Two Years

This precious babe was born two years ago today. I'm so humbled and grateful to be Brynlee's mother. I love her more each day, and I am so grateful that she's my little buddy. What a joy she is in our lives!

Birthday Party pictures to come!

Bryn

Two favorite moments of the day:

(1) Bryn's song and dance performance on the bench

(2) Bryn insisting on watching her movie through goggles

Love her.

Cutest Thing Ever

Brynlee made this little manger in Nursery yesterday, and Josh and I cannot stop laughing at the little peanut playing the role of baby Jesus. So great!

Score!

Today while Bryn was at playgroup I went to a used book sale that is usually too crazy to try out with Bryn squirming around. But today I took my time, looked through all the mostly-strange books, and ended up with 14 great ones for under six bucks total. Some of these are favorite books from my childhood, so I was excited. And now Bryn's spent the last hour reading them over and over. Hooray for cheap books!

Snowflakes

One of my very favorite Christmas activities is cutting paper snowflakes. I loved doing it with my siblings as a child, and now I convince Josh to do it with me. This year we made lots of little tiny snowflakes and strung them on fishing line as garland. The snowflakes are a little out of place since it's been so warm lately, but oh well! I'm still getting used to Christmas in California....without snow!

Cowboy Christmas

Our friends, the Haights, put on the best ward Christmas party this past weekend. It was a cowboy theme, and they spent ALL DAY making the most delicious Brisket I've ever tasted. (Which actually means nothing since it was my first time having brisket. But it was seriously amazing.)

The primary kids sang and did the Nativity Scene and it was so cute! I can't wait til Bryn is up there as a sheep or something.

Yay for fun ward parties!

Biscuits

I thought Bryn and I would have a little bonding time in the kitchen this week. After watching me roll out and cut biscuits, Bryn took over with the last little bit of dough. She rolled out the dough and started cutting mini biscuit circles, but then thought "Why wait for the biscuits, if I could just eat the dough now?"

Scanning the kitchen for more dough.

Bryn is definitely an instant gratification gal. We need a little lesson on waiting.

(Note: The biscuit dough did not contain raw eggs and no toddlers were harmed in this activity).

Felt Number Flashcards

Earlier this year I made Bryn some felt flashcards with simple pictures on them, but I wanted to do a new set with letters or numbers. (Naturally, I went with numbers because it took less time than it doing 26 letters). I made two of each numbers because we use the flashcards for matching games. And I made the colors coordinate with the picture flashcards I had made earlier. We use the cards to play "Memory", or we just lay all the cards on the ground and Bryn finds the matches. Bryn's favorite thing to do with them is stacking them in tower, which wasn't my intention for the cards, but if it keeps her busy I'm all for it. I love simple projects that keep Bryn entertained for a long time! And this is definitely one of those projects!

Tower

Bryn makes this same play-doh tower over and over every day. And every time she says "Wow! You make that big tower, Brynlee? Good job Brynlee!" Then she laughs, knocks it over, makes it again, and congratulates herself again. And again and again.

Bryn's Quilt

I just finished a quilt! Which is a big deal since I'm definitely not a quilter. I sewed a patchwork quilt years ago and tied it with yarn (you know the kind I mean?), but I'd never done this type of quilt before. I couldn't find a good striped material that I liked, so I sewed strips of blue and green together to make the top layer, and then the bottom is just a solid piece. For the "quilting part" I just connected the layers together with straight lines every three stripes. It was a fun project. It's 44" x 60" so it will be Brynlee's quilt for her toddler bed. I thought she'd need a toddler bed sooner, so I started on this quilt months ago. But now it might be a while before she switches to a toddler bed, so the quilt will just sit in a box. Yadda yadda yadda, too much information. But hooray for quilts!

Fun Weekend

My brother Jae spent the Thanksgiving weekend with us and it was such a great time! I love my siblings! In the past Bryn took a little while to warm up to my siblings since she only sees them 2-3 times a year. But Bryn and Jae are regular Skype buddies now, so she was silly and comfortable with him right off. She loved reading with him, coloring, dancing, and getting all wound up and silly with him. We also spent time with my Uncle Mark this weekend, which Bryn always LOVES. This is Mark and Bryn enjoying Thanksgiving left-overs. They're good buddies. On Saturday we went to one of our favorite places: Dana Point. We walked the trail that leads to the Ritz. It has such a nice grassy area above the beach. We read books, colored with Bryn, threw around a football, and took naps. It's such a beautiful place to hang out. Bryn and Josh The best part of cooking a turkey is using leftover turkey for a pot pie! Bryn's pride and joy is our little Christmas tree. She plays by it all day and says "We really love this Christmas tree!" about 100 times a day. One final, blurry picture before Jae took off. THANKS JAE for coming to visit! Today at about 5 pm Bryn paused and said "Jae at work?...... Jae come home now a Mom and Bryn?" Luckily, she'll see him in a month!

Christmas Season!

We got out our thin, little Charlie Brown Christmas tree this weekend, and Bryn was in heaven decorating it with ornaments and also random toys and things she found throughout the house. It's been a constant project as things have been added and removed all day long. These pictures show a pretty normal tree, but I should have taken the pictures when the tree was covered in play dough cups, plastic animals, strings, papers, and lots of other random things.

Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving at our apartment today and it was such a great day. We had two guests this year: my brother Jae who drove down from San Fransisco, and my uncle Mark who lives here in Huntington Beach. Bryn was napping when we ate, but she enjoyed a big meal when she woke up. When Bryn came out and saw Jae and Mark here, she immediately ran back to her room and came back with hats for everyone. She insisted that we each wear the one she picked out for us. She was loving all the attention from Mark and Jae, spending most the day running circles around our front room and trying to make us laugh.

Thanksgiving Party

We had a little Thanksgiving Party today for Brynlee's little playgroup. I'd learned from past playgroup days that these girls don't like wearing headbands, so instead of indian headbands I made some simple indian feather clips.

I saw a cute idea in Family Fun magazine of making a felt cornucopia, so I made three simple versions of it for the girls to play with. The girls had fun filling and emptying the cornucopias, and finding the matches of each vegetable/fruit. I asked the girls what they were thankful for (or what they loved) and these were what each of them said. I thought their answers were cute. I don't have good pictures of this, but we used some very authentic beads to make indian necklaces. Eating popcorn, with their new necklaces Coloring time. I replaced the crayons with fruit snacks to send home with the girls, with the little things they had made.

It was so fun to have an excuse to make some Thanksgiving crafts!