Happy Birthday Brenna!

I never realized how exciting a kid's birthday could be! I've been looking forward to this for a while and got pretty excited about making today really fun for Brenna! Here's my little two year old! Oh how time flies!

It's been hard to get her to take a break from all of her neat presents today! She got some neat things and I think she'll be content for a while with her new toys... at least for a day or two, right?

Her Elmo cake and Cookie Monster cupcakes. I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty impressed with myself!

Here are all of the babies that were at the party! Well we are actually missing two because one was eating (cousin Ava) and another got there late (Hunter). this is from oldest to youngest from left to right we have Noah, Cole, Logan, Mason, and Harley. Mason is sporting his Suns love too in the outfit Grandma Cook got him. GO SUNS GO!Once again, trying intently to open her presents to play. Brenna is now taking a very nice nap since she was up at 6:30 and had so much fun at her party!

I love my little Brenna so much! It's true that she now throws fits and sometimes doesn't play nicely with the other kids, and can occasionally be a bit of a pill, but I love her anyway! She has such a lovely smile and she loves music so much! She can sing a few songs like "I Am a Child of God" and "I Love to See the Temple" and now "Happy Birthday" too! She has "The Foot Book" by Dr. Seuss memorized since she always wants to read it at bedtime. She has beautiful curly hair and sometimes even sits still long enough to let me play with it. She is talking a ton and in full sentences now and can say just about whatever she wants. She loves her brother Mason SOOOO much! She always wants to hug and kiss and play with him. She is learning to go pee on the potty, and we are hoping to jump on this time to potty train her. We even got her some undies for her birthday!

In short, she has been a blessing and a joy in our lives almost all of the time! We love her and hope to make this day fun for her!

Pooped!

Brenna has been an absolute terror at nights lately... It's been rough. The other day she was up most of the night and then also refused to nap (she was locked in her room for a good hour and a half, she just never slept). So we had to go to a wedding reception and on the way there, I looked back and this is what I found! Totally passed out. And in style too... she is pretty attached to that cowboy hat! Too bad that exhausted Brenna did NOT equal a finally peaceful night... maybe tonight is our lucky night?

Ava's Blessing Day

Today was Ava's blessing day! That is Brenna's newest cousin, and our newest niece! She is so tiny, it's just adorable! I was also really excited because for Easter this year, Jeremy's dad and his wife got all of the girls matching dresses! (except Ava, but she wasn't born yet). So we all wore them to church today and had a little photo shoot afterwards! It was really cute, and here are some of my faves! I wanted to post them all big because they were all adorable, but this was faster! Enjoy our cute family! haha :)

Happy Mother's Day

I am going to follow suit and announce how great my mom is! I am so lucky to have an incredible mom! I am a little sad that I can't be with her on Mother's day, but I eagerly await the next time I get to see her in only a month and a half and I realize how lucky I am that we see each other so much despite living thousands of miles apart. I am so grateful that she makes that possible by giving of her time and money that I know it takes for her to visit or for us to visit her. I am glad for the relationship we have and that it really just seems to get better as I get older. I can understand a bit better some of the sacrifices that she has made throughout the years to raise a family and give so freely of her time and talents to help us grow. Because of her I know the type of life and family I'd like to have and have an excellent example to pattern it after. She is also an excellent grandma who so obviously loves and adores her grandbabies. They are lucky enough to get to see her most days on the web cam too! Brenna will run to the computer whenever it's open and ask to talk to Grandma! I love my mom so much and hope to be as selfless as her one day! Love you mom! I can't wait to see you again! Thanks for all you do... it's inadequate, but I hope you know how much I mean it!

PS - It's worth mentioning as well that I have been blessed with a loving mother-in-law and step-mother-in-law too who are loved by us as well! We got to spend a bit of time with them today and enjoy living so near to them. They also especially love their grandchildren, and we love that they love them! Aren't mothers the best?

Twins?

I stumbled upon some pictures of Jeremy as a baby that I didn't know we had the other night, and you won't believe what I found!

Mason, or Jeremy? Can you even tell?

He's the baby, and seriously.. is this even real?

Here's Mason

I'm a little freaked out by the identical-ness here... Do you see it, or is it just me? At least we know he'll be handsome when he grows up ;) haha