Triathlon

On Saturday, my sister Jessica and I "competed" in our first ever triathlon. It was SO MUCH FUN! I chose to do a novice race as I'm not the best swimmer, but it was still a challenge. Jess ended in 21st place overall and I was 25th (out of 26...j/k) overall. I don't actually know how many it was out of. There was also a kids race that was a lot of fun to watch.

 My helmet is on the right way here. :) 

Okay, a quick confession... I did the bike part with my helmet on backward! The whole time I was riding I kept thinking, my helmet feels weird. I only realized it was on wrong when I was on my way to my truck after and thinking about how I had worn it. Awesome, right? Good thing I didn't crash. Oh well, it just makes for a funny story.

I really enjoyed doing it and I'm so grateful my sister was willing to do it with me. Thanks, Jess!

Next year, we're going to do it again, but we're going to get the family (including the kids) to do it, too. You hear that fam? ;)

3 Months

On Tuesday Brighton turned three months old. It also happened to be the first day of school, so that explains my late posting. In the short three months that Brighton has been in our lives he has grown so much. The little guy is amazing, especially considering his difficult start. He is such a joy to have around and none of us can seem to get enough of him... especially Lila. He has the most BEAUTIFUL smile ever and is such a happy baby. When he does get sad though, it is the saddest face I've ever seen; even sadder than Lila's. He is so close to laughing and rolling. I just know they're both going to happen very soon. He also seems to still have all of his hair. He is such a handsome baby.

Brighton already has some opinions about things that he likes and does not like. ;)
Brighton loves...
to coo
to be held while somebody is standing
sleeping in your arms while on top of the boppy
sleeping on his side, it doesn't matter which one
tummy time, sometimes
being in his swing
being swaddled
having a pillow on the lower half of his body if no-one is holding him
his sister, even when she is smashing him while trying to give him a kiss

Brighton does not like...
me eating too much chocolate
his Daddy's whiskers
spitting up; poor thing does it all the time

I love having two children, and while it so much more work (more so than I thought) than having one, I am grateful for the learning opportunities and experiences I get from having two. I also love having a girl and a boy. It's been fun to see the subtle differences so far.

I'm so grateful Brighton was chosen to be in our family. How wonderful it is to have such a fresh spirit from Heaven in our home. He and Lila have made our place a Heaven on Earth.

I can't wait to see you continue to grow my little Bright baby! Your family loves you!

"Almo"

Right now for our family scripture study we are reading from this book:

It was the book that I had as a little girl and I loved it. It's great for Lila because it has so many pictures and tells the Book of Mormon stories in a simple way. I think it will be a good tool to lead into the regular scriptures. Anyway, it's been a lot of fun sharing these stories with Lila everyday and she's VERY curious about all the people in the pictures. She constantly asks "who's that" on each page.

She has started to recognize reoccurring people such as Nephi and Lehi. She tries to say their names and it is so cute! My favorite of all time though is what she calls Alma. She says "Almo". I know it's not that far off, but if you could just hear how she says it, you'd hear how cute it is. It's also funny because she really likes Elmo so I'm pretty sure she's combining the two names. 

It's been so fun sharing the scriptures with her and teaching her gospel principles. She has also become very good at prayers. She has loved to pray since she was one, but now we just have to say "time for prayer" and she remembers to fold her arms, bow her head and close her eyes all on her own. She also loves to say "Amen" and has to give us a high five after each prayer. When we play primary songs she "sings" along, but is not actually saying any words. She is such a delight. 

I'm so grateful that we are able to raise our children in the Church. I look forward to her saying her own prayers and singing real words to the primary songs. :) 

Pinterest Party

On Saturday all the girls of my family got together for a Pinterest party. It was a lot of fun. The point was to share food and craft together. We each brought a food item with a recipe that we found from Pinterest (for the most part) that we hadn't made before. All of it was SO good. We definitely need to do more of these to try out some awesome recipes.  

I made the Australian Milo cheesecake with a chocolate crackle crust. It was delicious. Definitely rich, though, so I'm glad we only had small slices. 

My cute nephew making a PB&J (not a Pinterest recipe ;) )

This Hummus was so good!

The crafts that we chose to do were travel pillows (AWESOME!), colored rice centerpieces (they turned out really cute), and a baby blanket to be donated to the NICU that Brighton was at as part of the Parent Support Group. When we first discussed doing this party we were unsure of what craft we wanted to do so we first planned on doing a service project (the baby blanket). I'm glad we chose to do it and we've decided that when we do craft parties in the future, we'll always include a service project.

 

Here are all of the travel pillows that were made that day. I made two, the light blue one in the middle and the gray one in front of it. They're nice because they fit so nicely around a seatbelt and they were super cheap to make. Thanks Bec for making up a pattern. 

These rice jars also turned out really nice and I'm excited to make more. I took home the candy corn looking one. (Aren't my nieces so cute?)

 

Finally, here is the baby quilt that we made together. Even the nieces and nephews helped. It was so fun having them participate in this way. My sister, Rebecca, just needs to bind it and then I can take it over to the hospital. 

It was such a great day and I love that my family likes to do this kind of stuff together. Thanks everyone!

Okay... also randomly I have to include this... Right now my sister and I are training for a triathlon we're doing in August. Well, we had just been swimming before the party (hence my awesomely good looks in all the pics) and so we had our swim caps there. You should know by now that Lila loves to wear things on her head. She insisted my sister, Jess, put her swim cap on her and then she proceeded to wear it around for about 15 minutes. It was awesome! At one point it was much lower and because they're so tight it was squishing her eyes. She still wanted to wear it though... what a silly girl I have! :)

Two Month Stats

Today, Brighton had his two month appointment. Our little guy sure has grown. Here are his stats:

Weight: 10 lbs. 5 oz.- 7.46 percentile (This is a little off though, because he hasn't had a bowel movement in 4 days so they said he's probably more in the high 9's. He's doing them on his own now though!)

Head: 15.5 in.- 55.12 percentile (Just like Lila his little head shot WAY up in the charts.)

Length: 22 in.- 7.67 percentile

His pediatrician is very happy with his growth and likes how the numbers are going up. He also said we could be done with the monitor- hallelujah! I'm grateful that we had it, but elated that it's no longer necessary.  Other exciting news is that we're going to try Bright off his GERD (acid reflux) medicine at 6 months instead of one year. Yay!! It was a GREAT appointment, other than his vaccinations. It's always so sad when they get the shots, but he's a champ and did really well.