It's About Time!!!

So it has been like 5 weeks since I last blogged. Every time I say I am going to get better I end up getting worse...so I am not going to say that this time! Sooooo much has happened since I blogged last that I have a plethora (I like that word:o) of pictures and news to go with it! But instead of trying to put it all in one post, I will probably have to do a post a day for the next few days in order to catch up. Please don't anyone feel obligated to read any of these, it is basically for journaling purposes anyway. I just happen to be able to show off my adorable baby while I'm at it! :o) Since I last posted, Brooklee has gone camping for the first time, she saw her first fireworks, we took a rode trip to Texas for a family reunion, we celebrated pioneer days, Brooklee got two more teeth (and is currently working on two more!) and she has learned to crawl and I believe is now very close to walking! So yah, I have a lot to post about! Anyway, I will start with Brooklee's first camping trip and 4th of July! Here are the pics:

Okay, so this has nothing to do with camping or the 4th of July, but I just thought it was a way cute picture of Brooklee and Oscar. Brooklee LOVES Oscar and I think Oscar loves her even more! It is so cute! He will come up slowly and sit or lay by her and she proceeds to poke his eyeballs and pull his ears and he seems to enjoy it!

Here is Brooklee in her carseat ready to make the trip to the White Mountains. She is SUCH a good traveler, which was such a relief knowing we would be driving to Texas in the next few weeks (which she was AMAZING during that trip as well)

Sam's mom gave us this backpack which has been the greatest thing ever! Brooklee seems to really enjoy it too!

Here we are! Family photos such as this are pretty rare, so I thought I better take advantage of having this one! We look pretty ragged, but hey...we were camping!

Did I mention we went camping on the weekend of the 4th of July? Anyway, here are the girls dressed up to go to the fireworks in Showlow (which was a horrible experience by the way, and we will NEVER do THAT again) Anyway, Jennifer made matching bows for all of them which turned out really cute!

Here are my parents and all of their grandkids. It is way too hard to get that many little kids to smile at the same time, but this is good considering the circumstances!

At the fireworks there were people selling glowing toys which all of the older kids got. Well Brooklee kept trying to steal them from the kids, so Sam went and bought her one, which she absolutely LOVES. She still plays with it. To this day it is probably her favorite toy. For such a cheap thing it has held up really well and still glows! Impressive! (She kept smacking sam in the head with it...it was so funny but sam didn't seem to agree :o)

Here is Brooklee in her feetsie pajamas. She hadn't worn feetsie pajamas since she was really little and I loved her in them. So I was so excited to be going where it was cold and I just HAD to buy her some! I kinda went crazy buying them...she ended up only wearing about half of the ones that I bought but she looked so darn cute and cuddly!

Okay, so I know this is really random too, but I just recently re-decorated my bedroom, and I thought I would post pictures of it. I couldn't find my "before" pictures, but here is the "after". It is not completely done, but it's close. It pretty much turned out how I had planned, so that is good. Nothing big but enough of a change. I just like the blue and brown color scheme and thought that a bedroom was probably the safest place to try it out. I was pretty proud of myself because it was a relatively cheap project. Most of the accessories I already had. It just took a few cosmetic changes (I love spray paint by the way! Everyone should use it! It does wonders) and a lot of time, but decorating is always fun!

Here is a panoramic shot of the room. I was just messing around with the camera and decided this panoramic thing is pretty cool. Anyway, like i said, it is not completely finished, but mostly there. Well, that is just part of what we've been up to this summer. There is definitely more to come!

Growing Up...

Our little baby Brooklee is growing up so fast! She seems to do new things every day! A few weeks ago, it seemed like in just a matter of days, she was waving bye, giving "five", shaking her head "no" (of course:o) and just doing so many things. She is such an active little baby. She always has to see what is going on, and she gets so frustrated watching her cousins and other kids playing because she wants to get in on all of the action! She is not crawling yet, but she gets around to wherever she wants to go. I think she is just trying to skip the crawling stage and go straight to walking. Everyone keeps telling me "she has to crawl first or else she'll be uncoordinated!" but she definitely has a mind of her own and is going to do what she wants to do! Anyway, here are some pictures from the last few weeks...

I love this picture! I set Brooklee on the floor in our bedroom while I went to the kitchen for just a few seconds. Sam was up on the bed and when I came in, I didn't see Brooklee. It freaked me out for a second, and then I saw her little head poke out from under the bed! I laughed so hard! It was so stinkin cute! I really was only gone for maybe 30 seconds and she had made her way under the bed!

So Brooklee's first two bottom teeth came in about a month ago. I really haven't gotten any good pictures of them. These are pretty much it and I made the mistake of using the sephia setting so you can't see them as well. But if you look closely, they are there!

You can see her two little teeth in this one as well!

Okay, this might seem really random, but I never did post about Father's Day! I am a horrible wife! Anyway, I didn't do too much for Sam, but I did make him breakfast in bed. Which actually says a lot because Sam is usually the breakfast maker, especially on Sundays! Anyway, I made a pretty good breakfast, if I do say so myself! I made banana pancakes, eggs, english muffins, and this beautiful fruit and yogurt parfait that I just put together at the last minute and I thought that it turned out really cute! :o)

And here is a picture of Sam and his breakfast in bed. A little embarrasing because, as you can see, I brought it to him on a cookie sheet! But who really even has those fancy shmancy trays anyway?! (actually, now that I think of it, we had one growing up:0) So the cookie sheet was all I could come up with! Anyway, Happy Father's Day to my wonderful husband! He is the best daddy in the whole world and Brooklee is the luckiest baby that ever lived!!!! I love you Sammy!!!!!! :o)

Eventful Summer!

So we have had a pretty eventful summer so far.  The weekend school got out we went and stayed at the Point Hilton in Phoenix for Memorial weekend.  Sam's parents and his siblings and their families all went as well.  It was a lot of fun.  They have a water park there that is real fun.  Brooklee really enjoyed the lazy river!  She loved the water!  We also saw the Diamondbacks lose to the the Padres on Memorial Day, but it was pretty fun anyway.  We sat in a section that has all you can eat hot dogs, sodas, chips, and popcorn and let me tell you, that is definitely the way to go if you are going to a diamondbacks game!  Anyway, here are pictures of our little trip! Enjoy!

I love Brooklee's little bathing suit.  She is so white that we have to cover her up as much as possible.  Gotta love Old Navy!!!! :o)

This is the little floaty that we bought for Brooklee.  She would just sit back and relax in it!  But she also discovered that she liked the taste of pool water! Yuck!  She kept trying to drink it, so we had to prop her up so she would be farther away from it.  Notice the face she is making!  It is so dang funny!  She makes that face and then blows in and out through her nose!  I will have to post a video of her doing it...it is hilarious!

Brooklee loves to ride on Daddy's shoulders!  Daddy likes it until there is a loaded diaper!!!  :o)

Here are all the cousins that went that weekend

I promise you that this was all Sam's idea!  He thought it would be funny...he was right!

We really didn't get many pictures at the diamondback's game.  But here is Shawn and Gwen eating their cotton candy with Jo, Kasi and Arizona in the background!

I almost forgot!  We got Brooklee's ears pierced!  Okay, so I shouldn't say we because Sam wanted nothing to do with it, but I actually wanted to get them pierced a while back.  I was told before that her ear lobes were to small!   We got them done at wal-mart, which I wasn't too thrilled about at first.  But I called everyone in town and nobody really did infant ear-piercing except walmart, or else they were just too dang expensive.  So then I figured out that the ladies at walmart actually have a lot of experience because they really are one of the only places in town to get them done.  Plus, it only cost $11 including the earings!!!  You really can't beat that!  Anyway, here is a picture of Brooklee on my mom's lap just before the big event.  I think by the look on her face she knew it was coming!

Here is Brooklee after the piercing.  She cried a little bit but we gave her this toy and she stopped!  She has been fine ever since!  So one of my biggest reasons for getting her ears pierced was so people would know she is a girl.  They day after I got her ears pierced, we were at the water park and a guy came by and said "well look at this little guy!...oh wait, it's a girl!"  HELLO!  She is only wearing a pink swimming suit, a floppy white hat and has earings!  People are so dang clueless!  Oh well, what are you going to do!  I just smiled and went on my merry way! :o)

Grumpy...but it's a good thing

Brooklee is normally an extremely happy baby.  But the last few nights she has been pretty grumpy, but  for a good reason.  We think she is finally getting teeth!!!  They are just taking an aweful long time to finally cut through.  Poor baby is in pain, but mostly in the evening.  Really, though, she has been so much fun lately.  She rolls around all over the place and just wants to see everything that is going on.  I'm sure she'll probably start crawling here pretty soon, mostly because she just doesn't want to miss out on anything!  I am so excited because in just two days I will be a stay at home mommy!  I can't wait to be with my baby every day!   Although I am having such mixed emotions.  I am going to miss teaching soooo much.  I am having the hardest time cleaning out my classroom and saying goodbye to everyone.  I know that this is what I really want right now.  Anyway, here are some pictures (some random) of what we've been doing lately!

Sam was playing around with the camera and took this picture of him and Brooklee and I thought it turned out cute!

Brooklee is holding her bottle here! (it was quite a while ago, but I haven't posted in a long time!!!)

Here she is drinking out of a sippy cup!!!!

Last weekend Brooklee went swimming for the first time!  okay, so maybe she just sat and played in the water, but she absolutely loved it!  I am so glad because I want to spend a lot of time at the pool this summer!

Brooklee moves so much in her sleep like her daddy!  I find her in a different position in her crib every morning.  This is how I found her one morning.  The first thing I saw when I went in was her little foot sticking out of the crib!

We were playing around with the camera and got some really cute pictures of Brooklee

Another cute one of Sam and Brooklee

Isn't she just beautiful!!!!!

By the way, I celebrated my birthday on the day of my first Mother's day which turned out to be a really good day.  These were flowers and balloons from my wonderful husband.

And last of all I had to put this picture in.  It is my 5th grade class of 08-09 school year.  I got up on the roof of the school and took this picture for the year book.  I am going to miss it so much.  I can't believe it is over in 2  days!  One of the kids asked me the other day if I was going to cry on the last day of school.  I am not usually very emotional, but it seems like this is really bringing out the emotion in me so hopefully I won't embarrass myself on the last day of school!  I'll have to let you know how it goes!

TRAGEDY!

Sooo...tragedy struck exactly two weeks ago today.  Which is the reason I haven't posted on my blog recently.  I feel like a complete idiot.  I am going to make a confession, so here it goes.................

I RAN OVER MY CAMERA!!!!!!

Yes, with my car!!!  I know many of you are thinking "How the HECK does someone RUN OVER a camera?????!!!"  Well, it really was a series of unfortunate events.  We were taking dinner to our friends who had just had a baby (congratulations David and Margaret!) and at the last minute, running out the door, I realized I had almost forgotten my camera.  So I grabbed it and we took off.  Well, while we were there I wanted to get some pictures of Brooklee with baby David.  I looked everywhere for my camera.  I tore the car apart looking for it and it was frustrating the heck out of me that I couldn't find it because I knew I had put it in my diaper bag.  So I left Sam and Brooklee there and ran home to see if I had dropped it outside on the way to the car.  I looked all over our house and driveway and didn't find it, so I headed back to David and Margaret's.   

Well....when I was pulling in to the driveway I see a little black case, right where I had originally been parked.  I thought that for sure the camera was fine.  It would have had to been dropped in exactly the right place for me to have run over it.  Well, that is exactly what happened.  It must have fallen right behind the tire.  I ran over it on my way back to the house to find it!  I guess it fell out of the diaper bag while I was going around the car to get Brooklee out.  I don't think I have ever been so sick to my stomach.  This really has been the story of my life for the past few months.  I think I am losing it!!!  We had only had the camera for just over a month!  Anyway, I don't like posting without pictures, but I figured I should post an explanation for not posting!!!!  Hopefully my new camera gets here soon or else you probably won't hear from me for a while!!!  Hopefully our next camera lasts a little longer than this one did!

Brooklee's First Easter Egg Hunt!!!!

So Brooklee didn't actually hunt for eggs or anything, but her cousins were going to an Easter Egg hunt that a family in their ward puts on every year.  The Thatcher's do a really good job and the kids absolutely loved it!  They also have a bunch of animals out there.  It was like a petting zoo for the kids.  Brother Thatcher also has a bunch of dove's that he raises and trains that he keeps in a pen out there, and the kids loved petting and hold the birds.  Here is a picture of all of the cousins that went...

There was a tractor out there that all the kids wanted to get on.  Brooklee doesn't look like she was having too much fun in this picture, but she actually loved it.

Here she is in her stroller.  She had so much fun just watching all the kids going nuts and looking for the Easter eggs

The Thatcher's youngest son is in my homeroom class at school, and he kept finding and giving eggs to Brooklee.  It was really cute.  Of course the first thing she did was put them in her mouth!

This is just a really cute picture of Austin and Brooklee.  She really loves her cousins and they love to entertain her, which is great for me!

Random...

Well, these are just some random pictures from the last week or so.  Here is a picture of Brooklee and her cousin Makenna.  She looks a little frustrated, but I didn't get a better picture.  Notice that she is wearing a bib.  She has been slobbering like CRAZY lately and it gets her shirts completely soked if she isn't wearing a bib to catch it all!  Hopefully her teeth will just decide to finally come out one of these days so she can stop slobbering all over the place!!!

I think this next picture is hilarious!  I love the face that Mason (Brooklee's cousin) is making!  And Brooklee just has her hand on his shoulder as if consoling him or something! :o) Or maybe she is getting ready to push him out so she can get her bumbo back!!!! :o)

This last weekend we went and visited Sam's grandparents in Sunizona.  The reaction when I say that is usually "where the heck is that!?"  Well, it is by Sunsites, if you have ever heard of that, or by the Chiricahua's if you have ever heard of those...which neither of those may have been much help!  Anyway,  I'm sad I didn't get a picture of Brooklee and Papa, but here is Brooklee with her great-grandma "Mema"...

And I just had to post this last picture.  It is Mema and Papa's dog "Curly".  I believe it has to be the ugliest dog alive!  It is a hairless Peruvian...people actually pay money for a dog like this!  Lucky for Mema and Papa they got it for free.  I think Mema's son brought it home with him and didn't take it when he moved out!  Hmmmm...I wonder why!!! :o)