6 Months

Brenn turned 6 months in December. With the holidays, all the family festivities and our trip to California, the month went by in what seemed like the blink of an eye. So while we were in Califonia I went and had her 6-month pictures taken (thats why the quality is not the greatest since I scanned them in, but you get the idea).

These last 6 months went by in the blink of an eye as well. Seriously I don't remember Carder's first 6 months of life going by this quick...what the heck?!? Brenn is SO pleasant, and such a sweet little girl. She loves her big brother so much (honestly I have never seen a child love another child so much). She just watches him wherever he goes, sometimes I have to make him stand behind me when I am trying to feed her baby food because otherwise she just tracks him wherever he goes. At 6 months she is starting to cut her first two bottom teeth. She loves to be tickled and entertained by her big brother, he can make her laugh so hard by doing all is silly dances and tricks and he just loves putting on the show. At her 6 month check up she weighed 14 lbs ___ oz, was ____ inches long. (I have her Drs stats from her check up somewhere but for the life of me cannot find them at the moment so I'll put that stuff in later...)

Christmas Morning 2011

I dunno what it is about Christmas time, but it makes me a little kid again. When we go back to California I am still the first one up and for the past few years have I been guilty of waking up my little boy... guilty. This year was no different. I thought Carder would be ready to go running for Santa's goods, but that morning of course I woke up first (any other day of the year getting up in the morning is excruciating, but for some reason I just cannot sleep in on Christmas). Knowing my 3 1/2 year old I knew I should let him wake up on his own otherwise we were going to have a pretty rocky day, so after doing some laundry and taking full advantage of the squeaky floors in our old house he finally started to wake up. I tried to tell him that santa came, and his response to me was "But Santa already came to Grandma & Grandpa Apostol's house and brought me some fruit snacks." Then I told him I thought I had seen some new toys out there, well that got him up and out of bed.

Earlier that month when I was putting up the Christmas tree he was lining up his toys...(something he always does). My house is constantly a mess, but its all in lines, we call it organized chaos. Anyway I was not really liking the idea of him bringing all of his toys out to the living room so I tried to tell him he needed to take them back to his room because Santa needed to have some room when he was going to come to our house. He then let me know that he was lining these toys up for Santa, so he could just wrap these toys up for him to give him on Christmas. If only Jake and I had been aware of this! Well lets just say that the NEW toys Santa brought Carder may have excited him a bit more.

Carder helping Brenn with her stocking

Brenn with her Santa goods

Carder with his Santa stuff...he was so excited about his new superhero stuff he said "Wow Mom, Santa really loves me"

Part of my Christmas was getting to fly with Brenn to California Christmas evening, so since Carder was not being monitored so closely due to his Mom packing like a mad woman I am pretty sure he finished off most of the Lifesavers in this book that day

Brenn with her "Lady Purse" as Carder calls it

Carder has been going on and on about this "Bake Pops" Infomercial since Thanksgiving, every time he saw it on tv he would say "Oh I wish I was 18" or something to that extent (because at the end you know how they say must be 18 or older to call) anyway he was ecstatic to score these from Mr. Clause

The Kiddos (Carder was too busy stuffing his mouth with lifesavers to look up at me)

Carder with his "Two Faced" jacket...yes to get my child to wear church clothes we have to tell him that is what the superheros/villains wear

Carder loved his present from Brenn...

But I think he loved even more how much she liked the present he picked out for her.

This big brother sure does love his little sister and she just ADORES him!

Carder getting serious with his new Batcave...

Brenn so happy to finally have some PINK toys!

BYU v Baylor

Jake and Carder have done their boys days this year by attending some of the BYU Football games, but the girls decided to join them a few Saturdays ago when BYU played Baylor at the Marriott center. I was a little nervous about bringing Brenn, not knowing exactly how she'd deal with the noise but she did surprisingly well (I mean, lets be honest, its not like she is used to quiet since she does have a 3 year old brother who is constantly making rather audible sound effects etc. all day long). Carder on the other hand sort of freaked out about the noise. He has been doing that every so often lately, it's really odd. Anyway for the whole first half I had to make ear muffs over his ears with my hands and tell him the play by play in his ear of what was going on with the game or when he needed to make noise etc. I think he was more cranky then anything, because he ended up falling asleep on the car ride home and sleeping for over 2 hours and I don't know the last time he took a nap. We ended up leaving at half time because Brenn needed to eat (I mean seriously BYU why do you not have a mothers lounge/nursing room in the Marriott center...ridiculous I tell you). But aside from the little Carder drama we had a fun morning/afternoon at our beloved alma mater.

Getting ready to walk over the stadium after grabbing some lunch at the "Wilk"

Jake's Grandparents have had season tickets to BYU Basketball for years, so they have sweet seats right next to the portal only a few rows up from the court. At halftime we went down to say Hi to them and they snapped a quick family picture of us (Carder was begging to leave at this point as you can tell by his "I'm so over this" face).

Now this is how you travel with two kids

Happy Holidays

A few months ago Jake's family had some family pictures taken.  Since we had everyone all put together we had the photographer shoot some of our little family as well (which we ended up using for our Christmas card this year). Here they are...

A picture with everyone looking and making a somewhat normal face...amazing!

I just love love love this picture of Brenn.  Babies make all these funny faces all the time but this captured pretty much exactly what she looks like.

The closest thing we got to a smile from Carder that day...

Jake & Holli

We feel so blessed to have the family and friends that we do, and to have had this past little while to spend time with them and get to reflect on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We hope you all had as wonderful as a holiday season as we did! :)