Brecklynn is 9 months!!

This is a bit late-ok a week late, but its better late then never.

This past month has been crazy. Been full of sickness and just pure craziness with the Temple Open house and school ending etc.

In a couple posts ago, I posted her weight and height. So I will just discuss what she's been up to.

-She's a crawling maniacque now. She's everywhere and fast.

- She loves to stand, and prefers to stand over crawling. She can pull herself up on anything and has started to walk along furniture.

- Ridge and her have a so called language. If he screams a certain way, she will copy or vice versa. They do it all the time.

- Brecklynn loves the outdoors. She prefers outside to inside.

- She's getting better with sleeping through the night. Only wakes one time. Hoping to change that soon.

- She's out of size 2 diapers now. I am finishing up with our size 2 diapers and then will get her to size 3.

-She's developed a bit of an attitude. If you tell her no, she screams back.

-She's learning to hold her own against her siblings. She will fight back or cry :)

-Food is huge with her. She watches what everyone else eats, and begs for some herself. Her new favorite is eggs- I know its early but hey she loves it.

-She loves to shake her head 'no' and will copy anyone else doing it.

-She got her two front teeth in at the same time. She's looking so old now.

-Trash is her new favorite. Yes we've hit that dreaded phase. So now all trash cans are on counters or in tubs, anywhere out of her little reach.

-She loves her daddy. She will sit and play with her daddy forever. I'm really jealous by this fact.

- She loves to do this throaty grunting sound. Sounds like a constipation grunt but its all fun. Cracks me up every time.

- She has found a liking to cords. This has been really bad for us. Any phone chargers, or computer cords etc. she has found and sucked on. It seems like every one of my kids have done this at one point or another. Drives me crazy. Nothing has been ruined yet, but we'll see.

I know I say this every time but I love seeing her little personality blossom more and more. She is such a joy in our family. Here's some pics I took of her.

This picture is for my mom. She wanted a picture of her two front teeth-mom click on the picture to make it bigger and you should see it. :)

This is her doing her fake airy laugh. She does it when she's very excited.

This was Sunday. I did her hair to the side for the first time. This dress is also what Cambree wore for Easter when she was little. I love to see Brecklynn in it.

Mud-

Cambree and Ridge got invited over the Aaron and Connie's new house to play in a huge mud hole. I was a little worried that they wouldn't enjoy it and the effort would be wasted, but Cambree LOVED IT!!!! Ridge on the other hand, hated it completely. There was even a little mud wading pool that got up to Cambree's chest. It was a fun time for all the kids. What kid wouldn't enjoy a good play in the mud :)

Temple Open House

Today we had the awesome opportunity of attending a special open house for the Gila Valley Temple. The official open house doesn't start until the 23rd, but today was a contractors open house-all those that worked on the temple and their families. This was such a neat experience. We went with Curtis' parents, grandma, and sister Sara and Darren. They have you start in the chapel next door to watch a special movie on the temple. Curtis and I were both surprised by the fact that the movie was made special just for our temple. For some reason we both thought the movie was just a general movie shown at temple open houses. So that was pretty neat to watch. Then we went on a tour of the temple. Cambree couldn't understand why we had to wear the special booties and kept asking when we would see the temple. We've been driving by for months and talking to her about it for months that I think she had a different idea of what the temple was. **as a side notes, on our way to the temple we asked Cambree if she knew who lived in the temple. She got really excited and said Aunt Lorene!! Thought that was funny. Its so neat to have these opportunities to teach our kids about the temple. It was absolutely beautiful inside. I'm very excited to start doing sessions in there in about a month.

After the tour, we went back to the church and they had a full on lunch for everyone in the cultural hall. It was all decorated and looked so homey. It didn't even look like a cultural hall. I feel so blessed to be able to attend this special occasion.

Here's some beautiful pictures taken by the oh so talented Curtis- he did pretty good huh :)

This is the corner stone. Curtis had the unique opportunity of doing a test run on raising it into place. How many people can say that?

Can I just say-what a week!!-its long

This week has been a very trying week for me. Sickness has hit our house and its not been fun.

After a couple nights of being up all night long with Brecklynn waking up every hour just to fall asleep immediately after holding her, I decided something wasn't right. I was figuring it to be an ear infection because she wasn't sleeping or eating. My throat had started hurting but I thought it was just a simple sore throat, which I tend to get time to time.

I had been struggling a lot with feeling terrible and light headed and dizzy. Then add a sore throat on top, things were just not fun. Wednesday I decided to take Brecklynn in to get her checked out. These decisions are always very hard for me because we still do not have insurance, so its always a concern that there will be nothing wrong and I just paid for them to tell me she's ok.

Well, we did get to see her new weight which was 16.4 pounds and she was 27 inches tall. They checked her ears-nothing. They gave her a strep test since I told them my throat had been sore. Of course, that had to come back negative too. I was so perplexed as to what her problem could be then. She isn't normally up all hours of the night like that. Something had to be wrong. She did have a pretty bad rash which turned out to be a yeast infection, but I still couldn't believe that would be our reason. So we ended up paying for our visit, for no reason like I had feared.

Thursday, my throat went from bearable to extreme pain. I was having to consciously think about swallowing and making sure I didn't clench my teeth together because it was causing a headache. My mom gave me some ideas of ways to try to relieve my pain. I tried the 3-2-1 combo and gargled it. It made my whole mouth numb, but of course not my throat. Brecklynn was still being a pill at night but was hoping the diaper rash was still the reason and we would eventually see some sleep.

Also Thursday was my jewelry party. I was so excited about it but with how I was feeling, it was taking everything out of me to keep a smile on my face and faking being happy. Curtis was awesome about taking the kids for the night. I really appreciated his eagerness to give me this time. The turn out was less than what I had hoped but it was still fun. I really appreciate those that did show up!! That night, after getting the show finished up, I headed home to find out Cambree was running a temp. Curtis had her in the bath trying to make her feel better. She was running a temp around 102.6. I gave her some medicine and put her to bed. That night, Brecklynn pulled her usual all nighter, but this time added a temperature on top. I knew about midnight, that I needed to cancel preschool the next day. Two girls with temps wasn't a good sign.

I couldn't sleep because of my throat. So about 4:30, I headed to Walmart in attempts of finding some kind of relief. I bought theraflu and chlorseptic spray. I tried them both immediately after getting home. It was so frustrating to realize that they weren't working either. I called my mom about 6:00- probably scared her a bit, but asked her what she thought I should do. She told me what I had already thought, but I guess I needed another confirmation. I needed to go back in to the Dr. This was such a tug of war decision for me with the last Dr. visit being such a disappointment and $200.00 out for no reason. I did as my mom said and said a prayer and I did feel like it was right to go even though I was still leery of the outcome. We got in and they immediately took a strep test on me. The Dr. came in and said it was positive. I was actually relieved. Then he said that Brecklynn's previous strep test probably was too early to see the right result. He looked at her throat and she did have it, along with Cambree. So I was right to going in. He looked at my throat and said he could tell it had been there awhile because my glands are so swollen. So now there's at least a glimmer of light in the future. I'm ready to say good-bye to this week and hopefully hello to a happier, healthier week.

Here's some pictures from actually the week before, but because of my terrible week, they never got posted.

Here's Cambree showing Brecklynn how to stand. This is all Brecklynn likes to do and Cambree is more than happy to oblige.

Brecklynn's first tooth. She's had it for awhile but this is the first time its been visible to the camera-so had to take a shot :)

This was last Sunday. Notice both of their objects in their hands. They refused to get rid of them

Ridge refused to take out his drink until it was finished, but still posed for pictures.

And of course my little model showing her moves.

And my little cutie Brecklynn in her little yellow tutu.

Easter Fun

This was a fun Easter this year. The kids were older and understood everything!! I had fun getting everything ready. Curtis just kept laughing at me for all the stuff that do for these holidays, but to me, its not a holiday without these things. They each got little goodies in their baskets like a stuffed rabbit, coloring book, crayons, little finger kite, etc, and a new outfit.

I hid eggs all over the house- where I could :) It was egg city. Ridge was of course the first awake. He couldn't wait. So Curtis went and woke up Cambree. She was dead asleep. Curtis shook her awake and told her that the Easter Bunny had been there and he said she shot right up and said "Ohh, I want to go see him, hurry"!

Love his face :

True bed head

In between conference sessions, we went to the Allen's for a big easter egg hunt. Here is most of the group.

Cambree found all her 12 eggs-she was proud

Miss Morgan-it was her 12th birthday!!!

Sweet Ol' GG

Cousin Matthew with the 'twinners'

And of course a shot of the twinners!

I had to post this for Sara- I LOVE this face and he does it a lot!!

Oh Cambree....

Easter Fun-Coloring Eggs

On Friday- for Good Friday we had time to color eggs. It was so much fun. They were so excited to do this. Cambree kept wanting to dump the eggs in different colors making them UGLY colors. She loved it!! Ridge just wanted to keep touching them.

After they dried, they put stickers on. This was way fun for Ridge cause they were CARS!! Cambree's of course was Princesses.