Brena's 8th Birthday Party

Brenalee has never had a birthday party before - I let them have parties when they turn 5 & 8.  I HATE birthday parties.  We will do cake and presents at home for the kids and celebrate their birthdays, but I do NOT like parties - ugh!  For some reason we didn't end up having one for her when she turned 5, so it was time to give the girl a party!  She wanted to have her party at Paint N' Fun.  It's a place where you & your guests pick out a piece of pottery to paint.  It was fun and easy! 

They also had face painting:

 The cake - she wanted a Monster High cake.  A lady from church made it for us. 

 Opening presents!  She was super excited about all her fun stuff.  She got lots of earrings, necklaces, doll clothes and more.

 All the girls.

6 months!

6 months already!  Brisol went in for her 6 month check up today.  She weighs 15lbs 3oz - 48%, and she's 26 1/2" long - 78%.  Her head circumference is 16.5 - 35%.  She was declared absolutely perfect in every way :)  She got a few shots and was very, very angry about that. 

She is now very good at sitting up on her own.  She loves her brother and sister and they can make her laugh like no one else.  They are so good with her.  She loves to eat oatmeal.  She is eating veggies and fruits now.  But, her favorite is oatmeal.  She is still nursing 4x/day.  She takes a few naps throughout the day and sleeps throughout the night.  Time is going too fast!

St. Louis

We drove until about 10pm the day we left Colorado.  We drove all the way across Colorado and Kansas!  We got into Missouri and decided to try to find a hotel - well bad news - they were all full!  There was a Royals game and something else going on and we couldn't find a room!  We finally found one and it was a little scary - but we got to sleep which was good!  The next morning we woke up and headed for St. Louis.  We wanted to stop and go up in the arch because we had heard from a few people how cool it was.  The arch is right off the interstate - we saw it right when we were getting into downtown St. Louis. 

We got to St. Louis about noon Sunday.  It was a 3 hour wait to go up in the arch - we decided we had come all this way - might as well wait!  We walked into downtown and had some lunch while we waited.  Then we walked around the outside of the arch for a little bit.  

Then it was our turn to go up in the arch.  It was really fun.  It took about 5 minutes to get to the top in this little box like container, and it was pretty small!

It was really cool to look out the little windows at the top of the arch.  It was much smaller than I thought, but it's a pretty narrow arch - so I don't know what I was expecting.  You kind of had to lean over the walls to look out the windows.

The Cardinals were playing a game as we looked out the windows.

 The Mississippi River flows right below the arch:

 Downtown St. Louis

 Bristol was pretty tired and starting too get a little grumpy - she wanted to eat and go to bed!  Unfortunately, there was no where to feed her!

 These were the windows - pretty small!

 The tram down took about 3 minutes.

We finally got back to the car about 4pm - we decided to drive and see where we made it to before getting tired.  We ended up driving the rest of the way home!  We got home at 4am Monday morning - we were TIRED!  The kids did so awesome on the trip - they were great!  I was so worried that Bristol would cry for hours at a time, but she never did - she was a perfect angel!  It took me a couple days to recover from that all night trip though.

I hope the older kids have fond memories of this trip for the rest of their lives.  I thoroughly enjoyed this trip - I loved that we got to drive so many miles across this beautiful country together and see so many beautiful sights.  I will remember this trip for a long time.  I hope we get to do another trip like this someday!  Thanks family for the amazing experience.  I love you guys all so much!

Back to VA we go

What a sad day - it's time for vacation to be over.  We have a loooong drive ahead of us!  We are not sure where we will stop - we're just going to drive until we can't drive anymore!  I love this adventure!

5 generations and more

Sometime it's hard to have almost all your family in the same town.  When you go visit it's hard to make sure everyone has equal time.  On the other hand I love that so many of our family lives in the same town - we get to see everyone at least for a little bit!  I love that one of my grandmas lives right next door to my parents and my other grandma isn't too far either.  We had our 4 generation picture taken - the last time we did that was 8 years ago!

 Never mind that my mom and grandma can't keep their eyes open - sheesh!

And 8 years ago...we've had a couple new additions since this was taken!

 

Me, Grandma Landes & Kim

And we got a special visit from our cousin Krishelle that night!  Krishelle is right in between Kim & me in age and was our very favorite cousin to play with while we were growing up.  She lives in Arizona now, but had come up for a visit.  My Grandma Whiting turned 80 on August 13, and they had a big family birthday party for her, so she came up for that.  We went out for frozen yogurt and talked and laughed for hours.  It was so much fun to see her.  Unfortunately, we had to leave the morning of the party - so we missed the birthday party.

Me, Steph, Kim & Krishelle

Birthday girl

There was a few things Brena wanted for her birthday - one thing she has been begging for was a real pedicure.  She got her wish the morning of her birthday:

 The finished product:

After Brena's baptism we went to my parent's house and had some food catered from a Hawaiian BBQ place - it was really good.  Then we watched Brena open her presents.  I love that she got to do this with all her cousins.  She's never had a real birthday party before - so this is the closest she gets when we are in CO and all her cousins come. 

 She wanted these high heels so bad - she was so funny when she opened them.  She can barely walk in them :)

 She also wanted these fashion glasses so bad, she didn't have enough money to buy them in the store and we almost had to drag her out of there crying - I guess someone told Grandma Franklin how bad she wanted them :)

 

Grandma snuggling Bristol

What a fun night and what a special girl we got to celebrate!  I can't believe she's 8 already!

Brenalee's Baptism & 8th Birthday

Brenalee was baptized in Grand Junction, on her birthday by her daddy.  Her birthday was on a Friday and we baptized her at the church that night at 6:00.  It was a special night and I'm so proud of my sweet girl!  She wore the dress my mom made for me that I was baptized in. 

 Sweet cousins that were blessed on the same day - I wish they could have been baptized on the same day as well - but Kayleigh doesn't turn 8 until October and we wouldn't be able to get back out West at that time.

 I LOVE Bristol's smile in this picture!

 Some of our family who were able to attend the baptism.

 My good friend Heidi and her family - I've known Heidi my entire life.  We were best friends as little girls - still are!  We love to chat on the phone for hours still :) 

The girls are in their matching dresses made by Grandma Landes.

 

Cake!

We had family pictures taken while we were in Colorado.  We had the whole family together and we decided to eat cake for Brena's birthday after pictures.  We weren't sure what/how the baptism would go and didn't want to miss out on the birthday cake for the birthday cake for the birthday girl - so we had it early.  Looking back now we could have had cake after the baptism - oh well.

Bristol getting ready for pictures.

 Our family was team yellow.

 Aunt Kim, Bristol and Kayleigh - they were team orange

 Aunt Steph finishing Brena's Lorax cake.

 Isn't it cute??

 Blow those candles out!

 Aunt Kim & Uncle Pat

 Uncle Kyler & Aunt Steph

 Brena, Deklan & Takiah

 Eating the Lorax.

 Silly Zayden & Kaleah