An Early Start on Christmas

Since we are going to be in Utah for Christmas and Brighton has been asking for a dollhouse for Christmas, Sant opted to bring it to her a little early. We have had three solid days of dollhouse fun. It is honestly the only thing she wants to play with. She doesn't want to go anywhere or do anything that will take her away from her beloved dollhouse. Lucky for her, school is canceled because of snow this week which means no work for Mom and all the dollhouse fun little Miss Brighton can handle.

Bri wanted to build sand castles in the snow so we got out her beach toys and went to work. When I would say something about a snow castle, she would quickly correct me and tell me that it was a sand castle, not a snow castle. Whatever. We had fun. :)


Here is my cute sister Lex. She just left to go back to Utah. We had so much fun having her here for a few weeks! Come back, come back!

This is Bri in her Christmas dress. She didn't actually get to wear it to church because church was cancelled, again due to the snow, but we put her in it on Sunday and she had fun twirling around in her "pitty wed cwistmas dess." Thanks Grandma & Grandpa.

Thanksgiving

So I haven't blogged in awhile. Why? Hmm. I don't really even know. I do know that once I haven't blogged in awhile, it's tough to do an entry because it's hard to write about things when it has been a month! So, I'm pretty much just going to write a little about our fun Thanksgiving and call it good.

We had a great Thanksgiving! My parents and my sister Alexis came and we LOVED having them here! Brighton was in heaven with five adults giving her all the attention she could handle. These are the times when we really wish we lived closer to family! My parents had to go after about a week, but we get to have Lex here for a few weeks and we are trying hard to talk her into moving here!

Christmas tree hunting!

Here is a little clip of Daddy the Dino!

Happy Hadoweee!

As Brighton would say, "Happy Hadoweeee!" Ok, this may be an obvious statement, but I'm going to say it anyway. Halloween is so much cooler with a kid! Bri has been so excited all week and it made it fun for everyone. She asked anyone she ran into what they were going to be for Hadoweee and told anyone who would listen all about her Cindereddi cown and glass slippers. :)We all had such a fun Halloween.

We started out the day going trick-or-treating at my school. My whole office made these little Halloween bags full of candy and little Halloween toys. Bri was in heaven. The star of the show. Just the way she likes it. Last night we went trick-or-treating with some of the neighborhood kiddos and Brighton loved it! She was a trooper hiking up the steep hills by our house in her glass slippers and 10 pounds of candy. (Everyone seemed to think it was a great idea to give the cute toddler loads of candy). Luckily, Bri wasn't too interested in eating it last night. She was just thrilled that she was getting it. Her pumkin bucket finally just got way too heavy for her and she had to have me carry it. That's when we decided we'd had enough trick-or-treating for one night.

Unfortunately our camera was having a freak out day yesterday so most of our pictures turned out fuzzy. Boo. We still got a couple of cute ones though and we did get a cute little video clip of our princess.

A Busy, Fun Week

So here we have some of my wonderful Portland friends. We were cracking up when Julie's neighbor was taking this picture. He said S*** every other word and I'm not exagerating. It was pretty hilarious to us at the time. I was wondering if he could get through a sentence without his favorite word. I'm going to go with no. Anyway, Julie hosted a fun little get together and we all had such a blast. We talked until 1:30 in the morning, which I haven't done in so long! We had such great conversations and it was so rejuvinating. I am a person who needs to have close girl friends and I have been so blessed my whole life to always find amazing women who inspire me and push me in different ways. Most of you who read this blog are included in this category so MWWAHH! I love you all!

We have been having some gorgeous weather so we have been spending as much time as possible outside since those gray, rainy days we love so much are right around the corner. Ugh. Notice that my child is wearing pants here. Yes, it actually happened. She has worn pants for almost a week straight without much fuss at all. I honestly didn't think it was going to happen without a massive meltdown every morning, but Bri is adapting nicely to life without summer dresses and bare feet.

Our friends Jeremy and Liz came to visit from San Francisco this weekend. It was great to see them! We hung out at the Farmer's Market in Portland on Saturday. Lots of good stuff there, but the highlight was definitely Brighton's balloon red heart flower with pink leaves and a purple hummingbird. (The balloon man was pretty creative). When the guy making the balloon gave it to Bri, she looked like he had just given her a million bucks. She was so proud of her balloon flower and had to take it everywhere we went for the rest of the day. She showed it to everyone, and of course gave everyone a turn smelling the flower because latex has such a fantastic scent! Here she is smelling her flower one of the hundred times she smelled it that day.

We also went to Cacao and got some drinking chocolate and it was heavenly! Mmmm. If you live in Portland, do yourself a favor and go get some!

We had two Halloween parties this week. The first was at our neighbors house. Costumes were required, which I thought was great, but Don was less than thrilled about. :) It was fun. There were lots of crafts for the kids and it was fun to catch up with all the neighbors. Bri spent most of her time upstairs playing with their little girls' barbie house. She thought it was a great party.

Party number two was with our ward. It was pretty chaotic, but fun. There was a chili cookoff, a costume parade, Halloween bag decorating, and of course, a little trick-or-treating. Bri thought it was pretty great to go from room to room getting candy. She seems to have forgotten that she got a bag full of candy last night and I'm not planning on reminding her. I'm sure she'll get plenty more on Friday.

Brighton loves dressing up! We debated about whether or not she should be Cinderella for Halloween because she dresses like Cinderella a couple of times a week anyway. I'm glad we ended up going with Cinerella though because she was in heaven showing off her beautiful gown, glass slippers, and sparkly crown to everyone. Plus, the girl makes a pretty adorable Cinderella!

Pumpkins, etc...

There hasn't been all that much to blog about lately. I've had Walking Pnemonia for the past few weeks and that's been pretty fantastic. Boo! I hate being sick. Hmm, what else...we've pretty much just been low key, hanging at the house lately. Exciting I know.

It's been rainy, but yesterday was finally sunny so we decided to go to a pumpkin patch. It was quite the task even to get there. Bri is, as many of you may know, a total princess. She wants nothing to do with any article of clothing that doesn't sparkle or that isn't a dress. It's been getting cooler so we are trying to get pants on this child, but let me just say, it is no easy task! She was so excited to go pick out pumpkins and go on a hay ride, but not if it meant that she had to wear pants. This was day three of making my child wear pants (I'm so mean) and it was just too much for her. She said that she would stay home so she could wear a dress and she stuck to it for a good hour, which in toddler time is quite awhile! Finally, the prospect of picking out her very own pumpkin beat out wearing a pretty dress and she put on some pants. In the end, I think she was glad that she cooperated because we had a great time. :) Ever since Disneyland, these little hands go up anytime we are about to go over a bump in the road, go through a tunnel, etc. So of course they went up when we were on the hay ride because, it is indeed a RIDE.

The pumpkins were all too big for her to carry, but that didn't stop her from trying. She kept asking where the baby pumpkins were because these were too big! On our way out, we did find some little pumpkins that were just her size. :)

Brighton loved running through the pumpkins. She ran and ran and ran and luckily didn't trip over too many.

Picking up pumpkins wasn't working too well for this little lady so she switched to picking flowers for awhile.

She loved riding in this wagon. The whole way home she asked if we could go back and ride in the wagon some more. It was a great fall day and we all quite enjoyed our visit to the pumpkin patch.

And this is where I found her the other day. I asked if she was looking for something to eat and she said, "No Mom, I'm just building my yogart castle." Oh, of course, a yogurt castle, I should have known.

Bits & Pieces

Here is our little bruise-faced child. The bruises are a little hard to see in the picture, but last week it was one bonk after another and she had three nice sized bruises on her face. Bonk, bonk, bonk. Her legs were much worse. Seriously covered in brown, yellow, and purple. Poor Bri seems to bruise just as easily as her mother. On top of the bruise fest at our house, we've also all been sick. Bri kicked things off with a fun round of Croup. The doctor put her on steroids, which made my sick child hyper, jittery, and unable to sleep. Oh, and Don was out of town for work. It was a pretty fantastic few days. Don got sick next and now it's my turn. Lots of coughing around here, but we'll all survive.
Don's cousin Dave came to visit with his family. It was really fun to spend some time with them. We went to the zoo on Saturday and so did the rest of Portland. It was packed. We had to park in a parking lot a mile away and take a bus to the zoo, which ended up being both the kids' favorite part of the zoo experience. They were both seriously pumped that they got to go on the yellow school bus. Go figure.

Bri thought it was pretty funny to hold onto Dad's face instead of his neck and ya know, it actually was pretty funny.

Denmark is such a cutie. It was fun to have him at our house for a couple of days. Bri had fun with him. He is all boy and Bri is all girl so it was pretty entertaining to watch them together.


This bear was so fun to watch. He was swimming and playing forever.

I couldn't get Bri to smile for a picture so I pretended to cry, which apparently was hilarious.

Randomness

So things have been pretty busy around here. School started again for me. Middle schoolers are hilarious. Everything is life or death. Oh the drama and tears of the first week of school. Friends that are in different classes, lockers that won't open, teachers they don't like, and the list goes on. I have to say that I used to think people who worked in middle schools were just a little bit crazy, but I love it. I can honestly say that I never have a boring day of work. Those tweeners keep me thoroughly entertained. :)

Brighton has been cracking us up even more than usual lately. It's amazing how much she picks up on when we think she isn't listening and then she starts talking about something like a week later and we are like "what!!??" Our funny little sponge. Just soaking up the world. The other morning I discovered that she knows our first names. When she woke up, I went to her room and she said, "Hi Momma Ashwee, where's Don?" Then the other night at dinner she asked me if I wanted a drink of my water. I said "sure" and she lifted her glass, clinked it with mine and said "cheers!" Yeah, no idea where she got that from. I am trying to think if they do that in one of the Disney cartoons or something. It's so fun to see how fast she learns and to realize how much she already knows.

I am usually a super picture taker, but for some reason, just haven't taken many lately. Here are a few...

Bri on her new bike

At the zoo

Here's Bri on the train at the zoo. She wanted to ride it so bad so we caved. It ended up being 45 min long and all we saw were trees. No animals. Woo-hoo. She still had fun just being on the train though.

This guy looks like he's had a rough day

And here we have a little tickle torture clip...