Brenna

Whenever I pull out and old dress or piece of clothing that I wore as a little girl and put Brenna in it, I of course have to take a lot of pictures :) Every parent thinks their kids are adorable but isn't she just adorable?! And having her wear something that you used to wear as a little girl adds a whole other layer of sentimentality. 

Also, Brenna has been on a kick lately with requesting curly hair for church. We have 1pm church so it has been easy to honor her requests, haha. When the new baby comes I'm not sure if I'll always have time to indulge in doing her hair but I'm loving it in the meantime! Her little blond curly locks are just too cute!

That hand on her hip though! So cute and sassy!

This little pink sweater with sheep on it was also mine as a little girl. I remember seeing pictures in a photo album of me at age 2 wearing this when I had a broken leg. I had a pink sweater to match my pink cast. Now I have a little girl that is wearing the same sweater 26 years later... and her little smile just melts my heart!

Raleigh, NC ~ Childrens Museum

We have always loved taking the kids to children's museums! There is always so much exploring that can be done and the kids always looove going! We had a pass to the Phoenix Children's Museum when we lived in AZ and then we ended up getting one to the Salt Lake City museum when we lived in Utah for the last year of med school. So, we figured we should check out the Raleigh museum here in NC. 

The kids had a blast with their water table area, the pirate ship, the hockey rink, making race cars, doing crafts, playing on the pretend animals, doing the kid-size exercise equipment, the play kitchen area, and the list goes on. It was fun to go on a little family outing together. 

We also decided to swing by Trader Joe's, a grocery store that is up that way in Raleigh, because that's the closest one to our house which is about an hour away. We lived close to one in AZ and there are a few things we love from that store so we decided to stock up on some of our faves. Like for example, orange chicken, pesto pizza w/ broccoli and tomatoes, and Rick tried out some of the Asian food. Yum!

These crate things stuck out from the wall so
underneath your feet is a huge drop off. It was
so scary but Garrett had no fear!

Rick's 29th Birthday

Rick has officially started his last year in his 20's. Next year will be the big 30... wow! 

On Rick's actual birthday, he was on a rotation that he was going to get home by about 4pm. I thought about making the cake during the day so it would be done and ready but Kimbri begged me to wait until after she got home from school to make it. So I figured I could have everything else ready and just focus on the cake as soon as she got home.

Well, as you can see from the first picture on this post the cake-making process did NOT go well, hahaha. Trying to cook a cake quickly and with 3 kids that are "helping" doesn't always work out so good. So yeah, I forgot to add the flour and this is how a cake turns out when you forget flour:

So, you would know that as soon as I pull out all the ingredients to start remaking the cake, I realize we used all the cocoa on the last cake. Greeeaaattt.... so I load up all the kids in the van as fast as possible and run down to the store to grab more cocoa. Rick totally beat us home and was there when we got back! A meltdown from Kimbri ensued because she REALLY wanted the cake to be a surprise. I explained to Rick what happened and he took the kids all upstairs to play while I began remaking the cake. 

And then this happened:

Of course my whisk would decide to break in the middle of making the new cake! Luckily I had pretty much finished using it but still, the craziness of it all!

The first cake vs. the second cake.

The second cake actually turned out
really yummy and great!

A birthday picture from Garrett to Dad.

To go with the Texas sheet cake, we also got Moose Tracks
ice cream because that's a kind Rick really likes.

Left: picture of a cake with candles from Kimbri
Right: picture from Garrett to Dad.

Kimbri wrote this birthday card to Daddy

More cards for dad from Kimbri.

I forgot to mention that the main birthday present for Rick was a new tv! We got a tv for our wedding that was just a little bigger than the size of a computer monitor, (read: very small) and recently Rick has been talking of maybe saving up for a big tv someday. Cosette heard of his wish and gathered money from her parents and some of their siblings and then I put in some money I had earned from Etsy and we were able to give him cash to go pick out a new tv! He was completely surprised and soooo excited about it! It was really nice of Cosette to do that! 

As a side note, in the middle of the whole cake fiasco, I received these flowers on the front porch from Zach and Jessica. They work together and had decided to send me some flowers because they said Cosette had mentioned Rick had just finished a crazy rotation where we didn't get to seem hime much. It was so thoughtful of them and the flowers were so beautiful. It meant so much to me! 

Rain & Tornado Warnings

One day we were waiting for Kimbri to get off the bus and be home from school. Right as her bus rounded the corner the rain went from not pouring too bad, to MAJORLY pouring! It was so bad that the bus driver, who is also Kimbri's assistant teacher, dropped the kids off at the bus stop only two houses down (most of the parents were waiting with cars for them to hop in), and then drove Kimbri down to our house and let her off so she could book it to the front porch! It was so sweet of Ms. Clark to do that for her. 

However, by the time she got to the front porch she had the idea sparked into her brain that she wanted to play in the rain. It was raining hard, but there was no lightening or thunder and it was warm. So I figured, why not?! They all had the time of their lives!!! The gutters were super full and flowing with water so they ran back and forth and splashed and had a grand old time. 

Can't you just see the happiness on their faces?

Well, after the thrill and fun getting soaked, they did all get
a little chilly and wanted to snuggle in their towels by the fire.

Later on that evening we got alerts on our phones that there was a tornado warning for the area. I decided it might be fun for them to set up camp in the closet underneath the stairs and to make them a little picnic dinner. We propped up flashlights so they could see and spread out the picnic blanket for them to eat on. They had PB&Js, cuties, and pretzels. They all thought it was a fun little way to eat dinner :) 

Garrett Preschool Pictures (March)

Here is another round of preschool pictures from Garrett's class album. They send out a link with pictures they take through the weeks and you can download any of them you want. So I of course just go through and pick out the ones that have Garrett in them :) So these are the pictures I downloaded from the month of March: