Independence Weekend

We had a real fun independence weekend this year. Like many others, since the 4th fell on a Sunday, we celebrated all weekend long.

My parents came into town on Friday and we had a BBQ at my brother's house.

Brookie was in LOVE with Sophie. She could not get enough of her.

Esther made these really cute "corn on the cob cupcakes."



Then Saturday we had a BBQ at our house. Jeff set up a canopy & smoked some tri-tip and Summer & Steve brought some outdoor games.

Steve teaching Aubrey how to play badminton. It was real cute.





Brookie bonding with Grandpa. As long as he kept giving her some peas from our garden, she was happy.



Aubrey trying out the bubble wand Grandma gave her.



Brooke still eating the peas and posing with Summer.



Brooke had to give badminton a try too.



JJ stripped down and got into the dying pool (the smoker burned several holes in it), so Aubrey had to follow suit.



The badminton thingy (no idea the name of it) got stuck on the roof, and Esther was the brave one to go and recover it.



Brooke and Cali were having a cute little conversation. Cali was making babbling sounds and Brooke was copying her. It was too cute. I wish that I got it on video.



While we were cleaning up, Brooke thought she should try out the sunken pool also.



Then the kids got bathed and pj'd and we took off to a watch the fireworks. I decided to let the munchkins stay up this year and watch them - because I knew we would all love them.

We got to the field about an hour early. I couldn't believe Brooke was still wide awake, even though it was after 9. She must have sensed the excitement. Although you couldn't tell it from the pic. below. She was only mad because she wanted mommy to hold her, as usual.



Then we broke out the glow bracelets - which Aubrey and Brooke were thrilled with.



Aubrey saw some other kids running around and decided to join in the fun.



She even made a little friend.



Then she settled down with her flashlight and stories.



Brookie enjoying her milk.



And then the fireworks began!

Brooke immediately started hopping toward them trying to catch the fireworks. It was really cute.



The video is kinda dark, so hopefully you can see it a little in this uploaded version.

They both LOVED the fireworks.

I'm trying to hold Brooke back in this picture - she really thought she'd be able to get a hold of those fireworks!

For several days afterward, Aubrey would ask me every night, "Why don't we get to watch fireworks tonight?" Funny kid.

Sunday we had another dinner at my brother's house - but I failed to take any pics.

Then Monday we went as a family to a water park and had a blast. We let Aubrey choose what we were going to do that day and she said, "I want to go to the water park, so I can show daddy how brave I am that I go down the waterslides all by myself." She had a blast showing daddy all the things she likes to do there and how brave she is. I LOVED only having to keep track of one child at a time. It was a really fun day!

I hope everybody else had a fun Independence weekend! I sure am grateful for our country and the freedoms we enjoy!

Little Brookie Bug

My little Brookie is such a doll, well that is when she is not being extremely difficult! I'm glad I have as much darling coming out of her as difficult, because it makes the difficult much easier to live with.

On the difficult side, diaper changes are almost impossible. I completely dread whenever I smell a poopy diaper. That child can not sit still for a second. It is a circus act trying to get her diaper changed. She is either throwing a fit as I try and constrain her or she is up and climbing around before I even open the dirty diaper all the way up. What a joy. The same goes for clothing changes, nail cutting and doing her hair. Church has also become ridiculous. She will NOT sit on our laps. If we try and hold her down she will yell and kick. If we try to engage her with toys she will throw them. All she wants to do is walk across the chairs and bang on them or try and engage any children sitting near us. Which I am sure their parents are not fond of. We are seeing a lot more of the lobby than we've ever seen.

BUT, when we leave her alone and let her be, she is just a darling little doll. She plays so good with toys. Especially big kid toys. No more rattles and teething rings for her. She wants the doll houses, ponies and Aubrey's beauty supplies. And the DOLLS most of all. Can I tell you how happy it makes me to see her loving dolls. She has even inspired Aubrey to like dolls. The last couple of weeks Aubrey has become attached to a darling doll she got from Santa a couple of years ago. Until now the doll has been pretty much ignored.

Brooke's language is still just moving along at light speed. She loves to point out things and either name them or say, "What's that?" Sometimes it is very clear and other times it more like wa da. She can say, "all done" at meal times too, which is nice.

She still wants to do anything she sees going on. She saw Aubrey cleaning up a water spill and as soon as Aubrey was done with the cloth she grabbed it and hopped around the floor wiping it with the cloth.

She saw me blowing on her hot food one day and now every time I put warm food on her tray, she blows on it.

She sees Aubrey standing on stools to help mommy with chores and so has begun getting up herself. Which is scary to me, since she doesn't even have the balance to stand on the floor by herself yet!

At both nap and bed time she will lay in my arms and point to all of the features on both my face and her face as we both name them. It's so sweet. One night after she pointed out my mouth, she grabbed my cheek towards her and gave me a kiss on the lips. It was so sweet.

She loves to laugh! Even if you just look at her and smile she will break out in a giggle. Any attention you give her generally results in a great big smile as well.

A while back I had her say, "bye bye" on the phone to her grandparents. Ever since then, whenever she sees a phone she points to it and says, "bye bye." It's so cute.

Brooke is just a little fish. The first time we went swimming she was trying to swim out of my arms. The minute she is in the water she starts kicking and giggling. It's so cute. She doesn't like to be in shallow water either, she likes when it's really deep and I hold her out by her hands so she is floating. I love to see her having so much fun in the water! Especially because we plan to spend the bulk of the summer at the local water park!

She loves loves loves Aubrey's necklaces and bracelets. She know how to put them on all by herself too.

I caught her in the act one day. What a cute little munchkin.





And then when she was done, she took them off and put them on her dolly.



What a cute little mommy she is. If there is a doll nearby she gives it all sorts of hugs and kisses.







The doll she has here, usually lives in her crib. After I spend a little time with her at bed and nap time, all I have to do is lay her down, hand her her baby and her purple blanket, and she grins ear to ear. She generally doesn't fuss a bit just hugs her baby and blankie and falls right to sleep. It is so heavenly!

I am loving watching Brooke's ever growing personality! I can't wait until I can have little conversations with her and get a glimpse into that cute little mind of hers. I just love that little Brookie Bug!

My Aubrey Kaye

What can I say about my Aubrey Kaye - I can't even type her name without getting a big smile on my face. She is such a darling little girlie girl.

She has lately become obsessed with being a ballerina. She is constantly wearing her tutu and dancing around the house. She also thinks that ballerina's must wear tons of jewelry and makeup as well. You rarely see that girl not all fancied up.

I wanted to take a picture of her putting her lip gloss on, because she looks so darn cute doing it. When I walked over with the camera she said, "Not yet mom, I'm not ready yet. I have to finish my makeup first." Seriously should those words be coming out of a 3 year old mouth?! Ha Ha.



I convinced her to let me take a few pictures.



She talks like a little grown up most of the time. She says things like, "Mom maybe we could spend a little time in the backyard this afternoon." or "I hope that I can have a fruit snack at snack time today." or "I have a good idea, we should make Brownies for dessert today." She makes me laugh to hear her talk like that.

She has rekindled her love for reading, which I am happy has returned. Usually at bed and nap time I will hear her reading out loud several of her stories before falling asleep.

She is just a little singing machine. She will sing any and every song that plays while we are in the car. And if she doesn't know the lyrics she will repeat them one syllable behind. It's really cute to hear her little voice just singing away in the car! She has a magnificent memory for song lyrics. One day she busted out all of the verses to "Mary had a Little Lamb". I couldn't believe she could remember that many words to a song. She even teaches daddy song lyrics when he puts her down for bed. He doesn't know all of the songs we sing so if she requests a song he doesn't know he'll ask her to teach him the words. It is so cute to hear her teaching daddy a song.

Most of you know that Aubrey has a slow to warm up personality. When introduced to new experiences or things she hasn't done in a while, she gets a little nervous. Well we've been hanging out at a local water park for the last month. They have some water slides that are specifically made for 3 - 8 year olds. I've been encouraging her to go down the slides by herself, but she was just not ready. Finally last week she did it! I was so proud of her bravery and she was sooooooo proud of herself. Once she tackled her fear, she couldn't get enough of it. She did the slide over and over again for 2 hours straight! I held a sleeping Brooke in my arms at the bottom of the slide for half of the time! I didn't have to heart to end her triumph just because it was nap time! When she finally tired out, we went home. She completely crashed on the stroller ride to the car. After all there was a lot of stair climbing involved!

A few funny things she has said lately,

She was eating her yogurt - the spoon fell to the floor and she said, "Don't do that spoon, if you fall one more time you're going to have a time out." Hmmm I wonder where she got that from?

We were playing tag in the backyard. She would tell me to run and that she would catch me and then she would say it was her turn to run and I should catch her. After several times of this she said, "Now we'll both run and it'll be kinda like we catch ourselves."

Frequently when Aubrey needs something from me she'll say, "Mommy could you do me a big favor . . . " How can you say no to a request that begins like that.

Whenever I ask her to do something that she doesn't want to do, she responds with, "No Thank you."

And then when I let her know she has to do it anyway she says, "But Mom" in that really annoying teenager voice.


On Wednesday Aubrey went to her first dentist appointment. I had been talking it up for weeks and she was very excited!

She loved the waiting room. It had a playhouse with toys and a big fish tank.






Here she is on the dentist chair. What a cute little thing. She was a little nervous, but did awesome! She kept her mouth open the whole time while the dentist looked at her teeth.





I told her that when they were done, they would give her a toothbrush. She asked me what kind of toothbrush they would give her. I told her that I didn't know, so we would have to wait and see what kinds they had. For the last couple weeks whenever we talked about the dentist she would say, "We'll have to wait and see what kind of toothbrushes they have." When the time finally arrived to get her toothbrush, she so was so excited and said, "We get to see what kind of toothbrushes they have." She was very glad to see that they had pink princess toothbrushes. She couldn't wait to use her new toothbrush that night. Along with her new floss that they encouraged me to use on her. I didn't think that would be very easy, but I let her hold on to help and it worked out much better than expected.

After she was done they made her a butterfly balloon, which she was thrilled about!



I was very pleased with our first pediatric dental appointment. Aubrey keeps reminding me that we get to go back again soon.

Father's Day

For Father's day I thought it would be fun for the girls to make foam frames for their dad and put in them the family photos we took in his old truck.

Since Brooke is always dying to do whatever Aubrey is doing, I decided to let her participate this time. After all, Aubrey was only a few months older than Brooke when she started painting. Brooke definitely had a fun time and was so happy to be a part of the action. Mommy on the other hand was pretty frazzled when the crafting was done. But, was very happy with the end results. I thought they turned out darling!

Here's Brooke painting for the first time. She picked it up right away, unfortunately, she also needed to eat a little glitter paint, and had as much fun taking things off of the frame as she did putting them on! We'll try again in a few months! She sure is cute painting though! And daddy loved seeing her handy work.



Aubrey of course LOVED making the frame!



Especially since I let her work the glue by herself this time.



Here's Brookie's finished frame.



And here's Aubrey's finished frame.



A few days later Aubrey insisted that we also make cupcakes for Father's day. She also insisted that they have pink frosting. So pink frosted cupcakes we made.

As always, Aubrey is decorating above and Brooke is below looking for the goodies Aubrey has dropped. And as you can see Aubrey has dropped quite a few for Brooke's enjoyment!



Proud of her pink cupcakes. And you'd think the pink above her lip was frosting, but no it's lip gloss.



Father's day morning arrived and Aubrey couldn't wait to give daddy his presents. She was so disappointed when we didn't want to have cupcakes for breakfast! That funny kid.

I realized that I never took a photo of the frames with the pictures inserted inside. But you can kind of see them here.



And here:

.

I also got Jeff a DVD player, since we've just been using his xbox for years, and movies frequently freeze on us.



Here's daddy with his little girls.





We love you Jeff and hope that you had a good Father's Day!