Family Pictures. :)

We got our family pictures taken about two weeks ago by Rachel Pemberton, she has been doing our pictures for a couple of years now and does an awesome job! Family pictures are usually pretty crazy with two little boys, but pictures mean so much to me, so it's definitely worth it. :)

Bridger would NOT smile normal through the whole session! Little stinker. I love him.

This one makes me laugh. :)

Then boys wanted to be done by this time...ha ha.

And I really love this...

I love them.

Beckham. :)

Beckham a.k.a. "Tasty"

Everything this little stinker does is adorable. I want to record every second because he is always making me laugh and his voice is so cute when he talks...and he has tasty thighs.

He can say quite a few words already, and even a few small sentences...want more please, no, thank you, want a show, ball, moo, quack quack, mommy, daddy, grandma, grandpa, apple, blankie, mine, trash, ew, ow, shoe, buh-bye, cheese, I don't know, uh-oh, wow, nose, hi, eyes, toes, he whisper roars like a dinosaur, all done, him and Bridger both whisper "beach body" when I do my workout in the morning (ha ha!), baaa (like a sheep), and drink. I can't think of any others right now...

He loves to high five and pound it.

He LOVES his blanket and his binkie, he will not sleep without both of them. Will not. He even goes up to his room during the day and works really hard to pull both blankets between the slats of his crib so he can carry it around and cuddle it on the floor.

When someone says "one," he says "two!"

As soon as I finish combing his hair and hairspraying it in place, he rubs his little hand all over the back to mess it up again.

...and yes, he still has his perfect curly mullet. I'm just a little attached. I will probably cut it...someday...

He can blow the cutest kisses.

He folds his arms every time someone says "let's say prayer," then he throws his arms open when they say "amen," with a big grin on his face.

He loves Grandma Brown's phones (the home phones with the buttons), and he loves diffusers! He turns them on and watches the colors change...I have to watch him so close!

He is a big boy, his 18-24 month clothes are either fitting perfectly or they are getting too small, and this boy is only 17 months!

He says "thank you" so good, most of the time, when someone gives him something he says it.

Bridger and him love running their huge trucks around the house together, and Beckham really likes to tease Bridger already...

He can point to his nose, eyes, ears, hair, and toes, and those things on other people too.

He still nurses about 3 times a day, mostly for a snack now.

He takes a nap at 1 PM and sleeps for 2-3 hours, then goes to bed around 7:30 PM and wakes up around 8 AM now, he is still waking up at night for some reason too.

He has gotten SO MANY teeth since he turned one. He only had 4 teeth at his 1st birthday, and at 17 months he has 12 teeth now, almost 13. That means in only five months he has gotten 9 (working on the 10) teeth...and I wonder why he doesn't sleep well...? It seems like as soon as one comes through another one starts, it's never-ending...gah. Poor kid. He has had a hard time with teething.

He loves to turn the pages of books and look at the pictures, and he loves to color and play with rocks outside. He loves to dance to good music and has some awesome moves, and he really loves to play with pretty much and kind of car or truck.

Perfect curly mullet right there.

He is still terrified of dogs, but he is not afraid of the vacuum anymore, progress! :)

He loves cottage cheese, pizza, grapes, strawberries, watermelon, raspberries, blueberries, apples and grilled chicken right now. (I have to hide fruit from him until he eats his other food or that is all he will eat!)

Bridger. :)

These two can make me laugh out loud, they can also make me want to pull my hair out. I love them. :)

I don't even know where to start. These two. Oh my goodness.

hmmm.

Here are a few of my favorite lines from Bridger in the last few months...

Bridger to his friends during preschool co-op a few weeks ago.

*his friend picks up his foam baseball bat*
Bridger: "That's my football bat. I'm going to play football at BYU when I get bigger."

(I was just laughing in the kitchen...he was so matter of fact about it.)

Another line from Bridger...he had just woken up from his nap and as we were walking downstairs I stopped in front of a mirror...

Me: "Look how cute you are!"
Bridger: "My hair is crazy, it's getting like daddy's."

10 PM one night and I heard this conversation...

Jeremy: "It's time for bed, buddy."
Bridger: "I don't want to go to bed..."
Jeremy: "You had 3 glasses of milk and 10 shows, it's time for bed."
*someone knows how to work that bedtime routine*

Giving eskimo kisses. :)

Jeremy was swatting flies in our kitchen...

Bridger:  "Daddy, don't kill me!" (being completely serious as he watched flies drop to the ground)

We did explain that Daddy was only killing flies, as he was quite worried.

He started saying this a lot the last few weeks...

Bridger: "Mom, I love you."
Me: "Oh, sweetie, I love you too!"
Bridger: "And you are beautiful."
Me: "And you are so handsome." *teary eyes because he is so adorable*

Today he had a balloon from a birthday party and as we were getting in the car it floated away, he started sobbing as he watched it float clear up into the sky, he cried as it got so tiny you could barely see it. On the way home he was still crying off and on...

Bridger: "I still feel sad because my balloon flew away." As he is rubbing those big beautiful eyes of his.
Me: "I'm sorry sweetie, what can I do to make it better?"
Bridger: "I just need loves."

I just wanted to squeeze him right there. When we got home he ate his cupcake, as soon as he finished he came over to me and wrapped his arms around my neck and gave me a big huge hug and told me he was still sad, so I just kept hugging him.

If I remember more I will add them. :)

Bridger loves to tell me how to drive, and to "go faster" than every car, he is very particular about if his hair is not right, if his pant legs come up, or if his toys get messed up when he is playing. He eats everything with a fork or spoon, almost never with his hands because he hates getting messy (if he does eat with his fingers he has to have a napkin on hand), he also doesn't like to get food around his mouth. He can write his name when I tell him which letters to write and we are learning the lowercase letters now.  He likes to spell all the words in books and have me tell him what they say, I think he wants to read! Sometimes we watch YouTube videos of random things he asks me about, or that I think he will find interesting. We have watched chicks hatch, volcanos erupt, steam engines (for like an hour! ha!), F-16's taking off and flying, commercial jets taking off (he likes to watch from the cockpit), helicopters, and we have looked at Google Earth a little bit. He loves stuff like this. He also loves to win, at everything, right now...going down the stairs, going up the stairs, getting dressed...pretty much anything.

He loves to play with trains and watch trains.

He loves pizza, grilled cheese, apples, strawberries and chicken nuggets.

Before nap time and bed we always read 3 stories, lately at bedtime we have read the 3 stories, then we let him look at one more book and he turns his light off and goes to sleep. He actually does it! He amazes me.

He weighs about 34 pounds right now and is wearing mostly 4T's, some 3T's still. He loves to rough and tumble play with his Dad and Beckham, and he really loves to cuddle before he goes to sleep at night.

We could not get him to smile normal the WHOLE session. This little stinker. ha ha.

We started a preschool co-op in our neighborhood with a few others moms and kids, but it didn't work out for us. Bridger didn't like going and I felt like it wasn't right for him, so we stopped after a month, but here are some pictures from his first day. :)

He is so handsome. :)

Arizona & Bri's Mission Call. :)

We took a trip to Arizona toward the end of August. I was so afraid it was going to be ridiculously hot...but it rained almost the whole time! It was beautiful down there. Jeremy had to go to Phoenix for work for two weeks, so we decided to go with him. They put us up in a suite with a kitchen so we were able to cook, which was nice since we were there for two weeks. :) Jeremy worked most days, but I took the boys and we went to two children's museums (which were absolutely amazing!!!!!) and the Phoenix public library (which is gigantic...), it was a blast! I was nervous to drive down there at first because their roads are a little different than in Utah, but I finally got brave enough and ventured out. On the weekend, my parents and Brianna made the trip down and stayed with us and we went to a natural history museum that was amazing! We also went swimming and played games, as usual, can't forget the games in this family, ha ha. They stayed for church and left Monday morning.

The boys actually did really well driving there and back, they watched a bunch of movies, and it helped that we stayed in Hurricane overnight there and back, making the drive shorter.

We were in for a big surprise while we were there...my family left Monday morning, and Monday night they Skyped us and Brianna pulled out a mission call!

WWHHHAAATTT??

I had no idea she had even put her papers in. I was just freaking out *half mad that she hadn't told me, or waited to do it in person and also SO SO SO SO happy for her* she got called to Estonia, initially, a few weeks later they called and told her she was going to Lithuania, speaking Lithuanian, instead (it is still in the same mission). Anyway, these last couple months have been a whirlwind of getting ready for her and my mom. We had a girls weekend with lots of shopping too...but, of course, time flew and we dropped her off at the MTC on November 5th, just this last Wednesday. It was a crazy, unbelievable sort of day, but I am so happy for her and her adventure in the mission field. Jen and I were always trying to convince her to go, but she always seemed like she didn't like the idea, so this was a HUGE surprise for us. I am so happy she decided to go, she has already changed so much these past couple months. She is so ready. As soon as she decided to go I could tell she felt so much peace about it, she was even totally calm as we dropped her off...I was the one who had the nervous feelings! ha ha. I already miss her so much. Who else is going to laugh at the same stuff I do and play with my kids so well??? :,) I just keep reminding myself that she will only be there for 18 months, and I also keep reminding myself we better start saving if we want to go pick her up! ha ha. We'll see...

Here are a few pictures from our last Seven Peaks trip, too! :)

P.S.-You don't know how it is to have kids before you have kids. Obviously. But, people get ideas in their minds about how it should be, and that's great. I did that, a lot, I think it helps to have an idea of how you want to do things and things to work toward *key words* work toward. I have realized since having a second child that parenting really just requires many talents, but one especially big talent. That talent is the ability to chill out.

I'm not very good at that. 

We are in Phoenix right now, we have been staying in a one bedroom hotel suite for about a week and a half now and my boys are going a little crazy. I think being here in Phoenix with two young children makes us kind of stick out. Just a little lot. Don't get me wrong, there are kids around...just not around like in Utah. Everywhere we go here I have become like hyper sensitive about the noise volume, running around etc., they seem even more wild here because there are no other kids around! I take them to breakfast by myself in the mornings, and I realized again...and again...how loud, adorable, messy, fun and crazy my little family is. We are basically surrounded by people heading to work, and here I am with my two children.

This is how it usually goes:

Bridger: "My juice is not cold this morning." (15 times in a row)
Beckham: Spitting food out of his mouth because he wants a drink, or grabbing handfuls of egg off his plate, half of them falling to the floor in the process.
Me: *run to grab the waffle from the machine*Oh, forgot the forks*Oh, need to get more juice*Wait, need syrup*pick up the biggest chunks of scrambled egg off the floor while trying to put a bite of food in my mouth because breakfast ends in 11 minutes*
Bridger: "I need help!" Because I cut the bites too big.

...all of this and more while it's dead silent, with maybe the crinkle of a newspaper page turning and the low background "lobby music" that I can't even hear over my children.

Breakfast and dinner in that big lobby gives me anxiety. I don't want to annoy people, I don't want my kids to annoy people!

Then, we were in church, it was crazy, as usual, but again, there weren't many children and our kids were acting up. I looked over at Jeremy and saw how frustrated and worn out he looked.

I leaned over to Jeremy and whispered toward the end of Sacrament, "we are like our own little circus." He nodded his head in agreement.

In that moment I had a sort of sunshine moment, I was able to just step back, almost like "out of body" (as ridiculous as it sounds), and saw my little family, literally, like a circus. Yes, a circus, all of the situations here that made us stand out pretty much just ran through my mind and instead of feeling stressed about them, I had this weight lifted off my shoulders because I just allowed my obsession with other peoples feelings to fall away. In that moment, I just focused on my kids and my husband, as wild as we are, and just felt love.

Then I leaned over and jokingly said, "I love being in your circus." He laughed because it's cheesy, but he said "me too."

Since then, I do everything I can to help my boys learn how to behave in public, but they are 3.5 and 15 months...things are going to happen. Many things. I just don't internalize it now.

People have actually been really sweet here for the most part, everyone tells me how adorable my boys are, and love how they match everyday. The maids all try to talk with them, they love my blonde baby and my handsome three year old. :) Even at the store people talk to them and compliment them.

Also...we went to the zoo in June (I think...) with some friends, Zak and Heidi Maples and their little boy Hudson who is only a couple months younger than Beckham. We had a blast!

I used to drink out of this fountain when I was a little kid, it's so fun to see it still there! :)

We bought a Pass of all Passes this year...and didn't start using it until like August, ha ha. We told ourselves we were going to go to Seven Peaks every weekend to make up for it! Well, Jeremy went to El Paso, Texas for three weeks and I headed down to Hurricane for a couple of weeks, then we went camping for a week. We finally got home and went twice in a row, then we left again! ha! Jeremy found out he could go to Phoenix for work for two weeks, it was very spur of the moment, on a Thursday evening, and we left Saturday morning.