A Halloween Baby Shower...

This year for our annual Halloween party- we added a twist. We started the night with a baby shower. Usually we all show up in our costumes but since we were starting the evening off with the shower our plan was to change later on.

Apparently the "parents soon to be" missed the memo...

Let's just hope their little guy doesn't think his daddy is crazy when he sees pictures from that baby shower someday...

Actually, his daddy always has the best costumes. This year was no different. That baby is one lucky kid to have a dad like Chris.

As soon as the shower ended, we all ran off to do our part to make Chris fit in a little bit better. As usual, there were some pretty funny costumes. 

(although I did take most of the pictures that follow, I did take the collages from my mom's blog. Thanks mom for doing all the work for me!)

 Brooklyn was terrified of Chris (the Mad Hatter)... she would have NOTHING to do with him. Hence, she is not in this picture. Wouldn't you know though, that as I go through all the pictures she keeps telling me she wants to see Chris. :)

 Most of the crew. We are missing a few children who were running around but I think it's most of the adults. Minus my dad, who took the picture.

 Karl as Me- and Me as Karl... real creative, I know.

Yes, Karl is actually wearing my pants. They are maternity pants, but they are still mine.

 This is my mom, her sisters and their Aunt Mardene. I love these ladies.

 This is a picture of my dad, who happened to make his way out of most of the pictures... but I still caught him. :)

 Sweet little Aubrey and my cousin Joanna's daughter Zoey. They are only a few weeks apart. Aren't they cute?

It was a fun party, with lots of good food and wonderful company. Thanks everyone for joining in the fun.
Oh and
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Birthday Celebrations...

The best part of having a big family... that don't live in the same town... is you get to have at least TWO birthday parties every year.

Brooklyn had a wonderful birthday this year. She was spoiled rotten. And loved every minute of it.

Let me tell you about her two parties this year with pictures.

Party Number One: Karl's family

When we asked Brookie what she wanted for her birthday dinner all she would tell us was that she wanted cupcakes.

SO cupcakes she got.

Nana even let her do all the decorating of the cupcakes too.

 I think she enjoyed herself :)

 She thought they tasted pretty great too. I think she even ate 2...

 Little Miss Aubs

 Brooklyn got LOTS of wonderful gifts... but every time we told her to show mommy so I could take a picture she turned right to Aunt Lacey. So most of my pictures look like this.

 I think some of her favorite gifts from the night though, were her singing birthday cards. Oh what joy they have, and continue to bring to this little lady.

Party Number two: My family

Since I loved how adorable Brookie looked in her halloween costume, I decided to plan her party around it.

And that we did.

(the date and time of this invite were actually incorrect but you get the idea...)

 Everything we served was colored a different color of the rainbow. We ate Hawaiian Haystacks, complete with Purple rice and Blue chicken. :) A little unappetizing but super cool anyway.

 We also served Magic Water that turned a different color when you added water to the cup. I was really excited about how this one turned out, but forgot to take any pictures...

This little lady was yet again, spoiled rotten. The girls have both loved all of her new toys. Pretty much one of her new toys is always in their hands.

Since all she wanted for her birthday was cupcakes, we thought it was appropriate that she got a few cupcakes that would last longer than it took to eat them...

-The cupcake memory game-

(since she also LOVES playing games)

-And cupcake pajama's-

 The cake was also one of those super colorful rainbow cakes but yet again... I forgot to pull my camera out once the cake got cut.

 Thank you to our family for all the wonderful presents and for making this the best birthday ever! 

Oh and PS... I don't know how but somehow Karl managed to put this outfit on Aubrey for the party. Would you believe he managed to put her onesie on backwards? Personally I think that is pure talent. He told me later that he was wondering why he had to lay her on her stomach to button it up...

Recognition...

I still have a few birthday posts to put up for Miss Brooklyn, but I wanted to take a moment to "gush" (I stole this one from you Joanna) about my husband for a minute. 

While at an office meeting this morning Karl was given the Quarterly Recognition Award for the Valley West Office. (Which is really in West Valley but they call it Valley West... I think that's kind of weird myself :) I personally think this is pretty impressive considering he has only been working there for just over a quarter of the year. But him receiving this award really does not surprise me because he was pretty much born to do this job. He loves what he does and he loves that he actually gets to help the people he works with. Anyway, they wrote up this little letter explaining why they nominated Karl for this recognition.

Valley West DRS

Quarterly Recognition award

VR Counselor

I want to take the time to recognize the motivation and effort of this individual. This individual has only been with VR for a short period of time, but he has demonstrated his ability to not only grasp the concept of the basic job functions, but he is also demonstrating his ability to work independently. Within the first three months with the agency, he was chosen as the individual to take over our satellite office in Tooele.

            In his time there, he has reached out to community partners and developed several relationships that have lead to a number of new referral sources. He is working closely with the staff in the Valley West office to learn his role as a transition counselor in Tooele. All of the feedback from the established and new community partners has been positive.

            Karl is willing to pull up his sleeves and get the work done. He has a lot of positive energy, has done outreach as he is building relationships in the Tooele community and gives 110% effort to make things work in the best interest of the client. We’re glad to have him as part of our office!

            Thank you Karl, we appreciate the time and effort you put in to your job. You model the way we should all approach our jobs. You are always bright eyed and bushy tailed when you come to work.

Third Quarter 2011

Not only is this highly complementary, he was also given an extra paid day off- who can complain about that?

Way to go Honey. I am so proud of all that you do.

Love you!

Birthday photo shoot...

Our little Brookie is finally two! (She's been telling people she was two for about the last 6 months... and so have I) More on the actual birthday celebrations later, but per tradition, we had to go out for our annual birthday photo shoot.

Since Maddie was out of town, Brooklyn had the camera completely to herself and she LOVED it. I think we got some great pictures. Here are a few of my favorites.

 This is how Brooklyn walked from place to place the first part of our photo shoot. 

...Until she found these leaves. She carried the same leaf around with her for the rest of our photo shoot.

 I think this is one of my favorites... I love the lighting and the completely innocent look she has going on.

A long weekend with daddy...

Karl had to take some time off this weekend so we get to enjoy a 4 day weekend with our family. Anyway, these pictures don't really have to do with Daddy, but they've all taken place the last few days so I guess it works. :) Really this post should be separated into 3 different posts but we've got so many more things to go that I just want to get them all up now... so here are a million pictures for you.

I saw an idea on pinterest the other day of taking pictures of your daughter in your wedding dress to display at her wedding. I thought it looked fun, so we decided to try it. (I think we are going to try again another day when we can go outside to take the pictures but it was still fun anyway)

Maddie

 Brookie

 Aubrey :)

 Since Brooklyn's birthday is this Sunday, (yeah, I know, I can't believe she is almost 2 either!) we decided to go shopping at ToysRus for her gifts. Maddie and Brooklyn were being their usual talkative selves when they made friends with am employee. Maddie told her it was almost Brooklyn's birthday. A few minutes later the girl came back out with this birthday crown and a sucker for her and then they sang Happy Birthday to her over the speakers. I was so impressed! What a fun little surprise.

 She also got a cool balloon too.

 This picture just makes me laugh because it shows how silly Brookie is...

 Maddie got to go on a special vacation this weekend with her Nana and Pop pop. They were going to St. George to see the Little Mermaid at Tuacan and had an extra ticket so Mads got to go. She was so excited to go on a special trip all by herself. It was kind of hard on Brooklyn when Maddie left. Not only did she not get to go with Pop pop, her best friend was leaving her and she didn't have anyone to play with. Maddie has been gone since yesterday but Brooklyn still occasionally walks around the house saying "where'd Maddie go?" She pretty much broke my heart having to watch her yesterday... So we decided to do something fun with her tonight. So we went to The Old Spaghetti Factory. I think Brookie's favorite part though was walking across the bridge and getting to JUMP on the cars. And boy can this girl jump. Look at her pig tails flying in the air. :)

Wow, sorry. I told you this was going to be long. Congrats for making it to the end... Don't feel bad if you didn't. :)