Brooklyn Turns 2!

Happy Birthday to my baby girl!!  Well, she is quite the independent sassy pants right now, but I love her dearly.  She is getting so big!!  A little big for her britches at times...  As of late she has taken a fondness to feeding the dogs-especially if she has something on her plate she dislikes...  The other day she wanted more yogurt (her favorite right now), but she had neglected the green beans on her plate.  Naturally, I told her she could have more yogurt when she ate her green beans.  A few minutes later she tells me that she ate them.  However some green beans "mysteriously" were on Lincoln's otherwise empty plate.  She even proceeded to say that Lincoln needed to finish his green beans...  She is going to be a handful!  She has been talking like a mad woman for a while now and she never ceases to crack us up with her comments and mimics.  I am hoping that potty training is going to be coming soon for this family!  She has been saying things like, "Change my diaper mama!", "I pooped in my diaper" and occasionally she tells me she needs to use the potty.  We bought her some big girl underwear and she loves them. She insists on wearing multiple pair at a time and often wants them over her clothing???  She is just getting into 2T and weighs 24 pounds :-)  I can finally french braid her hair into two braids!!!!      

Poor thing was sick on her birthday and Christmas.  But she had fun at her party which was after Christmas :-)  Way more people showed up than I anticipated, but everything turned out and I think people had fun.  The kids had a blast at least and that's what really matters.  The theme was Yo Gaba Gaba, as she loves that show right now.  Of course Amy did the cake and it was awesome!!!  A HUGE thank you to all who helped us celebrate the littlest Brannin.

 

 

 

Christmas Festivities

As I reflect upon our Christmas I am again reminded of how abundantly blessed we are.  We were hit hard this holiday season with illness.  It started just before Thanksgiving when I ended up with Hand Foot and Mouth Disease.  It was awful!  I was out nearly a week and my feet are just now recovering fully!  Lincoln then proceeded to contract bronchitis.  He had a fever of 102-104 for 5 days :-(  Due to his illness he and I missed out on Christmas with The VanFleets down in Longview. Then of course he shared with his sister and she ended up being sick on her birthday and Christmas.  In the mean time Josh somehow picked up pink eye along with a fever and sore throat causing him to miss out on Christmas with my grandparents!  That being said-I am reminded (thanks Dad...) that it could be worse!  While this holiday season was stressful, tiring, and filled with sickness, we all recovered and are healthy.  For that I am thankful.  That being said I can't sugar coat the fact that I had a few melt downs and pitty parties...  

This Christmas we did "Elf on the Shelf".  We had an Elf that Santa sent to keep an eye on the kids.  He was reporting to Santa about their behavior.  However each night the Elf ended up getting into some mischief... The kids loved it.  They were sad when Elf had to return to the North Pole... 

We started Christmas morning with a, "Happy Birthday" rendition for Jesus, stockings and gifts from Santa and of course we exchanged gifts with one another. Lincoln had been asking to open his stocking nearly every day since it went up on the mantle!   

Of course we couldn't forget presents for the dogs!  Brooklyn makes sure that when they are sleeping they each have their new blankets :-)

We started, well continued the Christmas festivities, with Chrstmas breakfast at our house.  We traditionally go to Kelly and Danette's, but with Kelly being away for work, Danette and Jessi came down for a quiet morning of food, presents, and playing.  It was so nice to relax and visit, but we did miss Papa Kelly.  

She LOVES her new stroller!  Thank's Auntie Jessi for assembling it!

We then went to my grandparents for dinner with my parents, aunts, and uncles.  The kids of course were spoiled with many gifts... 

 

Brooklyn loves Uncle Mike!  He opened all of her toys... :-)

Lincoln loved the silly string that he got in his stocking.

We ended the evening at our house.  My parents came over and visited while we opened presents.  The kids each got bikes along with an abundance of other cool toys!  We will be going through some of their old things and donating them soon!        

Revival of the Sweater Party

We have a standing tradition to have a get together with all of our friends around the holidays, a.k.a., The Ugly Sweater Party.  It's always so much fun to get together and see everyone.  Especially because as we all are getting older people have gotten married and moved away and our get togethers have been few and far between.  Then the sweater party took a 2 year hiatus...  One of our top priorities after moving in was to ensure that we would host and start up the sweater party tradition again.  We would finally have the space to entertain our friends!!  Yahoo!!  I wish I had been more organized as I had some ideas for decor that never ended up coming to fruition.  There's always next year as we plan to keep this tradition going.  It was so great to see our friends that are in the service and have been either deployed or stationed far away. We missed Brett this year, but were able to catch up with him over Thanksgiving.  I really missed all of my girls!!!!  We didn't have chicken wings this year-only because Tracy was unable to make it.  There was a reenactment of Derissa running fennel seeds through the dishwasher.  And the high point was that nothing was broken not was my house destroyed...Well, we are getting older and are much more mature...  Right?