Celebration Dinner at Betsy & Gary's!

Saturday night we all headed to Betsy's for our Celebration Dinner before our big day... Nana & Papa surprised us with this gigantic chocolate bar from Hershey earlier in the day. I had to take a picture because soon it will be gone! :)

Betsy did such a great job with everything as usual! Everything was so festive and the food was delicious!

Joey, Kristin and our handsome ring bearer "Jobie"

Grammy, Brynn, Kristin and me!

Everyone had a great time chatting and catching up...

Nana, Papa & Auntie Kim

Lexi & Vernon came all the way from Illinois to share our special day with us - thank you so much!!

Sisters - and Miss Brynn!

Joey & Jobie

Salad's ready! Yum

Brooklyn cleaned her plate, as usual!

Time to put together pom poms - thanks girls!

The most delicious desserts!

The best friends ever!

Thank you, Betsy & Gary, for such a great evening!!! We all had a great time and you both are the best. See you soon! XOXO

Pre-Wedding Festivities!

Off to the airport! Brynn has been waiting MONTHS for this day!

Such an experienced traveler she is all decked out in her Dora gear!

Philadelphia - here we are!! We made it!

The next morning we headed to the park right behind Auntie's house. Brynn would have stayed here for the entire trip if she could! Brooklyn rocked the park in her PJ's but when you only get a few hours of sleep, PJ's are totally acceptable!

Watching all the airplanes take off!

That night we headed to the ice cream stand since the ice cream truck never made it to Auntie's house.

This was Brooklyn's favorite part of the day - she literally came to life!

She was so happy I don't even think she noticed that her face was a little messy!

Brynn preferred to make soup from her ice cream!

The next day - we hit up Grammy & Pop Pop's at the perfect time to see if Brynn could meet up with the long awaited ICE CREAM TRUCK!!! (or icy truck as she calls it) - Here it is!!!! She was so shy when the truck actually stopped in front of her...

but SO happy with her rainbow snow cone!

That night we had a little pizza party at the hotel. Here's all the Minnesota peeps - Aunt Marcia and Mom too! Thank you Jess for providing all of the pizza and drinks - you're the best!!

Brynn with Auntie Kim. She kept stealing Kim's pizza and made lots of friends with the workers at the front desk. She scored candy, ice cream and more! She knows how to work it.

My beautiful bouquet of peonies from Allison's Mom, Nancy. THANK YOU so much!!! They were so beautiful and I'll post a picture of them right before we left - they were 3 times this size!!! We brought them to the hospital for my Dad to enjoy before we left. xoxo

She's 18 Months Already!!!

Our feisty firecracker is a year and a half today! It literally took me all day to get a few good photos of her - she's so fast! She was pretty attached to this yellow cup all day and kept bringing it into the kitchen looking for me to put snacks in there for her! She's starting to sign more often these days showing us "more", "done", "thank you", "please" and she definitely gets her point across to us when she wants milk! Every animal growls in her book - even when you ask her what Mom & Dad says, she growls! Crazy kid. She has a funny personality, a mind of her own and it's her way or no way... but we love her and she makes us all smile (& sometimes cry - lol!)

Knock Knock, who's there?! (Brynn was on the other side!)

Right before one of her famous Brooke Tantrums!

Check out this "Brooklyn face"... she's famous for that too. One minute she loves the vacuum, the next she's afraid of it. I can't figure it out. When it's out she wants it back in the closet - but as soon as I put it in the closet, she wants it out!

Gotta love that sweet little innocent face! :) ... this is when you know she's planning something and you better run fast!!

We're Back!

I can't believe it's been over a month since I've put any pictures on our blog. It's been so long that I wasn't even able to log in from my computer for some reason, had to use Bryce's... Anyway, we're back in action now! We're finally starting to get back on track from our trip back east and even though things didn't go exactly as planned, we had a wonderful wedding (pics to come soon!) and a great time visiting with everyone. We miss you all and can't wait to see you again SOON!

Here's Miss Brooklyn trying to fill Daddy's shoes! That's a tough job...

So now that we're back and it's about 110 degrees out (UGH) - there's not much else to do but stay inside or stay wet. That's what we did today!

Love that pose Brooklyn!

Add love the ruffle butt!

Crazy girls! They were loving the slide

What happened?! I feel like they grew up on our trip - they look so big!  Brynn has been talking up a storm - I'm so proud of her. She really started to open up and communicate while we were away. It's so fun to be able to actually talk to her now!! She says some pretty funny things :)

Pump It Up!

The girls and I went to Pump It Up the other day and had the place to ourselves. It's great because they love to climb and I can even go on everything with them if I need to. This day I was hoping to just watch because my back has been hurting me lately... I only ended up on the slide twice. We had fun!

Brynn is a pro at this place now!

Of course you pay money for them to jump and for 1/2 the time they love sitting in the cars pretending to drive...

AND... Brooklyn loves the water fountain. I love her face here - she knows she's caught!

Fun times!

24 More Days!

The time has gone by so fast! Hard to believe that in just 24 more days, we'll be putting the finishing touches on our wedding day (or celebrating/relaxing in the hot tub with a few cocktails!)... which also means that I have 24 days to get it together and get all of the tears out - especially since every time I listen to the music that we've picked out, I cry. Oh boy - at least Brynn is ready and looking beautiful! She tried on my wedding dress as well but those photos are off limits until after the big day!

BIRD DAY!!!

I know I'm a little crazy... but we volunteered to host Bird Day at our house today for our Homeschooling Group. I had no idea that 32 people would RSVP - yikes! I didn't even know there were that many people in the group! I knew I couldn't cancel, so we went with it and everyone had a great time! Once everyone arrived, we read a short bird book and then past out these feathers so all the kids could help "dress" the bird.

Then we headed outside to make bird feeders made out of toilet paper rolls, peanut butter and birdseed of course!

Here's Brynn with her friends Kellen & Reagan

All of their feeders turned out great and we had little bags made up for them to put them in to take home for the birds at their house.

When kids are involved, snack time is a must! We had "dirt" cups, fruit & goldfish.

A few of the boys!

and some of the girls... Reagan & Kennedi

Mason on the pink bike. Real men drive pink cars!

Miss Brooklyn and Maxden... so crazy to see how big they're getting. They were only about 3 months old when they first met!

Emmett & Brynn! Brynn was waiting ALL week for Emmett to come to her house - she literally has not stopped talking about him since our last play date. The craziness of the morning was all worth it once I saw the smile on her face. She was so happy to have her friends over! 

They all had lots of fun playing...

Brynn and her bird feeder that she made (it's the one hanging from the real bird feeder!)

Dressing the bird! (or undressing!) ... the bird only lost his feet by the end of the morning. I'd say that's a success!

They did a good job with all the feathers.

The bird bags for their feeders.

 

Some fun bird facts for them to learn about at home

The gang! Looks like a lot of kids but we're missing 8! We had LOTS of friends over :) Happy Bird Day everyone!