Happy Birthday Brooke!! (April 8)

Every year when it's time to celebrate birthday's I am amazed at how fast the kids are growing.
The time between when I was holding them as infants and today is like a whirlwind, yet it seems like only yesterday.
This year Brooke turned 6
Her birthday fell on a Thursday and we were packed with Achievement Days and Scouts.
So on her actual birthday we had a simple family party of pizza and homemade cake.
Then I took her to Target to spend some birthday money

Here is the delicious chocolate cake with cheesecake pudding for filling.
It was heavenly

A couple of weeks after her birthday we had a skating party

It was so much fun

At the beginning many of the kids couldn't skate

But by the end they were all doing really well

The birthday girl with her second birthday cake

It was a little chaotic but I would recommend a skating party to everyone

The kids absolutely had a ball!

Hope your birthday was great Brooke!

We love you so much!

when barbie meets lip

it's not a pretty picture

thanks bells for chucking one at me

OH - And we lost our first tooth!!!
But not because of the barbie, the tooth fell out first
And then we accidentially swallowed it.
So dad bought her gum intstead of the tooth fairy giving he money.
Because, the tooth fairy doesn't dig through... well ya know

sunday art work

during church on sunday brooke was quietly drawing. as quiet as she ever is during church anyway. i looked down and noticed that she had done this.

me: brooke, you really shouldn't turn jesus into an indian. it's not appropriate.

brooke: but mom, he's not an indian. i was drawing him a crown.

me - a little embarrassed: oh sorry. of course it's a crown. my mistake. it's lovely. great job.

swimming lessons

our kids are like fish. if they could breathe underwater i am convinced that is where they would live. since they are so comfortable with it, we haven't really spent a lot of time doing swimming lessons. however, i had a little break from watching extra kids and a few of our friends were doing swimming lessons so i said "why not" and enrolled brooke. due to her amphibian skills, we skipped the first few levels. at first i was worried that i had made a mistake. but in the end i picked exactly the class she needed. she learned a lot and actually passed!
she loved going to class almost everyday and has really missed it this week. it was so much fun for both of us. we each got to hang with some of our friends for a couple of hours poolside. what a great way to pass summer days!

our little stingray!

back to school

it has been blazin hot here all week. the kind of heat that let's you know it's summertime. which makes it even more bizzaro that my girls started school this week!!

there are a lot of things i LOVE about year round school. starting right after the 4th of july however is not one of them.

bella was very excited to start 4th grade and was missing her friends that don't live in the neighborhood. so in all honesty she was ready to get to school. don't you love how ginormous her backpack is??? when stuffed with her school supplies i bet it weighed almost as much as she does.

brooke has been begging to go to kindergarten since the beginning of last school year. so she was more than ready for the school year to start. it's hard to believe that the time has come for her to embark on her academic career. they just grow up way too fast.

milestones and awards

last week was super busy for us and full of exciting things. first, bella was awarded the citizenship award for her class. she was so excited! her teacher nominated her because she is always kind and sweet to others and in general is a friend to everyone. she also displays a positive attitude in the classroom. it was a great way for bella to end her school year. brendan also received the same award a couple of years ago (before bloggland). this recognition means so much to the kids. and as a parent it's nice to get some positive feedback.

next was brooke's preschool graduation! it doesn't seem possible that it's time already to send her off to school. but she's ready. i can't believe how much she has grown and matured over the last year. she is going to love kindergarten.
the only sad part is that all her little friends are either on a different track than she is or they are on the same track but in the afternoon. so she is going to be a lonely little fish in the big K pond. BUT i am confident that she will make new friends and that it will all be ok. and if not, well then it could prove to be a long year. really though i am not worried. she has a lot of charisma that one does.

brooke and ms tara. i know brooke is going to miss seeing you twice a week. thanks for everything!

first crush

so - brooke got her first little "love letter" the other day from the boy next door. its super innocent BUT if this keeps up, we will definitely have to move before they are teenagers! the translation of it is as follows:

dear brooke - you are so sweet and kind. you are nice to me and you are invited to my transformers party. you love me. from michael p.s. you are sweet and beautiful. michael

happy birthday brookie

last week brooke turned 5. five is such a big birthday. it marks the beginning of the academic career. and once they get into school the time flys so fast! it still seems like yesterday to me that brendan started school and he's in fifth grade this year. so in many ways i was dreading this birthday. i don't like that my kids are growing up so fast.

to keep the blog birthday tradition going, here's our little birth story (minuses all the gory details)brooke was a little bit of a surprise. i got a new promotion at work and found out i was expecting all in the same month. it was crazy! i was sure that i wouldn't be able to work after i had her but the thought of giving up the career that i had worked so hard at was a big decision. and working while pregnant is just not a fun thing to do. running to the bathroom to puke, hoping that whoever was in the stall next to me wouldn't recognize my shoes, trying not to fall asleep at my desk fifty times a day, trying not to take my raging hormones out on everyone in fits that would have resembled a two year old tantrum. and of course there's the whole "i'm pregnant so my brain is on vacation" issue. it was a great time those last few months. i have to say that i prefer being at home, having kids running around and screaming to working in the office while pregnant any day ;) but we made it through and she was so precious!


as far as labors go, her's was the easiest out of all the kids. the only complication we had was that the epidural would only take on one side for awhile. i learned during that time that natural birth is not something i am interested in. bring on the drugs baby!! the funniest part of her delivery is that in the packing bags for the other two kids in the middle of the night i forgot shoes. so brendan had to wear a pair of cowboy boots that belonged to my friend amy's girl. i felt so silly when she told me what happened. how could i forget the shoes?!? he of course didn't care one bit.

for the first several months brooke's hair stood up all the time. one of my friends dubbed her the fraggle rock baby. and it was so fitting. her hair was insanely crazy. and we totally stole her name from my friend michelle. larry and i just couldn't agree on anything and she told me she had always loved the name brookelyn. i immediately fell in love with it and asked her permission to use it since they were not going to have anymore kids. her full name is brookelyn paige and my brother in law teased us stating that she was the only baby he knew of that all three names were a noun. so true. i didn't even think of it. but even if i had, i wouldn't have changed it. i love her name.

she was a very happy and content baby. but when she did get mad - look out! i guess that was a prelude of things to come. but we love brooke so much. she brings joy to our lives everyday and we are so grateful to have her in our family.

look what i found

on my counter.

hmmmm..... i wonder which girl this belongs too?? after interrogation it turns out that brooke snipped a little bit of lily's hair. thankfully she had a little pony in at the time so this piece of hair came from underneath. when her hair is down you can't even tell it's been cut. i think that brooke has a future in hair design though because she is very fascinated with cutting hair. after cleaning up the infamous hair i stepped on this little guy.
he is very squishy so when i stepped on him i jumped and screamed providing everyone with some entertainment. it's good to start your day out with a laugh.

a trip back in time....

today brooke's preschool went on a field trip to the transportation museum and for once i was able to go (thanks angie and jami for helping me out). we had such a good time. it's amazing to look around and really ponder how much transportation has evolved in the last 100 years. i don't think that i would have enjoyed some of the earlier forms. such as the wooden train cars and the stage coach's that just looked so unbearably lacking in comfort and hot. the saddest thing we saw was a little white horse drawn hearse with small windows meant to carry children. i think the scariest was an early school bus fashioned much like an old milk truck. i can't even imagine sending my kiddos off to school in that thing!! i took a few pictures, but the lighting was pretty bad so only a few are really worth posting.

the kids enjoyed the museum so much! they couldn't climb\touch everything but they were able to climb onto a lot of it and push buttons without anyone telling them to stop!! every kids dream!! this was a model t and they had period clothing that the kids could put on and pretend to drive.
i love this picture because brooke and her friend torri are smiling at each other under the brims of their hats.


this old fire truck was amazing to me. i can't even imagine trying to fight a fire effectively with it. especially when you compare it to the modern day ones. huge difference!

and this sheriff's car was great!! it reminded me so much of the andy griffith show which i loved as a kid!

brooke and i standing by the wheel of a train. it's amazing how big and tall they are.

we got ourselves a bleeder over here

taking into consideration that the female to male ratio in our house is 2 to 1 you would think that accidents would be few and far between. however, for some reason it seems like every day someone in the house is bleeding. now the quantity of blood varies and usually it's nothing more than a minor scrape. but occasionally we have what i like to call "bleeders". last night, while watching the grammy's, brooke decided to show us her mad dancing skills. about 10 seconds into her phenomenal routine her head made an unfortunate connection with the wood feet of our couch. the end result was this lovely flesh wound.

now i have to say that brooke is one tough cookie. she hardly cried. although maybe that's because she was in shock?? and today she didn't complain about it at all. but she has decided to put her dance career on hold for a little while longer. to keep the tally of a bleeder a day running, while playing with the butterfly tunnel this morning lily ran smack into another kiddo. promptly producing a bloody nose and lip. i have to say that she was not as calm as brooke. she kept screaming "i'm bleeding" and became very disgruntled when i told her that i couldn't put a band-aid on her nose. "but how will it stop mom?" thankfully it didn't last very long. but i am seriously amazed at how often these kind of things happen in our house. is this normal?? are we just a house full of klutz's or do the kids just play too hard?? i really don't get it. if it were a house full of boys i would expect these kinds of things. i would have cases and cases of band-aids and polysporin. anyway, i'm hoping that tomorrow will be less eventful.

anger management

a week or so ago, we decided to attempt a little impromptu family photo shoot in hopes of getting a couple good pics for christmas cards and grandparents. i don't know about you all, but we love getting family pictures taken!!! always, always a good time!! i think the following picture sums the experience up nicely.

can't you just see the joy and happiness radiating off her adorable face!! we were looking though the pictures and brendan said "she needs anger management classes. her eyes are burning a hole in me." out of the mouths of babes......