Just a little late...

I have to play catch up on important events in our lives. Well, Brooke's life anyway. We had a pretty low key Easter this year. With conference and still recovering from our trip, we didn't even dye eggs this year. There's always next year, right? Brooke did love her Easter basket, though. She got a couple of new books and some chalk. She is all girl, though! She loves carrying purses around and treated her basket like one too, even trying to wear it over her shoulder.

Before the trip Brooke had her 15 mo. check up. She'll be 16 months next Friday so I'll hit two birds with one stone on this update:

Weight: 20 lbs 7 oz (25th percentile. She is still a small one.)
Height: 30.5 (50th percentile)
Head: 18.2 (50th percentile)

She has bright blue eyes, but one of them has a brown streak through it. It 's been there since she was born and hasn't gotten any bigger. And it's only in one eye. Funny, huh?

*Brooke is definitely starting to get a flare for the dramatic. She has learned the art of throwing herself on the ground and crying if something really makes her upset.
*She gives kisses and loves to snuggle with us and her pink blanket
*Is getting 3 more top teeth, making her total teeth count 5. She is getting her top left tooth and her 2 canine teeth. I'm hoping top tooth #2 comes in quick because she looks pretty funny!
*can say "uh-oh" "wow" "yes" "dada" "mama" "baba" and "bubbles"
*is starting to "sing" along to the song itsy bitsy spider and mimics the movements
*can tell us where her eyes and ears are and can point to them on our faces. For some reason, finding her nose has been tricky :)
*even though she is on the small side, she eats everything! Some of her favorites are Gerber Pasta Pickups, bananas, string cheese, carrots, PB&J and chicken nuggets.

We love our little Brooke trout!

Tidbits

I just have a few odds n ends to wrap up our March adventures. I have had a couple people ask me how Brooke did during all of our travels. She definitely gets the biggest trooper award! Considering that Brooke spend most of her time in her stroller or in her car seat:
or sitting on someone's lap, she did great! My nephew even complimented me on my "ninja-like" skills as I was able to quickly get Brooke out of her stroller and the stroller folded up in the blink of an eye (this came in handy as we got on and off multiple subways). It was also definitely because of my awesome sister and her family that I retained my sanity during the trip. Going on such a big trip without Blake is something I hope to never do again! My family was awesome in helping keep Brooke happy and holding her/playing with her when I needed a break.

Carter & Ethan (not pictured) were a huge help making Brooke smile and laugh!

Brooke adored Olivia and it was fun to watch them play together. Livvie's name for Brooke was "Baby Brooke" I heard that all trip long, "Aunt Courtney, Baby Brooke needs/wants/says..."
I love seeing my niece and nephews!

As for the airplane ride, Brooke did get antsy when she realized she wasn't going to be able to get down and play for 3 hours. I did my best and we survived. I was dreading an hour and a half layover in Atlanta, but instead of fighting it, I just decided to let Brooke play & walk to her heart's content. I wanted to wear her out so she would sleep on the plane. Brooke did develop a bad habit on this trip though. She became the biggest mama's girl ever! She is perfectly fine until I walk into the room and now she'll cry and reach for me. This is a habit we are trying to break.

Brooke also became an expert at walking. This started on the second day when I gave Brooke a break in her stroller by letting her out during our visit to the Statue of Liberty. She immediately found the most disgusting thing around to play with
and I didn't want that, so every time she would fall down, I would pick her right back up again and encourage her to walk around. By the end of the trip she was a pro!

During our visit to the Jersey shore my crazy brother in law decided it would be fun to go swimming and somehow convinced my nephews to join him. I had to post this video because it makes me laugh every time I watch it!

Brooke is thinking that her cousins are crazy!
The girls were the only sane ones and looked for shells on the shore instead.

Blake had an adventure of his own while I was away. He had surgery on his shoulder. His awesome sister took care of him for a couple of days and so did our neighbors. THANK YOU!! He is feeling sore, but getting better every day. He'll be in a sling until the beginning of May and will much happier when he doesn't have to wear that anymore. Except then he won't have an excuse as to why he can't change poopy diapers anymore! j/k

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

This title seemed appropriate since we traveled by all of the above and by: boat, a short bus ride at the airport, and countless subways. Oh, and don't forget walking. Lots and lots of walking. After 10 days, 3 airplane rides, 5 states, navigating the big city (of which I was absolutely no help), keeping track of one active baby, wrestling with a 50 lb suitcase, and recovering from major lack of sleep (Brooke slept from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m. last night) I am back in my small Utah town and the phrase "home sweet home" has never seemed truer. I have tried to condense all my pictures into collages, but there are still a lot! We crammed so much into 10 days and I had a blast! (Feel free to click on the collages to make them bigger and see all the things we did)
Of course the biggest part of this trip was spending time with my family. I got to visit with my dad and grandmother who I hadn't seen since 2006. Brooke also got to meet her great grandma. It was also a reunion for the 5 kids in my family. It's not very often we are all in the same state.

-We spent a whole day touring the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We were able to get tickets to climb up to the pedestal & enjoy amazing skyline views of NYC.
-We spent an afternoon in Philadelphia. We saw where Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross were buried. We toured Independence Hall and saw the Liberty Bell.
-Spent an afternoon at the Jersey Shore. It was pretty chilly & windy but that didn't stop us! Brooke loved the water, but hated getting sand on her hands.
-Went back to the hotel for a swim and got ready for the wedding rehearsal dinner. Dinner was at this Italian restaurant and by the end of the night we were stuffed!! Brooke was cranky, so I let her just dig into my plate of Chicken Parmesan & that made her happy.
-The next day was wedding day! Brooke discovered her love for bubbles and even added the word "bubbles" to her vocabulary!

I can't take credit for this collage. My dad put it together.

-Then it was off to NYC!!
We toured St. Patrick's Cathedral which was gorgeous! Then when we went to the top of the Rockefeller Center, we were able to see an ariel view. We had another gorgeous view of the Chrysler tower from our hotel room. We saw the Manhattan Temple and stopped at the American Girl Doll store too.

-We went to the Museum of Natural History (which looks nothing like it does in the movie, btw) and went to Times Square and spent most of our time in this amazing ToysRUS store.
In the store they had a ferris wheel, the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty built out of legos, a life-size T-Rex that moved and roared, and a huge Barbie house.-Went to the Museum of Modern Art and enjoyed paintings from Andy Warhol, Van Gogh, and Picasso. My nephew Carter was great with helping with Brooke. He was always able to make her laugh and smile. We spent a lot of time riding the subway and after a while, didn't mind so much sitting on the filthy floors if meant our feet got some rest :) We also spent a lot of time in our jackets. I guess it didn't matter that I stuffed my suitcase to the max since in all the pictures I am wearing my orange coat!

Needless to say, by the end of the trip, we were all exhausted!

Walkie Talkie Crawlie

As I mentioned on FB earlier, Brooke is walking!! Even if it is just sparingly. She will walk for a little bit, get tired of it and then just crawl. I know it's because right now she can get around faster by crawling and she is still pretty wobbly walking. I also know that won't last forever and pretty soon she'll have more confidence and be running! Even just over the last couple of days it's been fun to see her courage grow as she takes more and more steps, starts to fall over, regains her balance and keeps going. Blake and I took this video on Thursday night. We just kept passing the camera back and forth, & Brooke, wanting the camera to play with, was more than happy to walk over to us!

Brooke is also quite the little chatter box. From the minute she wakes up, we can hear her in her crib just talking away. She definitely has her own language. She will even get our attention by saying "Ma" or "dada" and when we say "what?" she will just go off telling us a story, sometimes even making herself laugh as if she just said something funny. She also likes to pretend that everything is a telephone and tries to hold it up to her ear and talk into it. It's so funny that she copies us even at such a young age. This is a very small sampling of how vocal Brooke usually is. She also loves to play on that step. We can almost always find her over there. You may have to turn up the volume to get a good listen.

And finally, the other night, Brooke pulled this towel out of the cupboard and at first was laying so her entire body was on top of it. By the time I ran and got the camera she was stretched out like this:

What a silly girl!

One of THOSE days

I hate feeling stressed and frazzled. And it's been a while since I've had a day like yesterday so I guess I was overdue for one. It started over the weekend when I went grocery shopping and found out that the microwave meals I usually eat for lunch (Healthy Choice & Lean Cuisine) weren't on sale. I was bummed and mentally reminded myself to buy something else I could take for lunches this week. Come Monday morning and as I pull into the parking lot at school I realize that I never actually did buy anything for lunch so I don't have anything to eat today. Then I realize that I also forgot a huge stack of papers I graded over the weekend and was supposed to bring back to enter into the grade-book because the end of the term is quickly approaching. I also realized I never did made copies of the worksheet I needed for today's lesson. Needless to say, Monday morning was not off to a good start. I spent the time before school rushing around like a crazy person making copies and getting things settled. I hate starting days off like that. My frazzledness carried over and my lessons seemed to go poorly. Including one class period where the students finished the activity super fast and resulted in almost 15 extra minutes of class-time I had not prepared for. Guess what kids?! Since I am such a nice teacher and you have behaved so well today (and me not having anything prepared has nothing to do with this..wink wink) You are being rewarded with free-time. Then it was off to lunch (oh yeah, still don't have one of those) so using my 25 minutes wisely, I rush over to McDonalds and get a $2.99 Big Mac value meal and scarf it down. To top it off, after school I had to go over to the DMV to renew my driver's license, waited in line for an hour, got up to the counter and realized they were going to take my picture (duh!) and I did not fix my hair or makeup that day. AND the lady did not do a countdown or anything before she took the picture. So I am sort of smiling and my eyes are half closed. By that time, I did not even care and just wanted to go home. But what a lovely memory I will have to carry around with me for the next 5 years to remember such a wonderful day!

Motivation

Maybe it's because winter seems to be dragging forever, or maybe it's because I am really looking forward to something that is making time go by so slow, but I am having a serious lack of motivation lately. Anyone else? I have to take the teaching Praxis PLT test next Saturday. I've known about it for a month now and do you think I have even started studying for it? Do you think this looming deadline has made me want to start studying? That would be a big fat NO! Oh I've looked over the test outline a few times and know what kinds of questions they will ask and I figure that is good enough for me. Maybe I should be more worried about it than I am, but my experience with the Praxis tests have been that you can usually use deductive reasoning to figure out the multiple choice questions and I figure I am an experienced enough teacher to work my through the short answer questions. And barely passing is still passing in my book! Hmmm.. maybe my students have been rubbing off on me too much because that's not a very good attitude to have. But that is how I have felt all week as we've rounded the corner into March. Last year around this time we took Brooke out for her first walk:
No walks for us in sight this year with the freezing weather outside! Speaking of walking, our school is doing a 10,000 steps per day challenge. It started on Feb. 22 and I was all gung-ho for it at first, but again this week I have not had the motivation to work out after Brooke goes to bed at night. Last night I went to bed at 8:30!

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. On the 22nd I am flying back east to attend my brother's wedding and also get to see my sister and her family (as well as lots of other family that lives in various parts of the country including my grandma who has never met Brooke). It's getting close and I am getting excited for all the fun things we have planned while we are there (NYC, Philly and oh yeah, the wedding. Just kidding, Ben & Katie!) And since I am looking forward to this, of course time has slowed way down.

Anyone know where I can get candy bars cheap? When I first started my job I promised my students that if I ever had a substitute and they behaved I would give each student a candy-bar. Now I am eating my words! I made this promise before I realized I would be gone for 8 days! Now I am going to end up owing my students 8 candy bars each if they behave themselves! Secretly I am hoping some of them (just a few) don't behave...is that bad? Goodbye teacher-supply money that will now be used for purchasing 400 candy bars!

Truly Inspiring

We had a lesson in Relief Society on Sunday that has left me pondering for a few days now. And I feel the need to share. I usually don't get very much out of RS too often because it's right during Brooke's nap and she is usually not very happy. Even when some nice person offers to take her for me, my mind is still in "Brooke mode" and I have a hard time focusing. But this lesson grabbed my attention and delivered a short but sweet message that was just what I needed. It was so positive and uplifting and I have been basking in the feelings it left me with for days.

Maybe you have heard this before. It is by Elder F. Enzio Busche and called Unleashing the Dormant Spirit. Elder Busche was raised in Germany and had a happy, normal childhood until WWII started. At the age of 10 he was forced to join Hitler's Youth organization. As a teenager he was enlisted as a Nazi. After the war he was very bitter and had a hard time overcoming the things he saw/did. As an elderly man he was diagnosed with a serious illness. During a time when he was in the hospital, the doctors took him off all the machines keeping him alive and expected him not to last much longer. Elder Busche describes having an out-of-body experience & a vision of beyond the veil and what was waiting for him. After he ended up surviving his illness, his outlook on life changed and this is his message for all us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAjZ8mfoYw

The video is about 7 minutes long, but so worth watching. I was so touched and I hope you are too. After learning a little of his background I felt his message especially important for all of us to live today. Watch it during a quiet moment during your day. Reflect and enjoy!