Gangnam Star House

On December 27th we closed on our new house! We went under contract before Thanksgiving and we had to wait a long 6 weeks before it was ours. This was due in part to not wanting to close on a house right before we went on our cruise the week before Christmas.
I felt like we had almost everything packed before we went on vacation and we did have a majority of our boxes packed but the things that we hadn't packed took forever to get packed up! We signed the papers at about 10:30 Thursday morning and we were almost completely moved in by Friday night. We put our bed together late that night and spent our first night here. It was so surreal.
Mark and Nate brought a car and truck load of stuff over Saturday and then got our new refrigerator. We are totally in love with it! I spent the majority of Saturday unpacking the kitchen. Considering how small our kitchen was; I never would have guessed that it would take the longest to pack and unpack.
Sunday we went to church and then straight to home depot to get blinds for our windows. Mark just couldn't take one more night of being on display to the world. Ha he hung them in all the front windows and in our bathroom that night. It was a great having some privacy!
On Monday I cleaned up the old house and crammed everything left into my car. It was a great feeling to know that we were finished with everything there.
I didn't get home until around 8 that night which meant we were spending New Years at home. I was a-ok with that. It had been an exhausting 5 days. Tuesday or Wednesday I finished unpacking. Friday I bought paint for the door and shutters and began painting them. I thought I would be finished by the time Mark got home from work. Nope. It took me until Monday and I still have 3 shutters that need a second coat of paint.
On Saturday Mark began dismantling the mantel. That took all day and made a HUGE red dusty mess. It took hours to clean up. He spent every free moment for the next week building our new fireplace area/built ins.
For the last 2 weeks I have been scouring Craigslist multiple times a day looking for the perfect furniture pieces. So far I have found a dining room table for $25 that is currently in the process of being painted white during nap time and a side chair that was also $25 and it will eventually be painted and most likely reupholstered once I find our other family room furniture pieces.
I was really worried about Brigham for this move. He was getting a new house, new church, moving from nursery to Sunbeams at church, and going to a new school. It has been a flawless transition. He loves his new school. It isn't play based like his old school and it seems like he prefers the more structured environment. He loves going. That was not the case the last couple of weeks at his old school. I love that his new school is 5 minutes away, starts at 9, and is only 2 days a week. Brigham LOVES our new house. I'm not sure why but he has called this house the Gangnam Star house from the first time we came to see it. He has never asked to go to the old house and when I say we are going home he always confirms that we are going to the Gangnam Star house. Church had also been a seamless transition. The first day he said he wanted to see Oliver at church. Luckily I didn't have to feel bad since Oliver's family moved the same weekend we did. Ha. Brigham had been super awesome at sleeping in his own bed every night! He has come in our room 3 or 4 nights. The first night I walked him back to his bed and he cried until he laid down and he seemed to just go right to sleep. He has also come in our room the last 2 nights. I let him get in our bed the first night (without lion). After sleeping for a while he decided to get back in his bed. Last night I walked him back to his bed and some time later he came back to our room and I let him get in bed.
Aubree has had a seamless transition. She sleeps the same and she loves the play room!
We are so happy here and we love our new house and neighborhood.

9 Months

At 8 months Aubree can hold her bottle, she pulls her self up in her crib occasionally, she has mastered crawling, she still loves food more than anything else, she is a total mommy's girl, and she spent an entire week away from us while we were on a cruise.
She drinks three 5oz bottles a day and eats 3 meals day. She is still takes 2 naps a day. Aubree wakes up between 7 and 8 every morning and goes to bed between 8 and 9 each night. She is all smiles unless you aren't sharing your food with her. Ha
We have a ton of fun with her and we just love her to pieces!

8 Months

These pictures were taken 2 days before Aubree turned 8 months.  I love them.  I really need to use Krystin's photography skills more often.  Brigham was a total hand full and nearly impossible to work with but Krystin managed to get a couple of shots with him not being a total grouch.  We left right after we finished these and he was asleep before we even got off of her street.  It was a Wednesday and he normally skips his nap on most Mondays and Wednesdays.  I was relived to see his grouchy-ness was at least mostly due to being tired and not because he is turning into an honory, hard to deal with kid. ha ha

At 8 months Aubree still has just 2 bottom teeth and a 1000 watt smile.  She began crawling on her 8 month birthday.  Mark's mom and Albert were visiting us before they went back to Ohio the next monring and they were able to see her first time crawling.  They have been on their mission her whole life so they miss a lot of things.  We were so excited that they were there for the momentous occasion.  Even though Aubree figured out the whole crawling thing, it took her about a week to realize the usefulness of her new skill.  Now she crawls all over the place and we are all much happier since she doesn't need us to move her to a new toy or activity every few minutes.  

In the last month she has gone from eating anything I give her to wanting nothing but puffs, applesauce, yogurt, and sweet potatoes.  I also noticed that she will eat almost anything I am eating.  This made me wonder if she would eat green beans if they weren't pureed.  We have a couple of cans in our food storage so I opened one and cut the beans into bite sized pieces.  She LOVED them.  I am not exactly ready to move to just table food with her.  Pulling pureed veggies from the freezer is so much easier.  Oh well.  I will have to figure it out. ha

Aubree is still super smiley and sweet.  She LOVES Brigham more than anything in the world and he feels the same about her.  As soon as he hears her awake in her crib (and sometimes when she isn't awake at all) he runs in and gets in the crib with her and plays.  They both smile and laugh at each other all day long.  My favorite is when she just starts cracking up laughing in the car just because he is smiling at her.  

Halloween

Brigham loves the idea of getting lots of candy but getting him to wear a costume for more than 30 seconds is nearly impossible so I knew I had to find a costume that was mostly just normal clothes.  At about the time I was starting to brainstorm costume ideas, he began to really like all things pirate.  How perfect! I looked online for some inexpensive pirate costumes but nothing had the look I wanted for the price I wanted.  My favorite costume was $50!  There was no way I was paying that.  I wanted to be under $10 including shipping.  A week or two before Halloween I went to my favorite thrift store, Value Village.  They almost always have whatever I am looking for and it is only 2 minutes from our house.  I went in with a vision of what I wanted in head.  I had no luck finding what I was looking for (except for the black sweatpants that I cut to make pirate pants/shorts.  As I was walking to pay for the pants, I saw a woman's stripped jacket hanging at the end of an aisle.  I immediately had a new vision for this prate costume and went back to the children's section to look for a red shirt.  I didn't find a red shirt but I found some girls stripped leggings that I missed my first time over there.  Next I found a red scarf and a red belt.  I got his whole costume for $8.  We got home and I cut the sweatpants to make them pirate-y.  Next I cut the zipper and hood off the stripped jacket and then I cut the sleeves off.  I bought a red thermal shirt at Wal-Mart and we had our costume.  He loved it and so did I. Since I got a red shirt for him to wear, I ended up leaving the belt off.  He got a lot of use out of this costume.  He had a preschool fall festival, a preschool class party, the ward trunk or treat, and then Halloween.  We stuck with tradition and went trick or treating with our friends, the Woods.  Kaitlyn was a super cute princess, Brayden was an adorable chicken, and Aubree was a bumble bee.  It was another cold Halloween but lots of fun!

7 Months

This picture is actually from election day.  I have gotten really bad about taking pictures on the 23rd of each month. Our sweet Aubree-Rose is just that.  She is so sweet and smiles all the time.  We are amazed at how much she smiles.  Brigham was not a smiler.  He wasn't a crier either.  Aubree cries more than Briggs did but  she only cries when she is tired or hungry.  She also has to cry herself to sleep.  Most of the time she just wines for a few seconds but as she was getting close to 8 months old, she would cry pretty hard and sometimes even cling to my clothes once we got beside her crib even though she was obviously tired.  She is just a busy body and wants to be where the party is at.  She is still an awesome sleeper at night.  She goes to sleep for the night between 7:30 and 8:30 (depending on how early she decides to wake up from her afternoon nap) and wakes up between 7 and 8 the next morning. Occasionally she will wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning and she will play or talk to herself and then go back to sleep after 20-30 minutes.  Nap time is a whole different story.  She will sleep anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours.  Most of the time her naps are between 1 and 2 hours.  Luckily she will play in her crib until when her wake up time is supposed to be.  Morning nap is supposed to be 10-12 and afternoon nap is supposed to be 2:30-5:30.  I will take a bad napper but a great night time sleeper any day over a bad nighttime sleeper.

The First Tooth

Just a quick note that Aubree's first tooth is here.  You can only see it when looking down on her gums and you can see a line.  I can definitely feel it though.  Maybe in a few days it will be more visible.  I am so glad that is such a smiley happy girl that hasn't seem bothered by her teething. This picture is courtesy of Brigham when Holly was holding Aubree while her mom was snapping some pictures at church Sunday.

Brigham is Three!

Brigham started his birthday off breaking out of our room.      

He then made his way to the living room where he popped balloons that had dinosaurs and money in them.

For breakfast he had a stack of birthday pancakes with whipped cream on top.

His next celebration was at school.  Unfortunately you have to bring grocery store cupcakes to school so I didn't get to make any cute ones but in the end, spending $5 on mini cupcakes that lasted us all weekend was fantastic for me!  It was cheap, easy, and best of all no clean up involved! ha 

That night the four of us went to Chuck E. Cheese  That is all Brigham has talked about since going there in August for Alyssa's birthday.  We spent $5 on some tokens and after about an hour and a half  the tokens were used and we went to dinner at Ruby Tuesday.  

Saturday Mark and Brigham went to Lowes to "build" a fire truck.  We went to the Festival of India later in the afternoon and then Saturday night we went to the stake fall festival.  We told Brigham that this was all his birthday party. ha ha

On Sunday we had family dinner where Brigham had a birthday cake.  

I really wanted to have a real birthday party with lots of friends and family but our yard was just too small to have the outdoor party I envisioned and to have it at a park, we would have to pay $100 to rent a shelter.  I decided that we would just have a fun family weekend where we ate cupcakes and blew out candles any time he wanted.  We all had a lot of fun and I am so glad that we did it this way.  It also saved us a ton of money! ha ha.  We will have a big party next year (unless Brigham decides to just have a fun birthday weekend). 

Brigham's 3 Year Stats:

38"

30lbs 4oz

He has become an awesome eater.  He will eat anything and likes almost everything!  It is great having a child that would choose shrimp or salad or artichokes over Kraft Mac and Cheese.  He loves to have his picture taken and will do all kinds of silly poses.  He loves running, climbing, dinosaurs, robots, sharks, whales, basketball, rocketships, cars, volcanoes, and fire trucks.  He loves making Aubree laugh and he loves to hug and kiss her.  However, if she touches him he reacts as if he is being burned by acid. ha ha

He loves his cousins and his aunts and uncles too.  He even loves seeing Mitt Romney and Barack Obama on tv.  He even said he wanted "Barack Obama to some to my house and see my house." Brigham Loves watching telelvision and he will watch anything that is on.  He gets totally mesmerized by anything on television. He also really loves watching the music video "Gangnam Style" by the South Korean rapper Psy.  He even does the dance.  This is his favorite thing to do right now.

This is the shark that he got from Uncle Paul and Auntie Becky and he LOVES this thing!