Happy Birthday Brinlee Lynn!

I cannot believe that my baby is 1 year old today. It seems like it was just yesterday when I held my tiny newborn in my arms and wondered where she had been my whole life. Now I hold my not so tiny toddler in my arms and think she has been here my whole life. Because my life truly began when I became a mother. This year has been the best year of my life because of the love and joy Brinlee has brought me. I feel truly blessed to be her mother. I love her more than she will ever know and I am so glad that I have her in my life. Happy Birthday Brinlee Lynn!

More fun birthday pictures to come!

My Little Cupcake

Halloween was wonderful this year! First of all I made Brinlee's costume all by myself (with a little help from Dave:)) And I didn't even have a pattern! I had to hand sew allot of it so it took a little longer than I had hoped but it turned out so cute that I didn't mind in the end. The only bad thing of the day was that Brinlee is getting all 4 molars at once so she was not very happy and didn't love to be in her costume but since it was her first Halloween and last first holiday I was a mean mom and made her wear it. My sisters and I took her to the mall trick or treating. She did good in it for the bottom floor of the mall but we ended up taking it off for the top floor :) It was funny at the mall because Brinlee already weighs 27 lbs and the costume I swear added at least 5 lbs and I could barley hold her so we had to pass her between the 3 of us about every 5 minutes. After the mall I made her wear it a little longer so I could get lots of pictures. After the mall we took her to Grandma Judy's to show her off and then we went to dinner with my family that night. It was a great day!

Dave was a wire whisk, I was a baker and Brinlee was the cupcake!

Ashlee and Josh were Sandy and Danny from GreaseCollette just announced that she is pregnant! So she had a bun in the oven and Tim was a baker. Noah was a storm trooper
Riding the rocking horse at Grandma Judy's

Mini Halloween Party

On Sunday for family dinner I had a mini Halloween party. We had spooky food and carved pumpkins. It didn't turn excatly as I had planned because cooking dinner with a 11 month old never goes as planned, but Dave only has to work one last Sunday and then he is off for good! Yippee!

My snake sandwiches

My ice hand pretty much melted as soon as they hit the punch

My meringue bonesAshlee and Josh forgot pumpkins so they were on baby dutyOne of my October projects. The ribbon was curled once but the drool made them straight.

This pictures is funny to me because Collette let her stick her hands in the pumpkin guts and then she wiped her hands off on Collette's shirt after :)

This is Dave's pumpkin. He always is doing something creative. It is a picture of Dave, me and Brinlee with our house in the background. He painted it to make it show up better.

Dave's Birthday!

Dave is now 26! What an old man! :) I like to give him a hard time about it because he is only 2 months older than me so it wont be long until I am 26 too. Since Dave has been working 16 hour days and hasn't had hardley any time off we decided to take the day off and go spend it in Northern Utah so we could go to our favorite restaurant, Maddox. It was lots of fun and nice to get away even if it was only 45 mins away. We also had my family over to celebrate and have some cake and ice cream.

Brinlee helping Dad open his gifts. She just woke up that is why her hair looks like that :)

Dave's rice crispies cake

Brinlee stealing off Aunt Collette's plateDave's 16 ounce steak! It was a good day! As you can tell from Brinlee's newest smile!
Quite the cheese :)

My Mom

Today is the 4 year mark of my Mom's death. I can't believe that it has been 4 years. There honestly hasn't been a day that has past that I haven't thought of her. Whether it be something that reminds me of her or a funny moment I know she would laugh at or a piece of juicy gossip that I would normally share with her. She is constantly in my thoughts. This past year of being a Mom has made me miss her so much. Everyday I have a question that I want to ask my Mom about being a mom. It has made this year extra hard for me because I feel like I didn't take the time to pay attention to the sweet things she did for us to make our lives extra special. So over the past few weeks I have decided to stop feeling bad about what I didn't take the time to learn and learn them now so I can be the mom my Mom was. We never ever had a store bought Halloween costume (not that they are bad, it was just something that she did for us) so it has always been one of my dreams to make my kids costumes. So this year I decided to make Brinlee's, even though I have only sewed 3 things in my whole life. I will post pictures when it is finished.:) I have also decided to try a new craft or recipe every month that I have wanted to try but felt like I needed her help with. I am sure they will be interesting at first :) but hopefully one day I can be a mom like my Mom was.

11 months!

You can expect a lot of posts from me for the next few months because there is so much going on! But today my post is on my cute little Brinlee! 11 months! Can you even believe it. Only one month to the big one year! I am already working hard on her birthday party and I will be sure to post tons of pictures of it. You always hear how fast time flies when you have kids but you honestly don't realize it till you have one. It makes me sad because she isn't a baby anymore she is a little girl. But she is so fun that it is worth it :) Here are some of her new tricks

- She says "What is that?" and points at everything. It is very cute and I swear sometimes when it is a person she is pointing at she says "Who is that?"
-She is great at standing by herself on the bed and couch. I don't know why, you think that would be harder. Maybe it is just because it is a soft place to fall. But she does stand on the floor by herself just not as long.
-She copies allot of what I do. Which isn't always a good thing. The other day I was telling Ashlee a story about something that made me mad and I made a fist a grunted and all of sudden we looked at Brinlee and she was doing. And kept doing it all day. It was pretty funny.
-She can bark like a dog and flap her arms like wings
-She has 8 teeth
-She can get on the couch by herself.
-And the best one of all....She snuggles me finally! She has never been snuggly, especially to me. It has always made me feel bad that she didn't want to, but lately she will crawl over to me and get on my lap and snuggle. It doesn't last too long and sometimes there is a bite included :) but I will take what I can get.


Here are some pictures from today. Dave was able to take a half day so we drove up American Fork Canyon to see the leaves before they are all gone.