Christmas program

Brenna is in the back row, 3rd from left. She's in the red dress. Jace is in the second row, depending on the video, either 2nd or 3rd from the right. He's wearing a red shirt & black tie. 

family day

We spent the morning at a vintage Kiddie Park. We'd driven by it a few times before and noticed it...but it looked a little creepy. Nick randomly met the owner one day and he told him about it and gave him a coupon, so we decided, what the heck...

It ended up being pretty awesome. Yes, it was definitely old and all the rides were original. They were all metal (and you can see with the planes, they even had guns for the kids!)

The kids had a blast! They were SO excited to ride the rides. There was no fear. We weren't sure how the Ferris wheel would go over but Brenna just shrieked (with joy) about riding in a bird cage and that was that.

 The kids got to try cotton candy for the first time. They were a little confused by it, but as long as it's sweet, Brenna will eat it. Jace on the other hand didn't care for it.

They had a pony ride, which was just ok. The kids loved seeing real horses though. 

 It ended up being a great morning spent hanging out with the family!

Easter

This Easter, I finally bit the bullet and let them color eggs. We've only used plastic eggs in the past. The kids did great and thought the process was fascinating. The kids had an Easter party at school and brought home plastic eggs with candy, so we actually just used those eggs to hid and decided to just eat the ones we colored because they never really dried.  It was great that the kids already had the eggs from school, because we didn't even end up buying any more candy for them!

We had pancakes and hard boiled eggs for breakfast. The kids actually liked the hard boiled eggs and Brenna even at the white part! Of course, she dipped it in her syrup, so now she thinks that you eat hard boiled eggs with syrup. yuck.

The egg hunt was pretty funny. Brenna just cannot contain her excitement and squeals so loud! It's really cute but absolutely ear piercing. She loved racing around to find the eggs. Jace was a little less impressed with the egg finding. Brenna was great and tried to show him were a few eggs were. I thought for sure they would be competitive and fight over the eggs, but he really didn't care much.

 What Jace was really into was the new matchbox cars the Easter bunny left. And really, both kids just wanted to eat the candy :)

 We got the kids new night time books and surprisingly they were a big hit. This wasn't even a staged picture! It's so funny how kids will always surprise you.

Thank you for all the Easter cards, toys, and treats that were sent! Wish we could have spent the day with you all! Love you!

First day of school

Another first this month was the kids started school! Brenna is in preschool and Jace is in early preschool. They were awesome, but pretty tired after the first day. 

Brenna had an ok day, didn't eat much and was sitting my herself when I came to pick her up. However, as the days have gone on, she really likes it. I think she splits her time between the kids and the teachers. She likes to sit with the teacher and watch her prepare stuff for the next day. Pretty funny. 

 Jace has been really fun to watch. He is such a proud little guy and loves to tell us about what all the 'Tiny kids' (the kids in his class) are up to. He is silly and goofy and you can just see how much he enjoys being there when you pick him up. He gets a little teary when we drop him off, but the teachers are great at distracting him right away.  He is eating like crazy, and has even become (slightly) less picky at home.

We've gotten lots of compliments on both kids being so polite and smart. It's been really interesting to see Brenna having some introvert traits, which totally makes sense and she really thrives on 1-1 conversations that are pretty deep and Jace who appears to be much more extroverted even though he starts off shy. He is VERY well behaved at school (I'm told) vs what he acts like at home and is a very determined-to-do-it-his-way kinda guy. We've gotten many more stories out of Jace, he's even sang us a new song her learned at school. It's going to be really fun to watch these 2 grow and change :)

Shake your tail feathers!

Birthday!!!

Brenna turned 4! It's incredible how fast the time went yet how long ago it all seems....

At her yearly physical she was 3ft 3.5 inches tall (49%) and 35.5lbs (55%) all perfect. She was great at the appointment and had no problem talking to all the providers and answering all their questions. She even asked about parts of the exam that hadn't been done yet. She did have to get 2 shots and she was NOT happy about that. She did pretty well, but has been limping for 2 days and had a decent fever from them. She let me know she was disappointed and ashamed and did not want the shots anymore. (she was just thinking of any negative words to tell me, she wasn't really ashamed!) 

So, Brenna was not thrilled to be taking a picture on her birthday. Granted she was not feeling great. But she was sure to make a point of telling me how she did not smile for her picture. 

Our next attempt didn't start off much better. I ended up bribing her with something to get this smile.  Maybe chocolate.

She ended up with 3 celebrations. The first at school on her birthday where she brought cupcakes to share. She told me it wasn't really a party because there was no cake. That night, we had a small strawberry cake that she had picked out at the store. Which she barely touched. Finally for her birthday party the next weekend, I made the cake she had described, pink inside with white outside and strawberries. However, within the few days between me buying ingredients and her party, she had changed to no strawberries and for it to be heart shaped. I thought she'd be ok with the compromise of heart shaped strawberries on top. You can see how pleased she was!

 Then she told me all about what she REALLY wanted...this kid...

Anyway, she recovered nicely with some gift opening. She loved all her presents! 

I apologize for not being better about sending Thank-yous out. It was pretty chaotic between moving, starting school, her birthday and 3 of us being sick. Brenna (without prompting) told me the next morning "Thank you for all the beautiful presents" xoxo love you all! 

Alarious!

Brenna being her grown up self & trying to use big words....

Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas Everybody!

Here is a video from Brenna last year...

and Jace this year...

Nick's birthday

kids love cake, what can I say?

Brenna was sure to let Nick know what her plan was for his birthday.

And then Jace was sure to show daddy how to use his new GoPro.....

Nick was totally surprised and excited for the new camera. I'll be sure to let you all know when we get a cool video of us doing...something....cool....whenever that happens ;)

oh, and I did my graduation walk

Even though I've been done with school since Aug and passed my  boards in Oct, I finally got to walk in my graduation ceremony. Deb and Don were able to come down for the ceremony, which was awesome (and I'm sure Nick deeply appreciated for the extra hands with the kids!) 

My friends from school, Kristin and Rocio

Christmas part 2

Here are some of our pics from Christmas..... Decorating the tree with their special ornaments.

Here is Bella trying to hide in my lap.....

The kids loved all their gifts. The seriously played with everything. Jace, ofcourse, loved each and every car/truck/train he received and studied each one individually. 

 Brenna felt very fancy in her new towel

Jace really enjoyed the truck book he got that made sounds. 

Thank you for all your gifts, we hope that you enjoyed all your gifts too! We love you very much and hope to see you in 2016!