Presents!!

After we got home from Rainforest Cafe we let Brooke open the presents we got her (even though her birthday was the next day). She is so fun to watch open presents now.

Can you tell she is really into dressing up now?

The last kiss with our two year old.

Goodbye two... Last pic with our Two year old girl.

Rainforest cafe

Brooke loves to look at the animals at Rainforest Cafe every time we go to Ontario Mills. After receiving a flyer with some coupons in the mail she saw it and really wanted to go there for Her Birthday. We went there the day before her B-day and we all had a great time.

This is her showing you that she is 3.

We got to eat right by the waterfall so it was pretty cool.

Brooke loved being sung to, and blew the candle out as soon as they brought her the dessert.

She lovingly licked the ice cream off the cherry and gave it to...

Daddy. He loves Cherries. She also told him to not eat the seed, as she handed it over. She is such a little Mommy.

Mr. Handsom was having a great time looking at everything.

Goodbye two....

Three

The next two days will be the last days of having my little girl as a two year old. It seems like the years have flown by but also that we have had Brooke for so long at the same time. She is so full of life and energy and is such a good and sweet girl. She tells me she loves me constantly (seriously like every few minutes or so), she loves to play with other's and is very social. She is SUPER smart and keeps us on our toes with all the little things she picks up from us. She knows right from wrong and is starting to be good because she likes the way it feels instead of because we bribed her to be. She loves her Heavenly Father and already has such a sweet testimony. She kind and tender and if you get hurt she will come over and take care of you and give you kisses to feel better. She understands so much of life and what is going on. She gives the funniest explanations to things and I love listening to her outlook on life. She is the best little girl a Mommy could ever ask for. I love you so much sweetie and i am looking forward to this next year with you.

Here are a few photos we took today for her Birthday. She asked for a Bubble gum party because I won't let her eat gum until she is three, and she got so excited about it she asked if we could have a bubble gum party. It is so fun that she really understands she is turning older and she is so excited to have her first piece of gum ever. We are having her party on Saturday and she keeps asking me "When I get bigger and turn three, then can I eat my bubble gum?" She also calls it gubble bum. So cute!!

A Visit with Great Grandpa and Grandpa Leatherman

My Grandpa is awesome and he was able to come visit us for a few hours in the beginning of this month. Oh how I love to see this amazing man play with his grand kids. He will get on all fours and crawl with them at the age of 88, and do just about whatever will make them happy. He is so great with them and they love him so much. My Dad was able to come too and it was fun to play, talk , and listen to some awesome family stories about my heritage and where I came from. After Brooke woke up from her nap to find they had left she said. "Oh no where did my Grandpa's go?"

Valentine's day 2011

It seems like we celebrated Valentine's a long time this year. Probably because we decorated our house for it a month in a half before the actual holiday. WE made heart garland, set out candy, made candy, gave Jason 14 days of Valentine's, blew up way too many balloons, popped too many balloons, enjoyed a fancy Valentine's dinner at home, had a Valentine's FHE, and ate lots of delicious treats. The best part...Knowing I get to keep all 3 of my Valentine's all year long. I sure love them all.

1st haircut

My awesome friend Ashley came and visited us from Arizona a couple weeks ago. We got to hang out with her and her cute boys Parker and Preston. We had such a fun time, and I really miss them! Ashley is the best hairdresser ever and agreed to cut Preston's, Brooke's and my hair all while our 4 kids played around us. It was crazy! Thanks Ashley for being so awesome! Here are the results of Preston's first cut.

before - a mullet and a lot on the top.

after - short and super cute!

First Sleepover

Brooke had her first real sleepover with her friend Brooklyn a few weeks ago. Maria took the girls to Disneyland for the day and then the girls got to do a sleep over at our house. They had a lot of fun and did great! These two have sooo much fun together and really are the best of friends.

10 Months

My little baby is now a little man. It seems everyday I see a little bit more of the little baby in him leave and a little bit more of the "little man" become apparent. He is still such a delight to be around. He LOVES his sister more than anything (despite the torture and teasing) and will follow her around and cry when she leaves the room. He loves just about any activity. He loves bath time, eating, dancing, singing, playing with toys, etc... This month he has started to say "Dada" even though I have tried t0 teach him Mama far more often. He does a half scoot half crawl and is pretty fast getting around the house. He will play peek-a-boo with you by putting one of his hands on his forehead "covering" his eyes and then pull it away with a huge delighted smile, that melts my heart. He is starting to have a little bit of separation anxiety and doesn't want to be away from me, and wants to held by me a lot. (which I love:) ) He is also teething SUPER bad and has a lot of crazy gum problems at the moment that is making him a pretty bad sleeper and a fussy baby. It is sad because he is never like that and I know he must be in a lot of pain. He likes to shake his head no. He loves to "schmeegle" (no I don't expect anyone outside my family to know what that means), and he loves to babble and scream in a high pitched voice. He is starting to give kisses and wave bye bye. He loves to watch people and observe. He is still a very timid baby and very laid back. I love him with all my heart and I KNOW I am the luckiest Mom in the whole world. Happy 10 months sweetie!

Don't you just want to kiss that little face?

Happy Valentines Day!

We love you all! Have a wonderful valentine's Day!!

Awful...

Well I am sitting here with a pit of guilt in my stomach. I feel a little silly posting this right after I posted about "hitting my stride" but hey that is real life.

I freaked out at Brooke today, and I'm not talking about a little bit. I freaked out BIG time! She had been whining for about an hour straight and the last two days she has been taking Preston's toys over and over again. This combination are my least favorite things kids can do. Whining I absolutely dislike and when she always takes whatever Preston is playing with really gets to me.

So here is the situation - I had just blown up 72 red balloons by hand so we could have a Valentine's balloon party together. Brooke had just woke up from a nap which is when she is normally is at her best. But as soon as she got up it was non-stop whining. In an attempt to get her to stop I took her downstairs and surprised her with all the balloons. We were all playing together but every time Preston grabbed a balloon she would go take it. Um hello, don't you realize there are 72 of these things? I kept telling her to stop taking them but after the 10th time or so of her taking them just to be mean. And yes she was trying to be mean, I lost it...

I grabbed her and started yelling at her. Threw her on her bed and told her to "STOP TAKING PRESTON"S TOYS!!" I kept yelling at her that she needed to listened to what I said. If I said to stop taking Preston's toys she needed to do that. If I told her to stop screaming in the house then she needed to do it. (She always screams louder when I ask her to be quite.) She pretty much has started to disobey everything I ask her to do just because. I am a consistent parent. if she does something there is always a consequence. So why does she do things to disobey on purpose??

So I did, I totally and completely lost it. I yelled at my daughter for a good minute or so (loud and mean, not a nice yell), and now I feel awful.

I grew up in a house of yelling, so unfortunately that is the first thing that comes to me when I am angry or when I really just don't know how else to react. Normally I know this and I stop to cool off before I do something but today just really set me off.

Sometimes I feel like I am the worst parent in the world even though I know that 95% off the time I am being a pretty good one.

It really does amaze me how I have only screamed like that today and now I feel like it will be the only thing she remembers.

So there you go I feel terrible and really feel like I don't know how to parent anymore.

Consistency isn't working. The yelling today..worked. What does that mean??

I know I don't want to be a "yeller" so that rules that out.

Brooke is hard right now. She likes to do whatever I ask her not to do. I will just keep praying for help from heaven in raising her. But today I learned that yelling is a awful feeling that I don't want in my home or in my relationship with her.

I know this may seem like a basic concept but it was a profound one for me today. I hope this post will be a good reminder to me the next time I want to scream.

Hit my stride

Lately I have felt like I have really hit my stride as a mom of two. It took me 8 months, but every day I felt like I learned a little bit more to be more efficient, patient, helpful, etc.. So now I feel like two kids is pretty easy. I am loving how smooth life is right now. I know that means something will happen to throw everything off course again until we all adjust again, because that is just the cycle of being a mom. Once you figure out a stage it changes.

I have also fallen head over heels in love with my kids. I didn't think I could love them anymore, but then they do something that makes my heart grow even bigger. I love that!

Brooke is such a sweet and loving girl. She is always trying to take care of other's and she is a really good friend to all those around her. She has gotten better about sharing, she doesn't cry when we brush her teeth anymore, she stays in bed until her "cow clock" wakes up and then she gets out. She listens good and chooses the right most of the time. She says the cutest things all the time and probably has just as eloquent a vocabulary as I do. She really just understands life, and loves it. I am so thankful for her and I am so glad that I am her mommy!! What a lucky person I am!

Preston is my little gift. I know how much Heavenly Father must love me just because of what a sweet baby he sent to me. He is patient, sweet, funny, happy, and just about every other good quality you could think of. He rarely cries. He is almost always laughing or smiling. He is a tender spirit and I can tell that he loves everyone around him. It is as if you can see the love that he has for his sister, daddy and others by the way he is with them, even though he is so little. He is starting to grow up so big lately and it is breaking my heart a little bit. I can't wait to see him in other stages of his life but he has been such a sweet baby it is hard to see that stage leaving. He can stand up, he is almost crawling, he scoots around the house just laughing and squealing in delight. He sleeps through the night normally from 6 PM to 6:30 AM. He does the cutest babbles and has a cute low man voice.( He can also scream and squeal like a girl though.) He loves to eat, and eats just about everything we do. He got four teeth this month, and even though you can tell he is in pain he rarely fusses over them. He really is the perfect baby. I'll put my order in for 5 more just like him.

I feel almost guilty to have as much love for my kids as I do. I am so grateful that being with them is my job and that I get to go through all the bad and all the good of every stage of life with them.

Brooke's Testimony

We had a FHE on Testimonies about a month ago. I wrote down Brooke's and then totally forgot about it. I found it today while going through some papers. It is so precious and I do not want to lose it so I am going to post it here. Here is Brooke's Testimony at 2.5 years old. Word for word what she said.

- I Know I can play with Heavenly Father.

- I love Jesus.

- Jesus loves children.

- Jesus makes our beautiful world.

- I know Jesus got born.

- Jesus got baptized in the water with a bird. (no we are not teaching weird things she is referring to the dove that came down from heaven after Christ was baptized. silly girl!)

- We get married at the Temple.

- Jesus talks at the Temple to hear us. (Once again not teaching weird things she is talking about the statue of Christ at the visitors center at the LA Temple. By the way if you have not gone to the LA Temple visitors center being a Mormon or not you should! It is amazing and has such a great spirit to it. It is a great place for your children to learn more about Christ and to learn more about your role as a family on the earth.

SICK!!

I am sitting here at the computer seriously going crazy!! My family all got sick after Christmas and we have all finally recovered. We had one day out and about at the park yesterday (so nice) and guess what? Brooke woke up with a stomach ache and is throwing up constantly today. UUHHG!!

Having sick kids is the worst but sick kids plus never getting out of the house is seriously driving me insane!!

Dear husband please come home and take care of our kids so I can go somewhere and do something other than clean up throw up...SAVE ME!

Happy New Year!

I know this is late but here it is. I decided to go cheap and not print my Holiday card this year, so here is the digital copy. I hope your holidays were wonderful! Much Love to all of our family and friends!!

Preston is 8 Months!

Our sweet baby boy turned 8 months old. He is such a sweetie and just loves life. He is super easy going and the best mild mannered baby in the whole world. He loves to play with toys especially any kind of electronic like my phone or itouch. He likes to make a fart noise with his mouth, and you can tell he is all boy. He has the sweetest laugh and smile in the whole world. He has one tooth to date and he likes to use it! He loves all food and basically begs for food anytime we are eating. He has tried just about everything already. He is our lazy baby and still will not use his legs in any way. He won't stand, crawl, or anything in between. he loves to sit and roll, and I think it will be a long time before he even wants to crawl. I love him so much and can't imagine my life with out him. Happy 8 months bubba!

Christmas Celebrations!

We had all of our family over to our house for a Christmas family Home Evening and game night on Dec 23rd. We had a lot of yummy treats and had fun with our family. Sadly these are the only two pictures I took from that night.

Christmas Eve - We do our fancy dinner on Christmas Eve. This year we had Filet Mignon, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, salad, and martinelli's. We made cookies for Santa and put them out for Santa along with some carrots for the reindeer. We read Luke 2 and Brookie followed along with her Nativity set. We each got to open one present and enjoyed them for a while. We finished off the night with a reading of The Night Before Christmas and we went to bed with Sugar Plums in our head.

Christmas morning coming down to see our stockings and the gifts Santa brought. Brookie asked for a "Comfy Chair" from Santa, I asked for a Razor Scooter, Jason a Simon Dewey Calendar, and Preston asked for "Rex" from Toy Story. Santa delivered..We must have been good this year:). Brooke was so much fun this year. She totally "got" Christmas.

For breakfast our tradition is quiche and Jason's mom always made him coffee cake so we have carried that on too. My Dad joined us for a while and we all had a relaxing Christmas day just enjoying one another and the spirit of the season. I can't wait tell next year!!

Gingerbread House and LA Temple

We made this awesome Gingerbread House kit from Trader Joe's. Brooke loved doing it and wanted to go inside the house. Moments after the picture of her on the ground with it she stepped on it and said she really wanted to fit.

We also got to go see the lights at the LA Temple and visit the new visitor's center. It was amazing and I could have stayed there all night. Brookie always loves to walk around the Temple. Love my sweet family! So glad we were sealed together forever!! Jason took us to a super yummy dinner at a little authentic Italian restaurant.

December 1st

I am way late on all these Christmas/December posts but here they are. On December 1st our tradition is to open our new Christmas Jammies. We also started a new tradition of opening a new book every day up to Christmas. They were all Christmas books. It was a fun idea but Brooke didn't really like it all that much so I don't know if we will still do it next year. Auntie Lana got to come over and enjoy our December 1st activities with us. It was a great way to start off the season.