HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATE AND A ROCKETS GAME!

I know this is late but March 2 was Nate's Birthday. He is 28 now, man he's getting old. Anyways, I started off the morning by attempting to make pancakes. Now I'm not a bad cook, but if there is one thing I'm not good at making, it's pancakes. Don't ask me why but I can count on one hand how many successful pancakes I've made. Their either too thick, too doughy or just plain gross. So I'm making pancakes and I'm so nervous that they won't turn out. What a way to start out a birthday, messed up pancakes. But by a miracle my prayers were answered and Nate had some delicious pancakes for breakfast.

When he got home from work we went to dinner to the Texas Roadhouse with Nate's parents. It was very tasty of course and I didn't have to do any fancy cooking. But then we went home for birthday rice krispy treats. Now if there is something you shouldn't be able to mess up on, it's these, and guess what? They were so hard and crunchy, I was so ashamed of myself. How could I mess up the birthday rice krispies? At least the pancakes were good.

For Nate's Birthday present, I gave him Rockets tickets. So that weekend we enjoyed a basketball game together. Now you may have seen me standing by this Yao Ming before, but I thought I'd do it again, because it's fun, ok?

And Nate next to Tracy McGrady.

And here is my hand and foot next to Yao's hand and foot. The guy wears a size 18! Anyways, it was a great game and Yao wasn't hurt this year so we got to see him play we were so excited! Not to mention they played Pheonix so we got to see him play against Shaquil O'Neil! The 2 biggest guys on the earth playing basketball together. It was like seeing a celebrity in the nose bleed section. They even looked big from up there.

BRYSTAL'S FIRST TOOTHBRUSH!

Some of you may think this post is stupid, but I thought it was cute and I was so excited to introduce Brystal to her toothbrush. She is always looking at me in wonder whenever I am brushing my teeth, so I decided to get one of her own.

First I showed her how it was done. Scrub those little bottom teeth...

Get those top teeth...

Then she was on her own, and she brushes like a champ!

Hey I think she likes it!

I GUESS IT'S TIME

I admit that I have been avoiding you all lately. But it is time for me to come clean about what is really going on in my life. Things here haven't been what they seem. So I went through a phase of almost non existant blogging there for awhile, I'm sure you all noticed. Well there is a good explination for that. I just don't know how much longer I can avoid the subject. This photo here was taken about 5 weeks ago...

That's right as you can see the picture says 10 weeks here, which was taken 5 weeks ago, so if you do the math, I have been avoiding you guys for 15 weeks. Actually, not really that long, since I didn't even know about this for quite a long time. Here is the story, in case you are interested...
We were not trying for this, I figured that since Brystal was so hard to get then it would be again, so I was just checking my cycles out to see if I would still be messed up. Well nothing happened nothing happened. So I went into the Dr the 1st of December who did an u/s and a pregnancy test and saw absolutely nothing and blamed my lack of my a regular cycle on the fact that I was coming off the pill and that my chances were very slim at this point of getting pregnant on my own.
Well ok then I thought, good to know for when we are ready to try. The story deepens at this point. 3 weeks later we are on the rode, driving to Utah, it was much more horrible than I originally explained in my blog. I felt like crap. So lo and behold when I get up there, I take a test and to my surprise, 2 lines show up. "what the heck?" I say, "I was just in the Dr's office a couple weeks ago who said I wasn't pregnant and that I wouldn't be able to" So with feelings of nervousness, fear, wondering, excitment, dissbelief I called the Dr back up and got myself an appointment because apparently, he was wrong. When I get to the Dr for my ultra sound they asked me how far along I was. "well I have no clue when this happened, so I would guess around 6 weeks I guess". So the screen pops up and BOOM, there is a BIG baby with arms and legs and hands and feet waving back at me. "That is a Big baby!" I say, the u/s lady says that I am a whopping 10 weeks along!!! What the heck! Apparently, when I had gone to the Dr before I was just barely a week or so along and they couldn't see anything. Oh my gosh, I couldn't believe this.

So that is that my friends. A miracle I guess, we didn't think it would happen so easy for us let alone happen for us when we weren't really trying. I guess this baby needed to be here right now. So I am due on August 13 so far. I really haven't felt too good until just a couple of weeks ago which as you can see is when I started to blog again. Things have been rough around here with Nate's busy schedule and me not feeling good especially in the evenings and Brystal getting molars and whining at me all evening long. I wanted to die sometimes. But the worst is over and we it is becoming a little more real especially since I seem to be getting fatter a little sooner than I wanted to but I am getting excited. And we think Brystal is going to be a great big sister.

BRYSTAL GETS A NEW DRESS

All ready for church in her new springy dress, that's right winter is pretty much over here in Houston and we are getting ready for Spring. The weather here is great!

We have never done green with Brystal before, but I think I like this color on her. What do you think.

MY SUGAR BABY

Not much going on here, just getting ready for Valentine's day. Brystal and I went to a Valentine's party and got lot's of treats. I don't let her have candy too often, but when I do, she loves it.

Mmmmmmmmm-

Mmmmaaaaaaaa!

SEE YA!

Brystal is so funny because now she says see ya instead of bye bye. Well she still says bye, but see ya is cuter. And I can never get her to say it around people, so this was my video proof of her saying it. Also, we had just got home from a little valentine's playgroup party so she is eating her sucker she got from that. She is growing up so fast.

MY CRAZY WEEK

Last week was a bad week. First of all, it is Nate's busy season, which means he is hardly ever home. So he leaves early in the morning and gets home around 10. It is very hard to be without him but we're getting through. Anyways, he likes to come home and check on Brystal in her bed, but he kept on waking her up and playing with her and then expect me to put her back to bed and be the bad guy. Well one night he came home and headed upstairs, I said, I better monitor this to make sure you don't wake her up this time. So we are both cooing over our adorable little girl sleeping away in her crib, when she suddenly realizes we are watching her and she wakes up and sits up in her bed and looks at us and then begins to throw up.

Oh dear, I can't handle the smell, so I run out of the room and leave poor Nathan with throw up in his hands. Poor little baby, we cuddle her up and put her back to sleep. She wakes up every half an hour with throw up on her and her bed for the next hour and a half. I was running out of clothes and blankets, and sleep. Finally it all ended at 1:30 a.m.

The next day she seemed fine, just didn't eat anything all day which I understand, so by that night, she came down with a strange fever. This night she woke up every half an hour having uncontrollable screaming fits that we couldn't calm her down. we would get her calmed, then put her back down and start all over again a half hour later. Finally at 3 a.m. it ended. I was pooped.

Speaking of poop, the NEXT day, she seemed ok, just not eating much again and a little sleepy. Well I'm on the phone when I look at Brystal and she has poop overflowing out of her diaper up her back and she is hunched over something. " I gotta go! " and I hang up the phone. I run over and she is poking her little fingers in a big pile of poop that must have spilled out of her pants, so I grab her and run her upstairs to the bathroom. She's got poop on her hands, her back, her clothes, everywhere. As I'm running up the stairs, I turn back to the damage and see Sophie, good old Sophie eating up the remains. I'm screaming "Sophie!!! Get away from the poop!!" Does she listen? Of course not. This is a delicacy to her. I dump Brystal in the bathroom and run back down stairs thinking how much I want to kill that dog, and I grab the dog with poo smeared all over her face and throw her in the laundry room until she gets a bath. And I'm not going to do it, so that means Nathan is. Anyways the poor baby upstairs is crying with poop all over her and I don't even know where to begin but manage to get her in the tub and cleaned up.

After that, I had HAD it, so Nate took me to the movies that night and we called his mom to come watch her. Everything is fine and dandy now, she's better and I'm much more relaxed now this week. But this was just a little glimpse into my life last week. These are the things that happen to every mom at some point in their lives though they never want to do it again, I'm sure it will.

BRYSTAL WALKING

Though Brystal learned to walk over a month ago, I haven't gotten around to putting this video up. She was being so stubborn about walking, if we tried to encourage her, she would smile, sit down and crawl to us. Apparently she just didn't want to walk in the presence of an audience because several times I would go to check on her in the other room and catch her walking around the room without her knowing I was watching. So I just said nothing and just let her do it herself. Well when Daddy was home that weekend, she wanted to show off her skills she had been practicing behind my back and here is what happened. She walked in circles around the kitchen all day long, and with those squeaky shoes on you can imagine how annoying that got after awhile, but I'm so happy that she has finally learned to walk.

PLAYING WITH SOPHIE

I know it's been awhile, I haven' t had much going on around here. But here is a video that was taken a couple months ago, but it shows the budding relationship between Brystal and Sophie. Sophie makes her laugh all the time, and sometimes Brystal annoys Sophie by trying to hug her or ride on her. So I know this isn't that exciting but it's better than nothing. Plus I think it's cute.

MERRY CHRISTMAS SURPRISE!

This year for Christmas Nathan and I decided with the dropping gas prices we would drive to Utah and surprise my family! Boy were they surprised! We drove the long 24 hour drive straight through the night and made it there while my family was at church and there we were waiting for them when they got home! It was so nice to get to see everyone since we hadn't seen them for so long, and Brystal got to play with her cousins and Grandma and Grandpa and Aunts and Uncles. We also got to see some of Nate's family for a day here. We wish we could have stayed longer so we could have seen everyone! The weather was in our favor for the drives since it was a complete whiteout snowstorm every other day we were there.

Brystal getting a good look at snow for her first time. Don't ask about the ears, I just found them and she left them on for over an hour.

We did alot of lounging around which was great since we have both been really busy here at home with work and things with our callings and getting ready for the holidays, we really needed the break.

SLEDDING!

With all the new snowfall, we went sledding and took Brystal along for the ride. She had lots of fun being pulled around in the tube and going down the little baby hill.

Maybe she looks a little scared in this one.

Weeee!

Ready to go down Mom.

Good times.

Mwah!

Hey Brystal, what does a fishy say!!! (this is her response)

The sledders. Nathan and I with Brystal, Nate's brother Michael and Cindy, And Kristie's Hubby Clayton!

TEMPLE SQUARE

We decided to hit Temple Square the night before we left. It had been awhile since I've been, plus it was fun to go with Kristie and Clayton, and Dusty and Hilary. We left the cranky monster at home with Grandma and Grandpa. Although we wished she could have come.

It was freezing, but such a good feeling in the air.

How I love my sister and Hilary. Hilary has to squat to be a short as Kristie and I.

Although this pictures looks very akward and posed, We really do love eachother. Especially Dusty, I know he really loves us the most.

2 AM, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN UT AND TEXAS

So our drive home from Utah was not as good as the drive up there. It started out with a bang with Brystal throwing up on herself before we even got up the canyon. After that was cleaned up, we found a place to pull over and get Brystal ready for bed. She did really well sleeping through most of the night, here she is at around 2 in the morning with her blankie on her head. The next morning we stopped at McDonalds to get breakfast and Brystal threw up her milk on me! Nice. So now we all smelled like barf, not to mention we had Sophie in the car with us who also threw up. But we made it home alive on New Year's Eve and around 11 o'clock we gave up waiting for the new year and crashed. It was a great trip and we had loads of fun!

Brysal and I playing out in the field. I was trying to get her to walk, she CAN walk she just chooses not to. Here she is standing, and she was dancing as well giving me her silly face.

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH

We were having some lovely 75 degree weather, so we headed out to the Water Wall! This is a HUGE wall that has water flowing down it on both sides. This is the front side of it, you can see how big it is with all the people next to it. At night it lights up and looks really cool. We decided to sit in this little field and enjoy the weather and just relax on our last day of the holiday vacation.

I don't think Brystal can get enough of her Daddy

Always a look of surprise on this girls face.

And here is a new face that we are starting to see alot more of lately. Let the fun of toddlerhood begin.