Family Store

Growing up, we had a "Family Store" where my parents subsidized the cost of little toys and my siblings and I could do extra jobs and save up money for items we wanted....or if we memorized 10 piano songs or something?? I can't remember the specifics, but I just remember it was pretty cool and I loved it as a child. 

I thought it would be fun to start something like this with Brynlee. So far it has been a big hit and Bryn has been doing jobs all day to earn coins for our "Family Store". (I am using fake coins with her). She has a list of jobs she can choose from - things like making her bed on her own, setting the dinner table, cleaning up her toy room, helping make dinner, etc - and after each job she gets one coin to put in her little money jar. Our prizes in the family store are things like a coloring book, sidewalk chalk, new watercolor paints, a book, etc.

 One of the jobs is getting herself ready on her own (putting away pajamas, putting on clothes, and brushing her teeth). One morning last week I was in a hurry and asked Bryn if she wanted to earn a coin by getting herself ready to go. My plan backfired when cute Bryn came down looking like a tourist and I had to spend 10 minutes convincing her to save this classy outfit for a day when it wasn't snowing outside :)

Another job she loves is setting the table. She started out using our regular dishes and putting them in the right spot, but each night she has gotten a little more creative with what dishes she uses and how she arranges them :)

One night last week she even made place cards for each spot. She was pretending we were all Charlotte's web characters that night, so Josh got the place card with "Templeton"on it....you know, that creepy rat who eats all the junk food at the fair? Ha ha!

I love, love, love having a cute 4-year old daughter as my little helper all day!

Artsy Afternoon

Today we put Mya down for her nap, then turned our dining room into an art studio! I haven't done any large-scale paintings lately because of the mess and our lack of space. And when I have painted, I've been doing mostly watercolors because the fumes of oil painting worries me with my children around. But I finally pulled out my acrylics last week and committed to paint something...anything!...before I get completely rusty.

 I'm painting over an old painting of mine that I got sick of and so far I think I've just made it worse! Ha! In about an hour it went from an weird looking abstract painting to a weird looking landscape painting. Clearly it has a long way to go, but eventually the painting will depict one of my favorite views in our neighborhood...(on the trail from Sachem Village to Boston Lot Lake).

Hopefully someday I'll have a nice studio to paint in, but I have a feeling there will be many years of painting on the dining room floor before we have the space for an actual studio! And I am totally okay with that because Bryn and I have a pretty good time painting and chatting, cross-legged on the floor.

Google

It's been a really busy few months with internship research, applications, interviews, networking, calls, emails, more calls, more emails....just trying to secure a good summer internship for Josh. 

Google had been Josh's top internship choice from even before he got to Dartmouth, and he was thrilled to find out today that he got a summer internship with Google in their New York City office!

I didn't realize how tricky the internship process is for MBA students. The offers all come in at different times and they usually expire within 1-2 weeks, so it's kind of a gamble because you have to accept or decline the early offers without knowing what will happen with the later offers. It was definitely a stressful few weeks as we sorted through a few different offers, hoping things would work out. We finally got an offer from Google today, just a few hours before our last remaining offer expired, so it was a bit stressful! We're really feeling grateful that things worked out with the timing of everything and that we ended up with an internship that we're really excited about. It's tough to try to figure out which job/location will be best for our family, but we feel really good about this Google opportunity and we'll see what it leads to down the road. Josh has worked so hard these last few months and I'm really proud of him! 

February Happenings

February is over and we are one more month closer to spring and warm weather! :)

It's been a pretty cold, wet month and we've spent a lot of time indoors, but we've tried to keep ourselves busy with fun things...

 Tea parties with friends

 Bryn and I aren't good at building real snowmen, but Bryn is pretty proficient at making snowmen from things from the craft box. 

 I love these three buddies! 

We had a fun Valentine's date with some of our church friends in the clubhouse.

 We got out the Easter box right after Valentine's was over and Bryn loves getting into character as the Easter Bunny and hopping around the house hiding eggs for us to find. 

 Mya is just cute.

 And she's even cuter sitting on her dad's lap!

 As much as I'm anxious for spring, I must admit there's something beautiful about looking out to a winter wonderland every day. And I'm kind of a home-body anyway, so I guess all these days cooped up inside aren't that bad :)

8 Months

 This cute girl hit her 8-month mark today! I love this stage and I'm getting such a kick out of her little personality that is starting to come through. She's smiley and sweet, but she's is more quiet and cuddly than Bryn was. She has just started being a little clingy to her mama and apprehensive about being held by my friends, so we've got to get her over that fear :)

 This month she got her first two teeth on the bottom, which made for a few cranky days! Another highlight is that Mya finally stopped spitting up, so we've had a lot less laundry to do. (She never spit up as much as Bryn, but we still had to keep a burp cloth by her at all times!) Mya eats at 7 am, 11:30 am, 4 pm, and 7:30 pm and has baby food at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I had a bad case of mastitis this month (well, is there such thing as a good case of mastitis??) and it kind of threw off Mya's nursing. We're still trying to get back to normal, but I might have to supplement with formula. (I've never ever used formula before....any suggestions on brands/types?)

Mya is getting more curious, but she's still not really mobile. At this age Bryn was crawling, pulling herself up to things, sitting herself up, and a little more mischievous with ripping things or putting everything in her mouth. That's not Mya! She will sit in one spot for over an hour just playing with the toys or books next to her. When she's on her stomach she rolls around and scoots herself backwards or in a circle, but she really doesn't seem too anxious to be mobile. She is getting a bit better and standing and can stand up on her own if she's holding on to the couch or an ottoman or something.

Bryn and Mya at 8 months

Hair

Like any girl, Mya likes to play around with different hairstyles every few months.

She began with a thick, brown fohawk and was instantly nicknamed the little "Hedgehog".

Then a few months later she tried out the hair-less look and we referred to her as "Baldie".

She's currently sporting an awesome blonde, fluffy head of hair that always sticks straight up, and she is now known as "Fluffy" or "The Fuzz". 

There was also that awkward stage where she had wispy, blonde fuzz in front with the stringy, dark patch in back. Or the phase where she was totally bald except for one alfalfa patch right on top.

We all have our bad hair days, right? 

Sundays

We we have church in the mornings now and I am loving the quiet Sunday afternoons we have now. Bryn is usually a little protective of this bucket of stuffed animals, but today she brought it out for Mya and of course Mya went nuts emptying the bucket and playing with them.

 Bryn thinks it's hilarious to put Mya's diaper covers on her head like a beret and Mya doesn't seem to mind. If big sis thinks it's cool, then it is cool.

It's going to be a busy week with internship things, so today was the calm before the storm and we just soaked it in. In the next few days we will (A) have to accept or decline an offer from "Company A", (B) hear back from "Company B" with hopefully an even better offer, and (C) have a big interview with "Company C" that is probably our top choice. Yikes! I always just want to fast forward things and know exactly how things are going to work out and where we'll be headed next, but we'll just have to wait and see! 

Anyway, the point of this email wasn't internships. It was to show how cute Mya looks with diaper cover on her head :)

Heart Attacks

 For the last week Bryn and I have been cutting out hearts every afternoon and writing little notes to all our neighborhood friends. Today we finally finished all the hearts and as soon as Josh got home we bundled up and covered our friend's doors with "heart attacks". She thought it was so sneaky and fun. 

Can you tell by the pictures how proud Bryn was of her work?? Her little cheesy smiles were killing me. It looks like she's trying to be silly, but she was actually just genuinely pleased with all the heart-covered doors. 

We got caught at 6 of the 8 doors we decorated, but that almost made it even better for Bryn because she could run off giggling.

Holidays are so fun with this little girl!

Girl Time, Part 2

Josh left Thursday morning for an interview in New Jersey. And then he never came home! And he may never make it back?? This "storm of historic proportions" didn't seem too crazy, but it did throw a bit of a kink into Josh's travel plans. The airports back here are still struggling to get back in business, so we're just hoping he makes it home by Easter. Fingers crossed. 

(Actually, he's hoping to catch a flight home tomorrow, but I keep getting the fake-out with cancelled flights, so I'm telling myself Easter).

I guess "Girl Time" is kind of the theme around here lately, but we know how to do girl time.

Matching outfits, dance parties, Taylor Swift sing-alongs, reading time in mama's bed, cuddles on the couch, treats, treats, more treats....you can't go wrong with that line-up.

 Eeek! This girl! 

I couldn't love her more.

P.S. Turns out, Bryn and Mya both love the same "Colors" book at 7 months. And they even look a little bit similar reading it. Blue eyes, chubby cheeks, low necklines, etc. Definitely siblings, right? Both cute as can be, if you ask me :)

This Week

It's been a great week...

  We walked to the beach and made sand castles with friends

We packed lunches and headed down to the pier to watch the surfers

We went to the beach again

We played at the park daily

 Okay, just one last beach day

 And we went to Disneyland and rode the Bugs Life rides again and again until we were sick.

.....

Wait a minute. That was last February! Oops!

This chilly New Hampshire winter is really making me long for our sunny winter days in Huntington Beach! We had it good! There's supposedly another big "Nor'Easter" blizzard headed our way tomorrow and I'm hoping it's not too wild because Josh is gone interviewing until Saturday afternoon (if his flight isn't delayed). The internship options in California are sounding better and better right now :)

P.S. New Hampshire, I really do love you, but not in February.

Tueller Family Pictures

While we were in Utah we had our pictures taken with my whole Tueller family. We were hoping to do them outside on the steps of the Maeser building at BYU, but it was a huge blizzard that day, so we had to move the pictures indoors. We hadn't taken Tueller family pictures in years, but most of the out-of-state family members all happened to be in Utah for Christmas so we jumped at the chance to take some pictures. 

This is everyone! 

My cousin Brittany was the only one who wasn't in Utah for Christmas, but her family made it into the picture with a little help from photo shop :)

My cute grandparents

 My mom's immediate family

 All my Tueller cousins

The Tueller great-grandchildren (minus Brit's two daughters)

My fam

Bryn had obviously had it with the pictures at this point!

Our little fam

 Devin, Marie, and 2-week-old Braden

(How amazing does Rie look 2 weeks after labor!!?)

 Jae and Amy

Jordan and Logan

There's nothing that brings two brothers together like a good photo session! :)

 Mom and Dad

Thanks to Jylare Smith for the fun pictures! 

Girl Time

Josh has been out of town the last two days, so we've had some fun girl time!

Josh will have an out-of-state internship somewhere this summer and chances are the girls and I will stay here in New Hampshire while he's away. So this week was a tiny little trial run of how it will be this summer. We've had a lot of fun! And we've also had lots of not-so-fun! Come home Josh! 

The fun turned not-fun when I made the mistake of feeding Mya baby food prunes. And that's a mistake I'll only make once.... I'm not sure why I thought that would be a good idea. Josh wasn't here to stop me.

I don't need to elaborate, but nothing puts me in a better mood than scrubbing out soiled outfit after outfit and changing soiled diaper after diaper. 

Tip #1 from this trial run of surviving without Josh: no prunes.

Okay enough about prunes. Let's talk about duplos. I could play duplos with Bryn all day every day. Our favorite thing is to build houses for her Toy Story characters. And today we went all out and even made very fancy felt beds for everyone. This was probably one of the highlights of Bryn's life thus far. Now I'm scouring ebay for a good deal on duplo sets because Bryn and I have great plans for what we could do with this Toy Story house if we only had the duplo blocks for it. In the meantime we'll just keep daydreaming about all the towers, and stairs, and balconies, and three car garages we'll be able to build someday.

 While Josh has been gone we've made lots of "girl meals" and twice-daily spinach and kale smoothies (HERE is our favorite recipe. Yum!) And the rule about eating (drinking) kale is that it cancels out any Valentine's candy you eat that day. Right?

 This girl loves to bake! And eat! She is her mother's child.

We usually have a rule of no reading at the dinner table, but it was a girls night so we let Mya off the hook this time. 

I'm not crazy about dressing my girls exactly matching, but Bryn happens to have the exact opposite view on this issue. She lives for it. It is a real battle to get her into an outfit that doesn't coordinate with what Mya is wearing. 

Basically, I love these two girls and I miss Josh.

Trial run #2 will be next week when Josh takes off for more interviews in New Jersey. I guess we are in the thick of "recruiting season". Kind of exciting, kind of really, really scary and nerve-racking. We'll see how things pan out. Yikes!