Sibling Supper Birthday Bash

I was in charge of the last semi-annual Brandley birthday bash.  I decided to make it a birthday party for Louis!  His birthday is usually overshadowed a bit by his Grandma's (they share a birthday) or conference.  He was very excited to have a party all for himself!  It turned out great!  We had it on the 4th at our church.  Everyone was able to come except Josh and Megan for obvious reasons.
We started out with dinner.  I let Louis choose what we had.  We enjoyed lasagna, I made a regular pan and a healthier pan made with whole wheat noodles, ground turkey, and mozzarella cheese.  We also had garlic bread on my homemade bread, green beans and corn, and pears.  Everyone enjoyed it.  Avery even ate a green bean.  I didn't even make her do it.

After dinner we had a quiz on Louis.  I think either Joel or Phillip ended up winning.  Then we played pin the beard on the Louis!!  Everyone loved it and it was funny!

My face is CRAZY because Avery got so close to getting it right on!

Annette tricked Louis by moving it up before his turn!  So funny!

After this game we played a candy ball game.  We had taped a bunch of candy up into a huge ball.  When it was your turn you could unwrap it and keep all the candy you got while the person next to you has two dice and was trying to roll a two and a six (because this was Louis' 26th birthday).  When the person next to them got it they had to pass the ball.  This game took forever!  I couldn't believe how long it took, but everyone enjoyed it so it was okay.  

After this we played a game that Alisha and Jon had prepared.  They had different themes such as, top hits of 1987, best selling Christmas toys from 1987 to 1997, all the Superman movies.  With these themes we had to organize them from earliest to oldest.  It was hard!  Louis was the only one that won.  

After that game we did cake!  I made a cookies and cream cake and it turned out super yummy!  

After that we talked and just enjoyed each others company then went home when the man came by to clear out the church for the night!  

I'm so glad I could help Louis celebrate his birthday!  I love his so much and am so grateful that he is mine.  He is such a great support and a wonderful father!  Our children are so happy when he comes from from school or work.  

Happy birthday Louis!

Mary Olivia, You Are One

Mary-

You are one.  These 12 months have gone by too fast.  Soon you will no longer be my baby, but my toddler.

We celebrated your first birthday today.  You had so many family members there to celebrate you.  You have so many people that love you.  We had a breakfast brunch and you enjoyed it.  You scarfed down all your food, you opened your presents, and you scarfed down your cake! 

You are such a joy to have in our home.  You are so sweet and chill.  You love to watch others and take things in.  You are my good eater, our bottomless pit, I appreciate it so much!  You love dogs and climbing.  Whenever we go outside you speed straight to the parking lot.  You go down the slide all by yourself.  You are starting to stand on your own and take a few steps.  You'll be walking in no time!  You know how to fold your arms and can sign more and please.  You can make a lot of animal sounds, dog is your favorite, you also know how to do pig, cow, horse, dinosaur, and fish.  You say dada, hi, and ball.  With a lot of babbling in between.  As I was planning your first birthday it gave me time to reflect on this last year together.  I'm so glad you came to our family.  I was worried about how it would be, but it has been nothing but wonderful.  You and Avery love each other so much!  You have been such a blessing in our home.  I love you Mar Mar!

Love, Mom

Man VS Mud

I did my second 5K on Saturday!  This one was the Man VS Mud.  It was so much fun!  Before it started I was thinking. . ."I don't think I know what I got myself into!"  It was great though, maybe I'll do it again next year!
I did the race with Alisha and my friend Holly.  Holly's tenant Jami also did the race with us.  She was very motivating through the whole thing, I'm glad she was there.
To start out the 5K you slide down this steep slide on a tube.  Then you have to run the tube back up a hill to drop it off for other runners.  After that you run around a bend in the trees and through a very small shower of water.  Then we ran over to something called the cargo net.  You had to climb up a robe ladder then climb over and make your way back down.  Climbing over was terrifying.  It was very wobbly up at the top!  We continued running and encountered our first real mud!  I very carefully walked along the edge of it and everyone else went straight through it and Alisha slipped!
We ran up a hill and they were handing out water.  Then we got to another slide.  This one had a rope to hold onto while you slid down because it was rocky.  The next part was the grossest of the whole race.  It was called the trench.  It was deep nasty muddy water.  It was super long and I was sinking down in mud all the way to my knees at some parts!  I am so thankful I didn't fall in that stinky water!
After this there was more muddiness and a hay bale tower we had to climb over.  So you can imagine how nice it was climbing over hay after being in the mud :)  Then there were tires we had to walk through.  After that we climbed up a slide with a help of a rope and we got to clean our hands at the top!
I can't remember what was between this point and when we got to the spider web.  The spider web was just a bunch of bungee cords creating a maze you had to climb through.  After this was a huge rope stretched across a river and we had to hold on and get ourselves over.  I just held on with my hands and let my feet float.  It wasn't as hard as I was expecting it to be.
The next part was not so great.  It was a very small swimming pool made out of hay bales and a tarp.  They had laid boards over the top and the water was ice water!  FREEZING cold ice water!  That was probably the fastest I moved in the whole race.  After I got out I tried running, but it hurt!  I was tingly from the ice water and it hurt my entire body to run.  It was just a little ways though until we were able to walk through some mud and water and it warmed us back up so I could run again.  We then got to the army crawl.  There were ropes strung low across a shallow stream.  It was hard!  I've never really army crawled before and had to figure out how to do it.  While trying to get across the worker was yelling into a megaphone and said about me, "Why is your hair still blonde?  It should be brown!"  and tried to get Alisha to throw mud at me.  Thankfully she didn't.  Then we went a little ways and climbed through a torturous tunnel.  I say torturous because you had to crawl and there were lots of rocks on the bottom.  After that you just ran basically to the end.  You climb up a hay bale tower and crawl or walk (or I saw one guy roll across) a rope bridge.  Then slide down a slide into muddy water!  I could not believe how fast I was going down that slide!  I didn't get my right eye closed fast enough and got gross muddy water in it.
After we slide down that huge slide you had to run up a huge hill then we were done!  We took some pictures and tried to shower off the best we could.  We all donated our shoes afterwards.  Then headed home.  It was really fun.  I was proud of myself.  I ran the entire time except when we were running through the mud and didn't want to get stuck or slip.  If I can I'll do it again next year!

I wish I had pictures of us doing each obstacle, but here's what I have.  

Before the race

Before going down the last slide

Going across the rope bridge

I'm sorry you were so muddy Holly

I did it!

4 Years

We had such a good trip for our 4 year anniversary last weekend!  I figured it was about time I blog about it!

We went to Idaho Falls.  They have one of my favorite temples and I always have a wonderful time anytime I visit.  We headed up Friday afternoon and came home Sunday night.  Avery and Mary stayed with their Papa and Nana and had a wonderful time.
When we got to our hotel I told them I wanted to be able to see the temple from our room.  They gave us our room and we headed up.  This was our view:

See that tree right there in the middle?  The temple is right behind it.  So we had a BEAUTIFUL view of everything. . .except the temple.  Louis went downstairs and they very nicely changed our room!  

This view was much better!  I was happy!  We had a little balcony off of our room that we loved to go out on to look at the view.  There were always people walking on the trail around the river.  I liked that.
I spent a lot of time on the balcony, or just staring out the window at the temple.  It really is a beautiful place.

That night we met up with Tyler and Amy for dinner.  We were going to go to a Japanese place that they like, but it was closed for reconstruction!  So we went to Outback Steakhouse which neither Louis or I had every been to.  It was tasty and a fun place.  

After dinner we took a little walk across the street.  It was getting dark so we didn't go all the way around, but it was still nice!

Then we went to Walmart to get swimsuits because we didn't bring our own and decided we wanted to sit in the hot tub.  We were surprised to find that they had already taken the swimsuits out of their store!

Saturday morning we woke up at 7.  Super early for a vacation!  Louis and I waned to see who could run a faster mile.  I won.  By 32 seconds, but that's still a win!  After our "race" we went in to have breakfast at the hotel.  Then we checked out some bikes and biked around the river.  Biking was one of my favorite parts of the weekend.

After our bike ride we got into church clothes to go to do sealings at the temple.  We decided to walk and stop by the Gardner's Market on the way.  It was about there when I said to Louis, "This is so nice to be able to just do whatever we want and not have to worry about getting back for naps or anything!"  

Sealings were great!  I really like doing sealings.  The sealer talks to you and I always leave having learned something.  At the beginning of the sealing session the sealer said was telling us what a special day this was for the people we would be doing this ordinance for.  I think he said it was Brigham Young who said this, but he said that these people are allowed to be there for their sealing.  I thought that was nice.  

This water is from the sprinklers outside the church by the temple!

We then walked over to Smitty's for lunch!  Louis' whole family seems to rave about this place and Louis has never been there.  He was excited to try it, but we left quite disappointed.  Louis ordered a Belgium waffle with fresh huckleberries.  The huckleberries cost extra.  They brought out what looked like an oversized eggo waffle with about 10 huckleberries!  In the picture below you can see the disappointment in his face.  I got pancakes with scrambled eggs and bacon.  It was pretty good, but not great.  The service also was not very good.  :(  We got a giant cinnamon roll to go and that was good, so it made up for it a little.

So disappointed

We then went back to our room and I took a nap!  It was great!  And also funny because I had mentioned earlier in the day about how it was nice about not needing to worry about getting back for naps.  After I woke up from my nap we drove to an archery shop that Louis' friend had told him about.  We just walked around for a bit then headed back to our room to get ready for dinner.  We went to Olive Garden because it's delicious and we had a coupon!  They were very busy and so the service wasn't very good.  They forgot to bring out our appetizer and Louis' soup.  We reminded them and then they brought out our appetizer and Louis' soup and our entrees all at once.  We had a lot of food.  We had a fun time together reminiscing about our last four years.  

On Sunday we got up and went to Tyler and Amy's for breakfast then went to their church then back to their house for lunch and a game!  They were so nice and helpful to us the whole weekend.  We headed home around 5:30.  We were very happy to see our kids!  I missed them from the moment they left to go down to Ogden!  

Even though I missed our kids I loved being away with Louis!  It was our very first trip just the two of us.  It was a perfect weekend with my love!  

Dinosaur Week

Last week for preschool was dinosaur week.  We had a really fun time with it!  

On Monday we went to the library and got some books and movies to fit our theme.

That's what we do every Monday for preschool.

On Tuesdays Isaac and Alisha come over to join us for preschool.  This week I set up different stations for us to go through.

Our first station was dinosaur nests!  Before Isaac came over Avery and I went around the yard gathering leaves, sticks, and pine needles to line our nests with.  We talked about dinosaurs and how they make their nests out of mud and then line them to cushion the eggs.  Our dinosaur eggs were actually rocks.

After our nests we came back inside to read books and color.  Then we got to play with dinosaurs and learn their names!

RAWR!

After this Isaac and Alisha headed home with some delicious dinosaur themed treats!

On Wednesday we watched the movies we had checked out from the library 

and Avery looked through the dinosaur books again.

Thursday we made some dinosaurs.  I had paper feet and heads and I made a play dough body and then Avery decorated them.

Friday we were going to find fossils.  I had put the fossils I made into the oven.  You're supposed to do it at 200○ for 2 hours.  Louis didn't know I had put anything in the oven and turned it to broil to make some hamburgers.  I looked over a few minutes later and there was smoke coming out of the oven!  Luckily nothing more than smoke.  Needless to say, the fossils didn't turn out.  So we just took a break on Friday!

It was a fun week!  Avery has fun playing with her dinosaurs!