Brighty's Third Birthday

I can't believe little Bright Bright is 3! How did this happen so quickly? The thing that sticks out in my mind about Bright right now is that she is a VERY grateful child. I decided to count today to see how many times a day she says "thank you" and she was at preschool this morning so from the hours of 1-4 pm she's said "thank you" about 15 times. She says it ALL the time and she is so sweet. We've been really lucky that we don't have many problems with her. Sure, when she doesn't get enough sleep we pay the price because she gets whiny and can throw the occasional tantrum, but she really didn't have bad "terrible two's" I don't think. She's usually just a happy, imaginative girl. She just makes up little games all day and talks to her "friends" all day (stuffed animals, dolls, wooden spoons, whatever)... she loves to color, play play-doh, dress-up and mostly make-believe. We're constantly playing "You be the (blank) and I be the (blank). She's the mommy and I'm the little "grill" or she's the princess and I'm the evil queen or she's Nanny (her preschool teacher) and I'm Brighton, etc. At her birthday party at my parent's house over Christmas break before she opened any present she would ask who it was from. Then she'd get this very excited face and put down the present and run and give them a hug and a kiss and say thank you. She did this before every single present. It was hilarious. At her first ever "friend" party she wanted to make puppets, so I found some easy foam puppets at Walmart. Then we played pin the tail on the donkey and duck duck goose and freeze dance and then decorated and ate cupcakes! It was very fun. I'm so excited to have this next baby but also a little sad that our Brighton and mommy alone time is coming to an end. I think the bond I have with her will always be special because of all this time we've had by ourselves every day just the two of us. (weep, weep, wail, wail, gnash teeth.. ok it's not THAT dramatic.) I love you Budah-bear. (She hates when I call her that.) But she calls me Booger and Brooke, so it's fair game.

Christmas!

Christmas felt really different this year! We had to stay home because Aaron was on call at work, so we just did our own little family thing. We did fondue Christmas Eve which is a Hale tradition and then we made a gingerbread house and opened PJ's from Nana, read a book from Nana and watched "The Grinch". Christmas morning we just spent it opening presents and playing with new toys! Then the next night we headed to Island Park to be with my family. It was all wonderful!

Aaron's seafood fondue.

Santa's setup.

Remembering Decmeber... in pictures

I recently told someone about how I was working like 4 very part time jobs, three of them freelance writing. They said, "No wonder you never have time to write on your own blog!" So very true. I have things I want to write about but never the time! But I have 25 minutes until I pick Brighty up from preschool so I'll post some pics and commentary.

Brighton is so imaginative! She comes up with the most random things. Notice how there is a piece of styrophome she lovingly put in her backpack and she's holding a wooden spoon she referred to as "Buddy" that day. She loaded up all her priceless items in her shopping cart and then wanted me to pull them all around. Also, it's not rare that she's not wearing any pants, LOL.

Since we don't have a truck or big SUV, we got a Christmas tree still bundled up and took our chances on what it would look like. When we got it open it was a mess! We had to cut off all these huge random branches and then the thing would NOT stay standing up. It was the poor, leaning Christmas tree all year. We had to shove water bottles in the stand to keep it from falling over

We were at the mall for something and noticed Santa Claus was there. It was a weekday and no one was in line, so I took Brighton to see him. She was so scared the last two years she said "I'm going to be a big girl this year and I won't be shy of Santa Claus." and she wasn't! She sat on his lap and told him she wanted a race car, which was really random, and a guitar with pink sprinkles. Santa gave me a weird look and I just shrugged.




You can see where Brighton gets her imagination! Aaron made this little fort out of work boxes!

So since Brighton "wasn't shy of Santa" at the mall, I thought she'd do great at the ward party, so I dressed her up all cute for pictures and then she wouldn't leave my arms! She had a serious death grip on me but told him she wanted a doll house.

Dancing with daddy at the party to "Two Pants Suit" our famous ward rock band! :)


Dancing with cutie Owen.

CHOCOLATE!

Two chocolate related items.
Today Brighton walks out of my closet with a sheepish grin and says "I didn't eat anything." I said "What didn't you eat?" " I didn't eat the chocolate from Jesus." She had destroyed our advent calendar and eaten all the chocolate. But these pictures are from the brownie batter I gave her. :)

It's a Boy!

Yeah, sorry that the only picture Aaron scanned is of his "proof" of gender. LOL. Anyway, Weird! We're having a boy! It's still hard to get used to the idea that all my cute girl clothes and things aren't going to get re-used (at least this time around) but it's going to be a fun change! We had the ultrasound yesterday and the second the bottom-area came up on the screen we KNEW it was a boy, LOL. Today the doctor said, "you're obviously having a boy!" I've thought we were going to have a boy next since before we conceived and at 12 weeks the ultrasound nurse said she thought it would be a boy, so it wasn't a big shock.

Brighton did a little pout when we said it was a boy but she's still convinced that "maybe it's a girl." I tried to explain boy and girl anatomy but there's only so much a 2 year old can understand. :) She is also CONVINCED that the baby will be named Jokala. pronounced like Joke a lot but without the T. She came up with this name before we even conceived and she gets full-0n angry when we talk about names. She says "NO! My baby is Jokala!!!" So now we just refer to him as Jokala around her. She might call him that for his entire life.

So serious honesty here... I need to get excited about the idea of having a boy. There's nothing adverse about boys to me, but I just always think about what would be the most fun for the kids and for me, I just wish Brighton could have a sister to play with. BUT- I had tons of fun with my brother Gregg (but we were less than 2 years apart) This baby will be about the same age span as me and my sister Lynzi, so I just kept picturing that. But it's ok... brothers and sisters have a special bond too and I need to remember that. I just think about all the fun girl things I do now with my sisters and I just want that for Brighton. So that's the deal! Aaron is really excited though. Now he'll have a real "boy scout" and won't have to try to petition to take Brighton on father-son campouts. I'm sure Brighty will be a real outdoorsy girl too though. They can all go on their campouts while I go on spa-weekends (in my fantasies). Here are the names currently in consideration: (in order of popularity in our house)

Oakley Aaron

Jett (Aaron or Reuel or Joseph Thomas as middle names... )

Talmage

Deacon

Gavin

Jonah (my fave, so I have to include it even though Aaron doesn't like it.)

Here are my issues: Oakley is also a girl name, which is a little bothersome. Jett sounds like a "wild child". Talmage is just a little weird, but sounds like a serious, successful person. Gavin is good.. Aaron doesn't like Jonah. If I had my way Edward would also be on the list but that's not even up for consideration. :)

Time for another episode of... things I'd never do.

Before I was a mom I SWORE I would never let my kids say a word wrong, and even encourage it, because it was cute. No way, I thought! Teach the kid the right way to say it. I remember my nephew Haydn saying ice cream in a cute way but I can't remember what it was because I was so bothered that his mom didn't correct him! But now... I have to repent. Brighton says skeleton "scare-eton" and it cracks me up! On Halloween she was talking about scaretons and then heard Aaron call them skeletons and corrected herself and I was seriously mad/sad! It IS super cute sometimes when kids say words wrong and I can admit that I was wrong. I do however try to get her to say regular words that she doesn't pronounce right.. like sometimes she doesn't pronounce s's at the front of words like sky and scooter. And she says yellow "rewow" which is weird because she can say Y's... she just refuses to say yellow. And this has been another episode of... things I swore I'd never do!
Oh and here are some pictures of ward trunk or treat and Halloween. Yes, I am wearing a gigantic rabbit fut coat and a poofy slip. We were both totally sweating all night because I bundled us up way too warm!

Pumpkins

Aaron wanted me to get the pictures of our pumpkin carving up here, so here they are! We have carved pumpkins with our friends Ryan and Natalie for the last three years, since Natalie and I were both pregnant with our first babies!

Here we were back then.... (super embarrassing picture of me.)


Here are this years! It was super funny because Brighton looked at me for a second and said, "mommy you look pretty!" which was weird because I didn't... and so I said "thanks... ?" and she said "You look pretty in your pumpkin making dress!" So funny. I was wearing an apron circa 1950 that my grandma gave me!

Natalie is making a "Twilight-New Moon" pumpkin. I made a Snow White one for Brighton and a regular jack-o-lantern for me. Aaron free-styled his and it was the awesomest!