This one's for Grandma!

Brielle got this cute dress from her Grandma Linda's trip to Mexico. She adores it and I have to admit that I LOVE how pretty she looks in this color. My favorite thing about it, though, is how she feels when she wears it. Her very first comment about it was, "hey, mom, don't I just look like a beautiful rock star!?" Yeah, nothin says rock star like a Mexican sundress and a cardigan!

I finally painted!

Brielle's room has been torturing me ever since before she was even born. I knew that I wanted to do a brown and pink room, but her room is seriously tiny and painting it brown terrified me. Painting it pink was almost as scary. I finally came up with a plan about a year ago and it's taken me a whole year to get up the guts to do it, but I finally did it and I am completely thrilled with it! Doesn't it make you want to go out and eat some Neapolitan ice cream? Now I just can't seem to make myself put holes in the walls to hang up her decorations. Hopefully that won't take a whole year....

School has been out for nearly a month and yet we have only seen one day that actually reached 80! It's been a windy and rainy and gloomy, and really really busy. I've found myself wondering when we'd be able to get started with all our summertime fun, until I finally downloaded my most recent pictures. Evidence of summer is everywhere!

First night of the summer sleeping out on the tramp --- Brielle actually only made it about an hour, but the rest of the giggled until all ours of the night! It sounded beautiful. This is our first morning of no school. It looks like sheer laziness -- but I like to call it "everyone snuggling on the couch and agreeing on the same show and getting along and letting mom sleep in". Otherwise known as "bliss"!

I believe this is morning number two. Waking up to find your son reading to his smiling little sister is a serious treasure!

We've also done some baking. Like a lot of baking. Maybe I should not have bought that enormous bag of chocolate chips at Costco right before swimsuit season?

The boys even got to have their first fishing day with dad of the season. They FROZE to death and fought the wind more than they fought the fish, but they got their guy time in and even caught a couple of fish in the process.

I can't wait to see what we get to do when summer actually begins!

Breje turned 14, and we got tons of visiters!

It's unbelievably difficult to comprehend that my little girl is actually a 14 year old! Having her party right after Brielle's really emphasizes how much older she is getting. She no longer begs for princess parties and dreams about getting dress-ups and coloring books. Topping her list was a slumber party and, of course, the ipod! (Thanks, Grandma!)

It's a good thing she is such an amazing teenager -- it makes missing her childhood a little bit easier. Breje has an amazing testimony for someone her age and a very firm hold of her values. She's a huge help with her brothers and Brielle and I'm not sure if I'd still be sane (at least partially) if she wasn't so willing to babysit for me. I love that she lets Brielle have "sleepovers" in her room and does her hair and everything else she can think of so that those ten years between them seem so short. I love that she shares my love of reading and that she "gets" Pride and Prejudice. I love that she's even more beautiful on the inside than she is on the outside, even though she grows more lovely every day. Happy Birthday, Breje!

Her birthday was made even more special when Grandma Linda and Aunt Hayley (with the ladies, of course) made the long drive from Utah to come celebrate. We finished up all her birthday shopping and ate some yummy food along the way. My camera happened to be missing at the time and it just kills me because there were many lovely moments. It never ceases to amaze me that Ady and Kutter have still not discovered that they have nothing in common (despite spending EVERY SINGLE WAKING MOMENT TOGETHER) and Brielle and Sienna never seem to stop smiling.

It was literally an hour after this crew left that Jason, Chelsi and kids showed up for their first visit to this lovely town. It was so fun to see how quickly the kids connected, as they don't get to see each other very often.

Spending time with them helped remind us that there are positive aspects to our sleepy little town. We spent most of their time here enjoying all of our wide open spaces in the back yard. The kids braved the motorcycle together....

... and the horse....

... and I seriously wish I had a picture of how much they enjoyed our new kittens (the sentiment was most definitely not reciprocated!)

Thank you so much, everyone, for making our Memorial Day weekend seem a lot less dreary!

My Baby Just Turned Four!

How is this possible? As trite as this sounds, it really does seem like just yesterday that we brought her home from the hospital and she's been our little princess ever since. There are so many things to love about our Brielle --- here's just a few of our favorites....

Brielle is always my number one helper. She adores laundry. She got roped into picking rocks out of the corral on her birthday and kept exclaiming, "This is so great! I love my birthday!" (making the rest of us look really really bad!) She can usually be heard saying "oh, I'll get that for ya" or "just let me do it". Her willingness to serve blesses our lives on a daily basis.

This kid is a snuggler. She is so full of love and usually more than willing to share. Occasionally she runs out of hugs and kisses, but she usually manages to discover a few she's got hidden around the house before we feel their absence too keenly.

I love how vocal she is. She has no idea that she is not actually twenty five and her vocabulary reflects that. Each day brings a new phrase that we can believe we actually heard from her lips. It's constant entertainment.

She adores her siblings and would do almost anything for them. We often discover her cleaning someone else's room so that they'll have time to play with her, and she'd follow her big sister anywhere!

I love how well-rounded she is. She is such a girly-girl -- crazy about cute clothes and make up and anything princess, but she'll get down and dirty outside with her brothers and she adores her dad's motorcycle!

Now, onto partytime! Brielle has been completely determined, for months now, to have a pink and purple princess party. We kicked it off by delivering these little purses to her friends, with invitations inside.

She chose a lavender tablecloth with pink and purple accents. I made these little paper "glass slippers" and filled them with links so that they could make their own necklaces or bracelets while they ate.

Since I SO don't do cake decorating, I printed princess cupcake toppers and stuck them in cupcakes (chocolate of course!) with lavender icing and pink sprinkles.
I think my favorite party decoration were the pom poms I made to hang from the ceiling. If you find them hanging in my home, different colors for every season, don't judge me. They just made me happy!

When her friends arrived, I had a stand waiting with homemade princess scepters and tiaras with their names on them. I also set out a bunch of dress ups in case anyone wanted to add to their princess attire.

First, we played "pin the tiara on the princess". Then we decided to cut right to all the sugar. We had to have the party just before dinnertime, so I kept it fairly simple with cupcakes and princess punch.

The jewels were a huge hit!

Then it was time for pictures and presents.

I love how tiny she looks surrounded by all her friends. She acted completely overwhelmed when she opened each present and LOVED everything she got!

Including this adorable beach umbrella, which the girls promptly begged to try out!

Then we played a princess treasure hung game with clues like "If Sleeping Beauty came to stay at Brielle's house, where would we find her?" I made it up that morning and was astonished by it's success. The "treasure" was the goody bags that Brielle had to give out to her friends. I'm so mad that I forgot to get a picture of that because it was her favorite part of the whole day!

We spent the remainder of the afternoon reading princess stories while they examined their treasure (This is when I discovered that getting kids to sit still while you read to them is simple if you just give them a ring pop!) and coloring in Brielle's new princess coloring kit!

Easter

I know. Easter isn't exactly a recent event anymore, but it's so tough to blog about the pinnacle of spring when it is totally FREEZING outside! Plus, the real kicker is that my children are experts at evading the super sweet-all-the-kids-standing-together-in-their-Easter-clothes-looking-adorable-picture. I even contemplated faking it the next week, but they've eluded me once again and so I must press on ....
We did manage to have some fun painting eggs with our friends... ...we didn't quite have time to pull out my fancy silk ties, but we managed to create several pink and purple eggs, along with a seriously alarming plethora of Bronco inspired eggs.

On Sunday, we rushed home for dinner and the annual egg hunt at a friends' house. Notice the utter lack of formal attire, mere minutes after leaving church! (sigh!)

Because Brielle so admires the camera, and NO ONE else does! I manged to capture this shot of Brielle helping Kutter find more eggs ... can you tell that he is sOOO not amused that little sis is giving him pointers?

That's all for now, because picnik has decided to hate my guts, but I'm on it ---- ok, so I'll probably give up and just post a couple blurry, uncropped pics in a couple days!

Oh Brother!

I was so excited for Trayson, 7 years ago, when I found out that our third child was going to be a boy! I pictured my two handsome little guys tossing a football around in the backyard, driving monster trucks all over the house, getting in trouble for treating bedtime like a constant sleepover ...

...I guess I had COMPLETELY forgotten what it was like to have a younger brother. I saw this gentle reminder (in paper airplane form!) flying around my house this week, and it's all coming back to me!My only consolation is that their relationship really is so similar to the one I use to have with my brother, so I get to assume that someday he will love and appreciate him as much as I love mine now!