High School Reunion

I'm sorry my post titles are so lame and unoriginal, but let's be honest, I don't have time to come up with good ones. So Saturday night was Rick's ten year high school reunion! There is no way that we (well not me, I am MUCH younger) are old enough to be doing reunions at all, yet here we were getting ready and going to one. I had quite the time finding a modest fancyish dress for the occasion, south Florida is not the modest fashion capital of the world by any means. Carson has been a little clingy lately, actually both our kids have.... very unfortunate. Here's Rick with some of his old friends (for some reason I ended up in the picture too...)

We went to the beach earlier Saturday with some of Rick's closest friends and their wives, sign.others etc., which was really fun. It was fun to meet some of the people Rick talks about and to experience a reunion other than the cliche ones I"ve seen on television. It was actually a little less cheesy than I was expecting, but still very entertaining. There was still the little groups all divided up and lots of drinking, which was interesting for Rick and I, who spent a great deal of time at the food table (I know you are all suprised!) Rick's favorite comment of the night was his friend who told him that he had changed the least out of anyone. Rick was very excited about that (meaning tha the hadn't blimped out or anything:) It was really fun to go, and to get to dress up and hangout together! Thanks to the Tolberts for babysitting!!

Pre-Halloween

Carson and Brynnli got to get all dressed up this weekend for their friend Cayden's first birthday party. They looked so cute!

Carson was superman.... (he was less excited about the cape than I'd hoped... hello you can use it to fly?)

And Brynnli was a flower.....
I had a crazy week so their costumes were kind of rushed, but they still looked cute:)
Here is the round of kids turning one this year (and early next year for Brynnli, apparently all our friends were a few months ahead of us with the second kid thing)
It was a fun time!

The Zoo

It was a nice day today so we decided to go to the zoo. It was so fun! Carson loved feeding the pelicans and birds....Carson and Brynnli had a blast playing on the fake animals and in the splash area.... Despite our numerous bribes, Carson refused to look at the camera for more than .5 seconds, therefore, he is not looking in any of the pictures. Brynnli was so excited to get out of the Bjorn and play!!!

The best moment of the day was when we were walking through the zoo and it smelled really bad, Carson plugged his nose and said "probaly the animals had gas!" The worst was when we walked the whole zoo to get to the giraffe feeding exhibit (which we did last time and Carson hasn't stopped talking about) and the dang giraffes were too lazy to come over and eat.
Notice the monkey swinging behind Rick, the chimps are my favorite exhibit, they are more closely related to humans genetically than to any other monkey it said. They seem so human, we had so much fun watching them!

Per usual, I couldn't help but add this extra pic in of Brynnli from Sunday(Carson was napping or I'd have taken a pic of him too), she's such a sweetie!

Oh sleep, where have you gone?

It all began about three weeks ago when Brynnli decided she was going to start crawling. This meant that she kept waking herself up all night wandering blindly around her crib "practicing". Right around the same time, Carson decided he no longer was excited about napping or going to bed at night. We were not excited about letting either of them "cry it out" because they would wake the other up. We tried everything with Carson, threatening no movies, putting his favorite toys in the garbage, positive reinforcement, we even put him out in the garage one night. Brynnli had started to get a little better, finally crying to sleep until this week when I found her like this in her crib..... now everytime she wakes up she stands up in there. Lowering the crib helped a little.
Carson was so cute and ran in saying "hi mincess (princess)" and Brynnli is a big girl!! She was so cute and proud of herself!
Needless to say, her sleep has gotten worse again, and Carson's is still less than amazing. The other night I spent two hours putting both kids to bed. I am close to going on strike.... eight months it has been since I slept ALL night!! However, in the morning when they wakeup (at 6:30) they are sooo cute and I can't imagine life without them!
I couldn't help but take a picture of my cute family after dinner the other night when both kids ended up in Rick's lap. Brynnli apparently has inherited her mom's blinking problem when having her picture taken. This was the fourth try, her eyes closed in all of them (no she is not asleep...)

Her'es the little rascal in her early days of crawling....

On a side note, after my long month of all too often counting the minutes until my kids are asleep at night, I got great meaning out of conference this weekend (for church) when our President Monson (our prophet) gave a talk on having Joy in the journey and making the most of today. He helped remind me that someday not too long from now all the "fingerprints, toys and laundry will disappear and you will miss them profoundly." What a great uplift this talk was and definately needed!! http://www.lds.org/move/index.html?type=conference&event=178&lang=english

Fun Weekend

We had a fun weekend as a family this weekend, the kids are getting so big and so cute together! Early Saturday morning Rick did another triathalon with some of the guys from church. Here's him on his bike when I drove up alongside him in the car (this was at 7:30 a.m. we missed the swim part due to the fact that we were still sleeping)

And then off for the run.....Me and the kids hungout at the park while Rick did the bike and run part, we were all kinda tired....
The big finish, what a stud:) And no, this was not after the pool, Rick really did soak through his shirt with sweat.....(it was hot outside in his defense)
And then of course, no Saturday is complete without watching some football! Carson watched a good 30 minutes of the Miami Hurricanes game with us and was so excited about it! Everytime it went to commercial he would say "where did the football go?"
This was the two of them when the Hurricanes scored a touchdown.....we won't talk about the outcome of the game though..

Friday we decided to take the kids to Flamingo Gardens, a little place by our house with all kinds of wildlife and stuff. It was soo fun! Both kids loved it!

We brought our own food and had a little picnic "nicnic" as Carson says. The only problem was that we forgot the picnic blanket, so we had a picnic at the picnic table, right under the huge sign that said "no outside food permitted". Oops. This was as good as the pictures got of the three of them, just moments before a peacock walked right up to Brynnli in the stroller...

Carson and I had fun feeding the flamingos LOTS of food, according to Carson they were very hungry. We watched a little show where we got to see owls, a snake, and some vultures, Carson sat there the whole time!I wish you could really have seen how huge this lizzard or whatever was. This was as close as I was willing to get since apparently they can whip you with their tail...

And yes, the highlight of the day, I got pooped on by a bird, it was so gross! Rick and I knew it was coming when we were in the aviary, we were running through as fast as we could, but I was the lucky winner!!!


Just a few other random pics from this week.....

How cute are they? This is one of their favorite things to do together right now (going through the drive through at McD's)

And Brynnli started CRAWLING!!! I held her off as long as I could.... now all she wants to do is stand up! What happened to my little baby?
I put her in her highchair with some sweet potatoes, which she succeeded in getting everywhere except her mouth, but she had so much fun I didn't care!

What a fun weekend!

Bowling

So we all went bowling the other day during the day and it was soo fun! One of the best parts was that we got to go for free and lunch was free since I was evaluating the service at the bowling alley and the other best part was watching how cute Carson was bowling! He would roll the ball which went barely at all down the alley (with bumpers of course) and then say "watch mommy, watch.." and then when it finally hit something he would jump up and down and clap his hands saying "yeah!!"

It was a fun family day, even Brynnli liked it, all the lights and stuff were entertaining to her!

I am a Wii-tard

Yes, that's right, I am. Our friends Chris and Kim got the Wii a month or so ago and ever since we have been having fun playing it with them at their house. On this one particular night however, I injured Rick. The four of us were playing tennis in the living room (on the Wii of course) and somehow, I totally nailed Rick in the elbow, it was really hard and VERY embarassing. He was bleeding and everything. I wonder how many injuries hospitals see of this kind? Sorry Rick! The same night we all decided to try out the Wii boxing, and I was totally kicking butt! If you guys want to check out my moves so that you can too be a champion boxer, watch this video. If you just want to laugh really hard, you can watch it too, but please, still be my friends afterwards.... weird things happen late at night.....