Farewell to the Colony

I don't believe I have mentioned that we are moving, well I should say have moved. Last weekend we loaded everything up and moved to a new apartment up the road about ten minutes.

We started entertaining the idea of moving last August when we returned home from visiting Utah. When we first moved to our apartment there were 17 other dental student families that lived in our complex. It was heaven!! I felt like it was college all over again, except I was married. Well, each year more and more families graduated but no new families moved in. So each year our numbers went down drastically. I realized that at the end of this school year, because we are the only family in our year, we would be left all alone in this once friend field place. It was a really depressing thought. Anyone who has lived or visited the Colony knows that the only real perk for living here is the friendships.

Anyway so we began to look around. When we got back from Christmas vacation we found an apartment that was offering a HUGE awesome deal and we signed a 14 month lease. We decided that we should move before the baby was born and I'm SOOOO glad we did.

It definitely was bitter-sweet to leave our little home. It spite of all the negative things about the apartment we really truly LOVED living there. It was our first real home together and where we started our family. We made AMAZING friendships that will last forever and created some wonderful life long memories. The Colony for those reasons will always hold a special place in our hearts.

Our new place is WONDERFUL!!! We have lots more space than we did before and the best part is I finally have a washer and dryer and a dishwasher!!! I'll post pictures of our new place as soon as we get it all put together!

A big thanks to everyone who helped us move! Especially Greg's parents who came for 4 days to load and unload us! You guys are the best!

Brinley's two year old update

Now that Brinley is two, I wanted to write a little bit about what she does in this stage of life, mostly for my benefit so I won't forget.

Brinley is very fun and very busy. She has discovered her independence and is running sometimes a little to wild with it. She loves to color and write in notebooks. We are working VERY hard to teach her that she only writes on paper, not things like walls, wood tables, and our leather couch. Yes she drew all over my leather couch last week with a blue pen, still a touchy subject for me so I'll move on. She is SUPER social! Everyday she asks if she can play with friends and go to nursery. When we are at the store she always waves and asks people "how you doing?" Needless to say we make a lot of friends in public.

Her favorite toys right now are her slide, rocking chair, blocks, and baby dolls.
She also is obsessed with Winnie the pooh. She has a little stuffed Pooh bear that we have to take with us where ever we go. She also loves watching him on T.V.

Another thing she is BIG into right now is singing! This girl sings all day long. Her usual songs include popcorn popping, rock a by baby, the Winnie the pooh theme song, five little monkeys, and as of late the song "popular" from wicked. Last week our primary had a talent show so we took Brinley to it and one of the older girls sang "popular" from wicked. Brinley had never listened to the song before, but she was glued while the girl sang it. After the show and we were home, I was putting her to bed. Usually I sing her church songs before she goes to sleep, but when I started singing "I love to see the temple" she stopped me and said "I don't want church songs, I want popular song." So everyday since then we listen to popular at least five times a day.

A few other random things she does that I want to remember is she has become a major negotiator. Whenever I tell her it's time to leave somewhere she looks at me and says "only 5 more minutes." Or if she wants a treat she'll say "I just want one, just one." After I give it to her she comes back two minutes later and says "only one more mom, only one!" If I go in a room to check on her and she is doing something that she knows she's not suppose to do, she says to me "Go Mom Go, go out of the room." I guess she thinks she'll get away with it if I'm not there.

I honestly don't know what Greg and I did before we had this little monkey. She keeps us on our toes like most toddlers do, but we sure love her and love watching her personality develop.

This was the first time she ever fell asleep in a random part of our house. The only place she has ever fallen asleep is her bed or the car.


Here she is singing.


Here she is building one of her tall tall towers.


Eating a cupcake at her birthday party.


Rocking in her new rocking chair.

Happy 2nd Birthday Brinley!!!

Today my little girl turned two! I can't believe it! I know that's what all Mom's say but I really can't believe how fast the time goes. She had a great day filled with lots of birthday fun. This morning she got to go to one of her favorite places, nursery! Then we came home from church, ate dinner, and then Greg took Brinley to the park while I got stuff ready for her party.

We had a small birthday party with our dental student family. Brinley had a great time playing with her little friends, eating cupcakes, and opening presents. She got a lot of darling clothes, an Amish rocking chair and a slide!! I'm trying to download the the rest of the pictures but my computer is being dumb so I 'll so upload them later. Until then......Happy Birthday Brinley, we love you more than you'll ever know!!!!

A pick me up

The past year and a half I've been growing out my hair. I hadn't had long hair since I was a Jr. in high school and I thought that I would give it a try again. Well, it has been what you would describe as long hair for about 3 months now and I can probably count on two hands how many times I've actually styled it. Normally, I get out of the shower and when I think about how long it's going to take to blow dry it, I decide it's not worth it and up in a pony tail it goes!
So, about a month ago I started entertaining the idea of cutting it. Then I started thinking even more drastically about just dying my hair back to its natural color, which is brown, and stop the hassle of highlighting it every 2-3 months. It took me a long time to make the call to my hairdresser but I finally did and this is how it turned out!!!


Before





After

Where is a Grandma when you need one?

Today has been one of "those" days where if I lived near my Mom or Greg's Mom I would have called them and said, "Please come and get your granddaughter, she and I are getting on each others nerves like you wouldn't believe and we both need a break from each other. How about a nice sleepover with your little love bug?" To which they both would have been tickled pink, stopped whatever they were doing to come to both, mine and Brinley's rescue. Don't get me wrong, I love being with Brinley most the time, but when you are with someone 24/7 with no break or anytime to miss them, you start getting upset at silly little things that don't even matter. I really feel the worst for Brinley. I'm so tired and unmotivated lately because of being pregnant and uncomfortable that I just don't have the energy or creativity to play or take her out places. We stay inside a lot and there are only so many things you can do inside before getting really bored!! So to my little love bug, I'm sorry that you have to endure these last weeks of pregnancy with me. Hopefully things will get better soon and maybe one day, just maybe, we'll live closer to a Grandma.

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day! We had a great day. Greg woke up early and made Brinley and me breakfast and I made a special Valentines dinner. Greg gave Brinley some balloons and a little stuffed Dog and she played with them all day long. Brinley LOVES balloons and really wanted to take them to church today, but we compromised and let her take the little dog instead. After dinner Brinley and I made rice krispy treats and took them around to her little friends. She had a lot of fun and so did we! Hope all of you had a great day also!

Snowed In

This past weekend we got hit with a major snow storm. It started snowing Friday evening and didn't stop until about 12 on Saturday. Overall we got about 17 inches and that was a small amount compared to other places like D.C and Maryland who got like 30. CRAZY! On Friday afternoon Greg got home from school early and knowing that we wouldn't be going anywhere all weekend we went to the Grocery store to get some stuff before the snow started falling. Everyone else must of had the same idea because the place was packed!

Brinley had a BLAST playing in the snow! Because it rarely snows here, we don't have a lot of snow stuff for her. She went out in Levi's, some knitted mittens, and some very non water proof boots. The snow came up to her waist! I still can't believe she stayed outside for almost an hour. She was soaking wet when she came in and her legs and face were bright red. It was a really fun weekend. We ate a lot of really yummy food, played games, and just hung out and did nothing!






Here was Brinley trying to make a snow angel. As you can see with snow this deep it just covered her!


After she got inside she said "I put my blankie around my legs." So she grabbed her blanket, sat in her chair and watched some shows for the next while trying to get warmed up.


This was me most the weekend. Just sittin' around doing nothing. It was lovely!