Learning

So funny story to start out with.  While I was typing the title to this post I spelled learning wrong haha!  

Today I'm talking about Avery and all of the new things she's learning.  She picks up on things so fast!  Here are a few of them that I've been able to catch on camera.  The first thing is that she is learning how to color.  She mostly tries to eat the crayons and she can't push down very hard so her coloring is very light.  She has been pretty good lately about not putting them in her mouth, she'll put a crayon to her mouth (but not in her mouth) then look at me and shake her head because she knows she's not supposed to.  To help her to still color and not have the temptation of putting the crayon in her mouth I got a ziplock bag and squirted some paint in it.  Then taped it to our window and let her go to town. She can use her fingers to draw or she likes to use her xylophone stick thing.  I got the idea here.  It's been a week and the paint is still good to draw on.  I'm impressed.

Side note:  I just looked up at my title and it was spelled wrong again!  The first time I spelled it wrong I forgot to put in the a (lerning) and now I forgot the first n (learing).  Goodness gracious, it's spelled right now.  Now onto some more learning!  

Avery has been copying our behavior a lot.  One thing she has been doing lately is taking her stuffed animals temperatures.  It's pretty darn cute.  She'll also give her baby doll a binkie.  (and give her kisses, and rock her!  It's too cute, I know she's going to love having a little baby sister or brother)

Another thing she's picked up from us is how keys are used.  She gets our box with our keys down off of our end table and opens it and takes keys out.  Then tries to go open the door.  It of course doesn't work and she gets frustrated every now and then.  

One super fun thing she's doing is throwing her ball.  It is her FAVORITE thing to do outside now!  I will throw the ball into the grass and she'll squeal and laugh and run after it.  Then throw it back to me and clap for herself.  We do it over and over until I take her inside and she cries because she wants to stay outside forever!  I've tried to help her learn how to kick a ball, but she hasn't picked up on it yet.  She does love when I run her around kicking the ball though.  

Another thing the is learning is how to stack blocks.  My mom made some blocks for her this past Christmas, yes made them, and she's had fun playing with them.  There's a link on baby center somewhere with a list of a few things most children can do, some children can do, and a few children can do at each age.  For her age she's supposed to be able to stack 3 blocks I think and she's gotten up to 9.  Little smarty pants.  It makes me happy.  After ever single block she stacks she claps and says "yay" for herself.  

She has recently started to really like putting lids on and off of things.  And as always she'll say "yay" for her amazing accomplishment!

Look at that concentration!

 The last thing I'm going to write brag about is that she likes to comb her own hair.  She hasn't tried to comb my hair yet, thank goodness, I think that would probably hurt.

She does more new things, but I don't have pictures.  She "brushes" her own teeth and wipes her face off after, she walks on her tippy toes every now and then, she blows kisses, (and french kisses, ick) she takes her pants off and her shirt off over her head, and she bounces in her bed haha!  Am I a bad mom for teaching her that?

I love this little girl so much, I am so blessed to have her in my life and to be her mother.  I know that for some it's difficult to get children here and I am thoughtful and prayerful for those of you.  I'm glad I get to keep her forever because anything less I just wouldn't want to settle for.

Essential Swimwear Giveaway

I heard about Essential Swimwear through one of my friends.  They have the CUTEST swimsuits and, wait for it. . .they're modest!  It's hard to find swimsuits that are modest to me these days.  Most of them seem to have plunging necklines, or low backs, or random weird holes in the side.  For the past 8 days Essential Swimwear has been doing daily giveaways.  Which is awesome because even with how cute the suits are, they are too expensive for me.  Today is their last day and in my opinion they are ending with their cutest suit yet.

If you would like a chance to enter click here to go to their page on facebook.  If you're seeing this too late to enter click here to go to their website.  The only thing I wish was different was that their models were more normal sized not these little skinny girls.  Makes me wonder, "Okay it looks great on her, but she's itty bitty, how would it look on me?"  I understand it though, that's just how things are.  Until later!

Birthday Weekend

I am now officially 23 (as of Friday)

and let me tell you I feel sooo much older!  Ha just kidding, I don't think I've ever felt different on my birthdays.  Nevertheless I had a great weekend.  I knew Louis was planning on taking me overnight somewhere, but he wouldn't tell me where.  Not even what city we would be in.  I was excited, we hadn't had a night alone since our anniversary in August.  Josh and Megan watched Avery for us and from what they told us, she did really well.  We headed out on our weekend away and Louis let me look at the directions so I could see where we were going for the night.  We were going to a little bed and breakfast in Sugarhouse called Parrish Place.  It was so cute and the first bed and breakfast I've been too.  It lived up to all of my expectations for a B&B.  Well not all of my expectations.  I imagined a little old couple running it and instead it was a middle-aged women with a cat.  The house was gorgeous though, it was built in the 1890's if I'm remembering correctly.  It had a lot of lilacs surrounding it, which is my favorite flower so that made me happy.

The lady was so nice and sweet and we think she was lonely because she talked a lot!  She said that it was a slow weekend so we could stay as late as we wanted.  Our room was smaller than we expected, it was no bigger than our room at home, maybe even a little smaller.

And it had this weird sheep on the bed, I don't know what that was about!  It was nice and cute though.  We had eaten lunch at about 4:30 so we didn't get hungry until like 8 so we ended up just getting Carl's Jr for dinner and eating it in our room!  It was perfect.  The next day we left at 11, the lady was surprised we were already leaving she said,"Oh I thought you would stay until 1 or 2!"  As nice as it was, what were we going to do there for that long?
We headed over to Salt Lake and walked around temple square and the new city creek center.  It was such a BEAUTIFUL day, blue skies and super warm.  We saw 10 brides while we were walking around temple square.  That temple is much too busy for me, I'm glad I got sealed in the Ogden.  It is picture overload time now, Louis and I took a bunch of pictures.  Also I don't know why, but I've been taking pictures sideways??  Some of them look good like that, but I don't know why I've been doing it.

A duck in the reflection pond

The window in the temple was opened?  Louis said it was
because the fire of the spirit was so hot

My awesome husband

I loved all the beautiful flowers

Louis' favorite picture of me from the weekend

Cool picture Louis took from across the street

At the new Disney Store-Spiderman!

Rapunzel

Louis made me run up three flights of stairs
so he could take this picture.
Do you see me?

Here's a close-up

Okay those are the last of my pictures from the weekend.  Around 2 we headed into the Conference Center where our family (John, Katie, and Craig) were performing for the institute choir.  I enjoyed it and it made me miss being in a choir like that.  After the performance we took Katie and John out to Crown burger.  Everyone got the crown burger except for me, I didn't know if my stomach would agree to pastrami or not.  Then we headed back home to our baby!  She missed us and was excited to see us.  Even though we had such a great day together, we missed her too!
On Sunday we drove to Ogden to hear John give a talk in my parent's ward and for my birthday dinner.  John did a good job and hadn't even prepared anything!  He even made a special mention of me and my birthday.  Dinner was good, (of course) and dessert was even better!  After dinner everyone just talked and the kids played.  Avery loves other kids!  Especially Tafton, they chased each other around for probably half an hour!  I tried getting a picture of them after they were done chasing each other around and were sitting in a chair together, but by the time I got my camera they had gotten down.  Avery also liked talking to baby Elizabeth, she is so in love with babies, she's going to be a good big sister.  We left a little before 8.  We were the first ones to leave when usually we're the last so that was a little sad that on the day when everyone stays later than usual we still had to leave.  It was a very good birthday and I felt very loved with all of the calls and messages I got from everyone!  Thank you!

Sibling Supper-Fancy Pants Dinner

Now that I've left you all in suspense I'll tell you why Louis was sporting a mustache this weekend.  Every six months Louis and his siblings try to get together for a sibling supper.  I've written about one of them, you can read that post here.  Louis came up with the whole theme for this party.  He even made the invitations.  Aren't they great!

Not the best picture, but deal with it.  If you can't quite read it then I'll tell you that we invited everyone over for a fancy pants black tie sibling supper.  For those who see Louis often you know that he usually has a beard.  Partly because he doesn't like shaving, it tends to irritate his skin, and partly because he just doesn't have time!  His brother Josh has even been calling him Brigham (as in Brigham Young) for a while now.  Obviously he couldn't sport his untamed beard to this fancy party so he shaved for it.  I did not know what he was going to do and then he came downstairs with a mustache.  I may not have been the nicest wife, I gave him a funny look and probably said, "Are you serious?  How long are you keeping that?"  Haha I'm just really not a mustache person and he knows that.  I will say it was fitting for the occasion though.  That's it.  We've spent the last couple of weeks planning for it, and I think everything went pretty smoothly!

Getting things ready

We started out the night chatting while waiting for everyone to arrive.  I took pictures of everyone as they arrived.  First to arrive (besides Kamila because she was there helping set up, she ROCKS!) was

Joshua and Megan

Then came Jakob and Celestial

Then the kids Tifannee, Kamila, and Kaileb

(Sterling was acting in a movie {I'm not joking} and couldn't come) 

(and Phillip of course is on his mission and couldn't make it)

Last to come was Alisha and Jonathon

and here's us!

After everyone arrived Louis invited everyone outside for a little game of croquet, very fancy huh.  He changed it up a little though and played golf rules.  Each wicket (yeah that's what they're called I guess) was a "hole" and we played in two person teams.  I stayed inside to set up for the next activity.  Kamila and Kaileb won and received 3 tickets each.  We gave tickets out for each activity and at the end of the night there were three prizes.

 Kaileb starting out

 Louis taking a whack at it!

Jake and Celestial 

Alisha 

 The winners!

After the game they called me out to get an in-law picture, so here's Megan, Jon, Celestial, and me.

Then everyone came in for appetizers and a blind taste testing.  For appetizers we had baked pita chips and spinach and artichoke dip mmmm!  For the taste testing we had three cups numbered 1-3 filled with Sprite, 7UP and Lemon-Lime soda.  Everyone had to taste them and guess which cup had which soda in it.  Josh won, he got them all right, so he won three tickets.  After the taste testing we had salad provided by Megan.

We then started on dinner.  Chicken Cordon Bleu, (made by Kamila and Louis) mashed potatoes, green beans provided by Celestial, and rolls provided by Alisha.  During dinner we had another little activity.  

Louis announcing the next activity

Louis had gone online and got a bunch of movie quotes.  Each person was given four quotes that they had to use at some point during dinner we were also all given 4 tickets.  If we said our quote and no one caught it then we got to keep our ticket.  If some one noticed your quote, but no one knew which movie it was from them the ticket went back to Louis.  If some one guessed the correct movie then the ticket was given to them.  If you didn't say your quote then the ticket went back to Louis.  There were some funny ones, and there were some that everyone got, and there were some that no one caught!  Even when the person said it 3 or 4 times through out the dinner!

After dinner was finished we took a little break before dessert and played a trivia game.  I had looked online and got a bunch of questions, it was really fun looking them up and I learned a lot of useless stuff!  After the trivia questions were done we served dessert.  Cream Puffs and ice cream (Ice cream provided by Jake).  We thought about making the cream puffs ourselves so over conference weekend we made them to see if we'd be able to.  When I say we it was actually Louis haha I had left in between sessions to get some errands done and so he started it and ended up just doing to whole thing.  They turned out GREAT, but the custard took forever to cook.  So in the end we just bought them.  Here's a picture though of how Louis' homemade ones looked!

Looks yummy doesn't it!  After dessert we just talked and everyone went home around 8:30.  All in all I think it went well and everyone had fun.  Really I should never stress too much about planning a Brandley event, they always make it fun and enjoyable.  Here are a few other pictures of the night.

The table

The place setting.  It's a tux, the fork is the tie
and the collar is actually the name card

The party favors

Oh and the winners of the night were Josh in first place, Alisha in second place, and Kami in third place.

After everyone had left I asked Louis to take some pictures of me.  So here I am at about 16 weeks.

My smile is a little weird, but this one is okay.  Louis realized though that the heart in the back made me look like I had a huge ear!  So we tried again.

He took the picture at 2 instead of 3!

He didn't even count so I wasn't ready at all!

Then finally a good one!  I think I'll stick with using the self timer for my pictures, but thanks Louis!  Love you!