Christmas in Utah

Christmas in Utah was great this year! We stayed with Quinc and Deb for a couple of days when we first got to Utah. It was great to see them! As usual, wish it could have been longer!

This is pretty typical, Coop with his ball and Bri with her magic wand.

Tinkerbell twins!

Grandpa hadn't played barbies in so long...he had forgotten how much he loved it. Luckily he got plenty of barbie time in with Bri around. Don't worry Papa, we'll be back soon for more barbie fun!

Christmas Eve PJ's

Christmas was so much fun. At first Brighton helped every person open every gift, but once she opened her Belle dress up toy, that was all over. She didn't even want to open any more of her own presents. It was so great to relax and spend some good quality time with family in Mammoth. We loved our time there and miss everybody already!

Santa's stylish little helper

Plenty of Christmas snow in Mammoth!

Meet Mr. Napkin Head. He came out to visit a time or two during our stay at Mammoth. Brighton thought he was hilarious (as you can see below) and she is hoping he comes to visit her in Portland soon.


We drove up to Bryce one day. It is so spectacular in the Winter. These pictures don't do it justice.

Bri and Grandma got lots of good story time in on this trip. I think they both quite enjoyed it. :)

Here is a little clip of Bri on Christmas morning

18 Hours!

That is how long it took us to get from Portland to Utah and no, we did not drive, we flew! Can I just say longest day ever! Ugh. Here are a few of the highlights:

• HOURS sitting on various runways.
• A co-pilot with too many hours logged thus a search for another which took hours.
• Bad weather in SLC so as soon as we were ready to land they sent us to Boise for a few hours.
• A lost pilot...once we re-boarded in Boise, no one could find our pilot so yes, another hour + on the runway with no one to fly our plane.
• My poor sister sitting in SLC all day and all night waiting.
• Many unfulfilled promises from Southwest (worst airline ever) that we would be on our way soon. Seriously, no one from good old Southwest seemed to have a clue what was going on. That was pretty fantastic.
• And once we finally landed in SLC, we sat on the runway for another hour.
  

We were scheduled to arrive at 3pm in SLC and we got there closer to 4am. Woo-hoo what a day! Luckily, Brighton had a much better attitude about the whole thing than her parents did. Seriously she was amazing! She just played with her princess figurines and stickers cheerfully for hours and hours. Don and I were slightly less cheery about the whole situation. We were lucky to get out when we did though. I guess the Portland airport has been closed for four days because of all the snow they are getting so I'll just stop complaining now and be thankful that we left the day before the airport closed!

So we're now in Utah and it has been so fun to see family and friends! We're all cozied up in Mammoth and loving it right now. Bri is in heaven playing with all of our old barbies from the 80's. They all have awesome crimped hair and very stylish clothes. ;)

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

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.