bad, but it is seriously the funniest thing to me. :)

 He loves to be in these chairs...

 and to play in the dirt...

 and to laugh...often...

 and his first (or maybe second) owweee. He fell out of a chair kinda like the one before...straight onto his face. He had a bloody lip, and I am pretty sure it may have broken his nose. He didn't catch himself, and I couldn't get to him fast enough. :(

And my little walker...

Brekken turned 1 (in February)

We had a fish theme...or rather a fish cake.

We shared a birthday party with our good friends who their son turned 1 a day before Brekken. It was a good time! :) We opened presents...well more like the big kids helped him, because he had no interest at all.

And of course we had cake...



And one of all of us. :)

Marlee

Marlee is now 4. A month later and here is her birthday picture...

She requested a snowman party. Thankfully we had enough snow to go sledding. I didn't take my camera sledding, so I have no pictures of that. I also have my hat on, because after sledding for a few hours, I wasn't about to take it off since everyone came straight to our house afterwards for cake. :)

At 4, she is smarter than ever. :) She loves soccer. She tried volleyball, but wasn't super into it. She says she likes it now, but a couple times during practice she wanted to go home, and we didn't end up going back after one practice where we left early because I was fighting her to get onto the court. She loves to be outdoors. She is really into "exercising" with me. I started going to running club, and while we are out running, the kids are playing and they were having "races". It cracks me up! She knows all of her upper case letters, and their sounds. And most of her lower case letters (with the exception of d, b, q, p) which are pretty standard to get mixed up. We are working on number recognition, and we count all the time. She still skips a few in the teens, but she enjoys it. She is really into Daniel tigers neighborhood right now, and syd the science kid, so sometimes we "do school" and do different things. We also have done a science experiment...what dissolves and what does not with things around my house. She really enjoyed it. We will have to do it a few more times since that was the first time she has ever heard the word dissolve. She made predictions, and then we tested it. Afterwards she really enjoyed dumping all the water into different jars.

She is such a good big sister! She always wants to help Brekken (well almost always!). And she loves to show him new things, and play with him. She also loves to pull him around and try to make him do whatever she wants him to do. lol

All in all, we love her lots and lots!

Marlee's 4 year old questions

1.     What is your favorite color? pink

2.     What is your favorite toy? dinosaurs

3.     What is your favorite fruit? blueberries

4.     What is your favorite show? Dinosaur train, Daniel Tigers Neighborhood

5.     What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Yummy yummy banana bread

6.     What is your favorite thing to wear? Jeans and a shirt and socks

7.     What is your favorite game? Hide and seek, and tag

8.     What is your favorite snack? watermelon

9.     What is your favorite animal? Giraffe and elephant

10.            What is your favorite song? Jingle bells

11.            What is your favorite story? The big snowball fight

12.            Who is your best friend? Addie and Aurora

13.            What is your favorite cereal? Fruit loops

14.            What do you like to do when you go outside? Play soccer

15.            What is your favorite drink? Punch and lemonade and milk

16.            What is your favorite holiday? Christmas Eve

17.            What do you like to take to bed with you? My new little dragon

18.            What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Yummy pancakes

19.            What is your favorite thing to eat for dinner? Yummy chili

20.   What do you want to be when you grow up? A girl basketball player, because I don’t want to be in football because they tackle. I am not gonna be in football, I’m gonna be in basketball.

Kids..

Brekken turned 11 months near the end of January, and Marlee turned 4 a few days after. I can't believe I have a 4 year old! And that my baby is almost a year old. It's so crazy to me how time is just flying by!
Brekkens favorite word is no...and that is about the only word he says any more. Little turkey. He says mama and dada sometimes, as well as oh and he used to say hi, but I haven't heard that in a while. He crawls like a speed demon, and will walk if he can push something around...so some of his toys are bigger, and he will stand up and push them around while walking. He babbles all the time. He didn't inherit the quiet gene from his dad! He's gonna be a talker like Marlee and myself. :) He definitely tells me if he doesn't like something, by either screaming or crying. I think he is going to be harder to wean from nursing than Marlee. I had to go to Walmart last night to get diapers and they were still eating dinner when I left. Mike got him all ready for bed, and they were all playing just fine until I walked in. I tried to put some stuff away and he just followed me around crying until I sat down to nurse him. There are other times that I will have waited longer than I normally do (because we are either out and about or something else like that) and he will climb all over me, trying to eat my shirt. He reminds me of a little bird. It's cute! :)

Marlee...she is my big girl! She is usually so helpful! She likes to play with Brekken, although she has her moments of wanting nothing to do with him. She still loves dinosaurs, but I do see a little more "girly" side coming out of her. She now likes to play princess more, and twirl and dance. She has pretty much stopped taking naps now...which is a real bummer for me! She still has quiet time, because lets face it, every mom in the world needs a few minutes to themselves during the day.
She loves to go sledding, which is what we did for her party. It was a blast! We went a few days later with some friends and Marlee and her friend finally went down by themselves. She also learned how to go down a bigger slide at the park. It's cool to see her growing, learning and trying new things! She is really coming out of her shell!

I have an interview I want to do with her...and am hoping to get it done soon... :) Then I will post that too.

Brekken 10 months

Brekken turned 10 months right before Christmas...so I guess I shoulda titled 10.5 months. As of 10 months he had 4 teeth. Two on top, two on bottom. As of now, he has 4 teeth, and is getting his 5th tooth on the bottom.

He loves:
Marlee
Our dog
balls
trucks/cars
his sisters dolls for her doll house
anything Marlee has
the remote
my cell phone
keys (real keys...he doesn't play around with the pretend ones :)
outside

He says on occasion hi, mama, dada and oh. Although none of those are said all the time, or with very much rhyme or reason. He likes to talk, and babble.

He and Marlee share a room. If I lay her down first and she's sleeping, and then lay him in there (during nap time) he will stand up looking at her and say "Hiiiieee" a bunch of times. It's super cute, and cracks me up! :)

He says oh for almost everything. If he sees the dog he will say oh and crawl over to the door. :)

He is in 12 month clothing. He is a super happy boy. He loves food. He barely eats any baby food any more. I usually just give him whatever we are eating.
He can crawl. He can pull himself up. He is creeping along furniture a little bit. He can go up and down stairs...well, down one stair, I haven't let him go down more than one at a time, although he loves to try to get to the stairs and wants to go down them if the gate isn't closed. He is super fast too, so he has almost went down them...little turkey!

He plays peek a boo with blankets, and claps his hands.

We love him very much! :)

farther and farther apart

My posts keep getting farther and farther apart...not on purpose. It just seems like I don't have time to be on the computer much any more, and when I do, I don't want to be...I want to be hanging out with my hubby.

Here's what is going on lately:

• I am super excited because soon Sarah will be living in a town close enough that we can hang out. 
• I am getting ready for Christmas.
• I am almost done shopping...
• I still have to wrap everything...and mail some stuff.
• We got our family photos back, so now I just need to hang them. :)
• We are going to have over 20 people at our house for Christmas (if everyone comes). This is a little daunting to me, but should be fun. 
• My mom got Marlee and Brekken a trampoline for outside, so I am hoping that Santa will bring it, and then all the guys who are here on Christmas can put it together. :) 
• My kids were a little cranky from Saturday-Tuesday, and I thought I was going to have to give them away. :/
• I am super excited to have spend some time with Mike this weekend. I am hoping he can help me get some stuff ready for Christmas. 
• I got him NBA tickets, and am super excited to go to the big city. While we are there we are going to take the kids to the zoo (weather permitting) and also to the aquarium. :) 
• I still have to finish a quilt for Mikes brother. I have no motivation to do it though. :( 
• If you remember me telling you about our challenge to get rid of 500 things by the end of the year, I met that goal, and my friends and I are trying to meet 750 by the end of the year. I am still in the 500's. 

We do not have snow...but we are hoping for some for Christmas!!! :)

Brekken

Brekken is now 9 months old. He turned last Friday. Crazy how fast time is going!

Last week, literally he learned:
how to real crawl
sit up from laying down
pull himself up to a stand
master the stair between our kitchen and living room (we have a sunken living room) and he learned that before he started real crawling.
say mama

We had his check up today and he is 20lbs 15 oz. and 27 (I think) inches long. At 6 months he was 19.9 pounds, and I thought for sure he would be at least 22 or 23 lbs. He did jump about 2 1/4 inches which is amazing to me. It may be more...I thought it would tell me how tall he was last time, but it did it in feet and inches instead of just inches, which in the Dr.'s office I couldn't do the math in the short amount of time I had. :)

Anyhow, Brek is eating solid foods and still nursing. We are starting to give him some regular foods like crackers, and some types of meat also. We will probably start introducing more of that soon.

He babbles all the time, and is a super happy baby. He still randomly wakes up in the middle of the night, but it's not as often as before. He def. has my number in the middle of the night. He cries and says Mama...and it melts my heart, but I have been trying to not give in to him.

I was going to post a bunch of pictures, but apparently ran out of storage, so I will figure out that, and then post more pictures.

Halloween

I know this is late....but I finally got my pics off my camera. :)

Pumpkin carving...




Minnie Mouse
My little elephant


We packed a lot in, in a short amount of time...We went to a "carnival", came home at 4:30 ate pizza with Grandma and Grandpa, then went trick or treating from 5-6, came home, fed Brekken and took him to the babysitters...then went to watch the UW game, because amazingly they were here. Marlee loves UW. So we had fun. It was just a lot of business all at once. :)

Marlee loved trick or treating this year. And Brekken stayed home with Mike while I took her trick or treating. Amazingly it was a super nice evening so we didn't even have to wear coats...YAY!

A little mix up...

Marlee heard me talking to our neighbor on the phone the other afternoon. We were talking about how the kids should play together...either at her house or at ours...

I said "Oh yes, it doesn't matter to me which house, but Marlee's been dying to play with them for the whole week!" The conversation went on a few more minutes, and I think I may have said it again...randomly.

When I got off the phone Marlee came up to me and says "Mama, I'm dying?"
I said "What, no you're not dying! Why would you think that (clearly not thinking about my previous statement, and my mind was reeling!).
"Well, you said I was dying on the phone."
"Oh, I did say that didn't I. You are not dying. It's a phrase. But I meant excited. I should have said excited shouldn't I have?!"


Thankfully it didn't go much farther than that...but I just thought holy moly, I really need to pay attention to what I am saying! She was in the other room, so I didn't really think she was listening. :)

Beautiful!

Today, well actually this whole week has been beautiful! It's been in the 60's, which is awesome and oh so scary at the same time. But I guess we can't change how the climate is being affected by the world, (well we can IF everyone did something...but anyhow), so I try not to think about it. And just go with the flow.

I got to teach my class today, so we did scarecrows, and a Thanksgiving countdown chain. It was fun...I have no photos of it, but we essentially did this craft from No Time for Flash cards. And obviously just a chain of cut papers, and glue on one end. We also read two books...The Scarecrow boy (or something like that, and a countdown to Thanksgiving one. (I don't have them in front of me.)

Anyhow, afterwards, we met up with some friends at the park and took a lunch. I can't believe it was nice enough for us to do that...to be able to hang out in sweat shirts and have the kids play. We were there from about 10:45-2:00 it was so nice. We met some new friends also, which is awesome!!! I love meeting new people with kids Marlee's age. And actually I met this girl who her daughter is 4 (just turned 4) and then her other daughter is 9 months. Which is awesome!!!

Marlee has been really into wearing sunglasses lately. In fact we were at the park for about 2 hours and she comes up to me and says the sun was getting in her eyes, so she needed her glasses out of the truck. It cracked me up. And she has also been into wearing her hoodie with the hood up. So this is what she walks around looking like all the time...

 And this is her doing her pucker up face. She cracks me up! :)

And here is Brekken at the park.

While he can army crawl, he doesn't usually go far if we are outside. He was content to play with a toy, and a sippy cup for an hour or so. I also of course fed him, and when we had gotten there he was sleeping. We also tried the swing, and not thinking about it, I swung him a little hard, and he was done. I almost had a heart attack. But I was also swinging Marlee, so she was saying higher, higher, and I just started pushing both of them, while talking to a friend...yea. Mother of the year award right here. lol

whirl wind

This has been a whirl wind of a week...
My head is still spinning from all the activities, and it's not even over yet...I still have a girls only trip to the big city on Saturday.
I am super excited.
And oh so tired!
So I hope everyone had a fun halloween!
And I will be posting pictures later. When my eyes aren't all blurry. :)

Shoe Boxes

Last year Marlee and I filled a shoe box for a child who doesn't get Christmas presents, or many of them anyways. It's called Operation Christmas Child through Samaritan's Purse.

Essentially, you fill up a shoe box, or a shoebox sized plastic tub from the dollar store, with toys and other gifts for kids in need. Last year we did one for a girl in the 2-4 year old category. This year, we are doing at least two, if not more...and we are going to do the 10-14 age range. One boy and one girl. Apparently that age is harder to come by.

Our church is hoping to get 50 boxes filled. Our new associate pastor has helped deliver these boxes before, and he showed a clip at church on Sunday. It was amazing. There is a list of things to send, and not to send on their website. And you can find a drop off location online as well. It's pretty neat! A lot of the kids need school supplies, and essentials-tooth brushes, tooth paste things of that nature. We are also putting in socks, hats, gloves, and some other stuff. When we get it all together, I will post a picture of everything in our box. :)

If you decide to do it, I would love to see your box!

doll houses...

I have been thinking about Christmas for a while now. I start thinking about it in about August...well the end of it anyways. I don't usually buy stuff, but I start browsing to see what I want to get the kids, and pricing things out, and start making lists of things I want to do/get for everyone. And I also start some of my hand made projects...and when you do handmade with two kids, you have to start early to get them finished in time! :)

Well, I found this doll house probably in August, on our FB kid swap. If you've looked into doll houses, they are not cheap. Mike thinks I still got ripped off, but then we went to Walmart today, I showed him that the one they had there was $90. And I got mine for cheaper. There are a few little scuff marks that I couldn't get off, but really, Marlee is 3 and doesn't care if it's used, or if it's brand new.

Well, I had planned on having that be her big present for Christmas. And then a couple weeks ago, my mom came and she saw it. She never asked about it after that day, but I knew she knew about it. And has probably spied it a few times since then. Mike and I talked about it, and decided to give it to her now. Today was the day. I went downstairs, brought it up, and cleaned it. She played with it from 9-6. I had to force her to go outside for a little while (which is really unusual-especially if Mike's out there).

We had some shopping to do also, so when we got back, she was excited to get to play with her dolls again. I am super excited she likes it so much, but kinda surprised she didn't play with her dinosaurs at all today. She has been a dinosaur girl for so long, it throws me off not to have her play with them. Mike even tried to have her dinosaurs use the house along with the people, and she told him that was not okay.

Brekken even likes the doll house. He was trying to see inside there, and Marlee would talk to him from one side and he would laugh and laugh and laugh. And she would start laughing too. I am excited to see the interaction between the two of them! It's been so fun!

And I even got some of it on video...I swear they don't do as much once I get the camera out, and you can't see their faces very well, but it cracks me up!

Are you thinking about Christmas yet?

school

I have mentioned before that I am not going to put Marlee in preschool. At least not this year. Probably not ever, unless I decide to put her in public school in kindergarten. I am still on the fence about that.

Anyhow, we are doing some "school" over here. This week I found some printables from 1+1+1=1. We were doing a letter a week, and then life got crazy around here and we didn't do anything for a while. We went to the pumpkin patch last weekend which was a lot of fun. So I thought we would have a little theme of pumpkins this week. Carissa had some stuff on pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns, so Marlee got to learn a new word. Last weekend, I had asked her if she wanted to carve them, and she said no. Then yesterday after we did some of this stuff, she asked if we could put faces on our pumpkins. It was cool to see that. We will be carving them with Daddy home, so he can help. :)

Marlee is super into cutting right now. She's not so into coloring, but cutting and gluing are her favorites at the moment. And we also got to do math with these, which is always a plus. I have a harder time doing math with her than reading just because my brain doesn't really work like that I guess.

Anyhow, here are the sheets we did. We also played a dice game, that was graphing the other day, but don't have photos of that. :)

 I had to help her draw their mouths...but she really enjoyed this. She also really liked me making one of the legs, and her making the other. :)

Brekken

Brekken giggling

And him "crawling." :)

park fun

I am trying to suck it up and play outside more. It's not that I don't like being outside, it's just that my friend who always went for walks with me and my BFF moved. And once you get used to walking, playing at the park, and all those fun things with someone, it's so much harder to go by yourself. Some days I am really good at it, others not so much.

The other morning I made plans with some friends to have coffee at the park so our kids could play, and we could still have time to chat, without having to keep our kids in check the whole time we were at a resteraunt having coffee. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Yep, that's how I roll. :)

Anyhow, I didn't take my camera, but have been trying to take a picture every day of things we do, or in general...so I used my cell.

His fingers are super dirty from playing in the wood chips. Thankfully he doesn't really try to eat the wood chips. But he sure does have fun! Marlee and her friend, were running around like crazy kids, so I didn't get any more pictures of her. :)

what's been goin on...

Brekken is now 7 + months, and he is a mover. He is army crawling all over the place. I also saw the little stinker pull himself up onto a toy today. He was fully on his knees. It's going by so fast! He is saying the m sound often. I am hoping he says mama first. :) He is still happy, and smiley, except when I get the camera out...then he won't smile to save my life usually. He doesn't love it when we take things that he's not supposed to have away from him.

Marlee is also growing like a weed! She now says "that's weird" often. She is also trying to make jokes now. And is really into pretend play. It used to be that we had to have something (dinosaurs, animals or whatever) to play like they were talking, but in the past few weeks it has morphed into us also pretending to be animals, and dinosaurs and things like that. She also likes to pretend she is an animal and I am the zoo keeper. She is pretty clever in our "adventures." :)

I have been sewing and working on clearing things out of our house. I don't know if I mentioned the 500 things challenge before...our goal was to get rid of 500 things by the end of the year, with the hopes of having less stuff to clean, put away, and all that jazz. And living simpler. Well, I am 390 and I can tell you I feel like I am running out of things to get rid of, because I don't really want to part with them, even though I am tired of having it. But we as a group (because I am doing it with 3 friends), decided to up it to 750 by the end of the year. When we hit milestones, we get to go do something together, which has been fun. Our first outing was dinner, and our second was dessert. I also feel like although I am at almost 400, I am still swimming in stuff. It's almost annoying, that you can get rid of that many things, and still have a house full of clutter.

Some of my friends and I have been making freezer meals. Last time we did it, we made 13 meals for each of us, which is just so awesome! We are going to try to do it each month, with different recipes. Our first go around was taco casserole, meat balls, and tater tot casserole. They were delicious!

I am trying to take a photo a day...we shall see how it goes. It's usually with my phone, but maybe I can get all my pictures onto my computer, and off my camera and start using that. :)

This past week

Of course there was the crazy aspect of the week, that I just wrote about, but then there were a lot of fun things. Mike was off all week, and we got to hang out at home. It was nice. We got some things done around the house that we needed to do, and also did some things I have been wanting to do...:)

We had our first snow of the season last weekend. So we were all bundled up and outside at 8am last Saturday. If I haven't mentioned it before, Marlee's favorite book is Snow Day. We have been listening to Christmas music (well she has in her room), since last Christmas, and we have been reading snow day since this summer. She has been super excited for the snow. :)

So we had a snowball fight, made snow angels, and they rode in the sled...

Then Marlee and I went to get our hair cut...

And now we match...we both have bangs. :)

Then we got our family pictures. I am so bummed that i completely forgot to get pictures of just Mike and I. I don't usually pay for pictures...and the one time I did, I forgot to do that. I even thought about it before and had a whole list of things I wanted, but then some stuff happened and they were post poned,. and then I forgot. :(

Then we went fishing. We had a lot of fun. Although we didn't catch fish, and it was freezing that day.

 The only thin we caught was this big stick. lol

Then my sister came and we went to the pumpkin patch.

 My children don't cooperate very well with pictures of them together. Brekken was interested in the dirt, and Marlee wanted to go back to where her cousins were, because they were picking out tiny pumpkins. :)

 Then we went shopping and found this cute hat. :)