Happy Holidays!

We had a great time this Christmas. It didn't have to be that great to be better than last year when I was SO sick the whole time. But it really was great.

On the 23rd, we made some candy for our neighbors and went around delivering little bags of it with an ornament for each neighbor on our culdesac and it was way better than I even thought it would be. Most of the neighbors invited us in and wanted to visit for 20 minutes or so and our girls are quite popular now, especially with the older couples who are empty-nesters. :) It was a great experience and I'm glad we did that because we've been here for 10 months but we hadn't met most of our neighbors yet. This was the perfect opportunity.

On Christmas Eve, we had cinnamon rolls for breakfast (a new tradition we started this year and Ben voted to keep) and enjoyed reading Christmas stories and singing carols with the kids. A nice, low-key day. Ben got off at noon and got to spend most of the day with us! We drove around the neighborhood that night looking at the Christmas lights while I read the original Christmas story from Luke 2 and then we listened to Christmas songs from Trans Siberian Orchestra. I think the girls have a pretty good understanding of what Christmas is truly about and that the lights, presents, and singing are just a fun way that people have come up with to celebrate the most wonderful gift the world has received -- the birth of our Savior. It was a really special night for our family.

Christmas was a blast! Jill & Miranda didn't wake us up until 7:30!!! Yay! We did have to wake Natalie up but she was all for it when she saw the presents. Since we have a kid at the "unwrapper" stage, we can't put our presents under the tree until Christmas morning. Our kids were amazed at one of the neighbor's houses because they already had presents under their tree two days before Christmas! :) The girls all loved what they got (yay, we did good!) and then we were going to have a big pancake breakfast, then pack and go to Grandma & Grandpa Bryner's house. But since we all were excited to get going, we opted for frozen waffles and a quick pack up. We had a great drive over (thanks to new Christmas presents to play with -- DS & Leapster!) and were able to enjoy the next few days with ALL of Ben's family. We had people visiting from Georgia, Minnesota, and Nevada and it'll probably never happen again, so we took family pictures, played games and did puzzles, had a talent show, and of course there were more presents and lots of food.

Fun was had by all and the fun doesn't stop yet. We are home for two days and then we will head out on New Year's Eve to go see my family in Kansas. The driving is not my favorite but it is so nice to see family and have Ben and Jill home with us so much. We love the holidays!!!

Our family's new favorite song to rock out to :)

This is the edited version, so be aware if you try to listen to it elsewhere. There's just one word that's derogatory that's dubbed over in this video. I can't help but dance when this one comes on! :) Even Ben likes it!!!

Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows everywhere

Ha ha. I loved that song. Ok, so none of the above are around here but things are going well. It's been SUPER cold this week. It was 80 degrees on Sunday and we were enjoying time in our backyard and the next morning it was 20! Someone told me the cold front that came through changed the temperature 40 degrees in about one hour! Crazy! I feel bad making Jill stand at the bus stop in this weather (and I don't enjoy standing there with her!) but we're getting used to it. And it's supposed to be in the 60's this weekend, so it's all good. :)

I (Brandi) was sick last week and Ben was wonderful enough to come home from work and take care of the girls for me. I was really down and out with some flu or something. Then I had almost 24 hours of health when I lost my voice! Luckily that was some fluke that had no other symptoms and I've been feeling good since. I REALLY don't want to be sick for Christmas like I was last year, so I'm fine with having it out of the way now!

We've been partying big time lately. The YW hosted a dance for the couples in the ward and they provided childcare but I was too sick to go to that one, darn it! But we had a church family party on Friday and last night was a church women party and tomorrow is Jill's class party at school. School gets out at 1 PM on Friday and then I have my Jill all to myself for a couple of weeks! We're both excited about that but I have a feeling she'll be begging to go back to school before January starts!

Ben was on tv this week. Woo hoo! He's hit the big time now on a local Abilene nightly newscast! He gave a great quote and was very articulate and handsome. :) But the caption at the bottom of the screen said, "Ben Bryman." :( Oh well. They can't report ALL the news accurately. :)

Jill had her first piano recital last week and did quite well on her "Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer" piece. She does way better in the comfort of her own home and was nervous but I was so proud of her. I asked the teacher what to have her wear (I had assumed a dress) and she said, "Oh I just say no jeans. We have everything from pants to dresses." She made it seem very casual (and she, in fact, wore nice dark JEANS to the recital), so Ben & I suggested to Jill that she wear these cute pin striped trousers and a pretty pink shirt (she had originally wanted a dress). She looked great. We walked in and every other girl was in a frilly dress. Ugh! Way to go Mom! She didn't even seem to notice and didn't say anything but next time, she will be wearing a dress! Also, she memorized her song and I was impressed but sometimes she'd play an occasional wrong note (not a bad sounding note, but like a different part of the song). I noticed she was looking at her fingers and not the music. I was trying to convince her to play the music. So at home she practiced and did a great job but at the recital, she got flustered trying to look at the music ("to make you happy Mom!") and didn't play it as well as if she was looking down at her fingers the whole time. Ugh! Way to go Mom! So I'm going to leave the teaching to the teacher and just enjoy her playing without critique! She didn't get upset at all that she didn't play it perfectly and I was so proud. I was a bit of a baby when I was younger and if I couldn't play perfectly, I would cry and quit. My poor mother. :)

Miranda is so stinkin' smart. I know my kids are all geniuses but really she is amazing me. It's that great age where they want to learn and they retain so much of what you tell them. A lot of times I think or even say, "Miranda, you're not old enough to do this," and she does everything she can to prove me wrong. I definitely underestimate her when I consider her one of "the babies." I've always called her & Natalie that but really they aren't babies at all anymore. It's fun to be teaching her to write her letters (Jill has already taught her a lot) and she asked me to teach her how to read, so that she can read the cards on a family game that we play together. "I want to read it myself!" So she comes up with something that she thinks it might say and then grins her beautiful grin and hands the card to us for us to tell her what she's supposed to do in the game.

Natalie's new favorite phrase is, "Zat mine?" We'll be dishing up food... "Zat mine?" We'll be folding laundry and she'll see her pile... "Zat mine?" She's very possessive and her favorite thing to do with Miranda is say, "NOOO MINE!!!" They will do this back and forth all day long if I don't stop them. She also thinks that Miranda's name is Natalie, so anytime she wants to talk to her, she bellows, "Nat - a- leeeee." Very funny. Perhaps she picked that up because we often mistakenly call Miranda, "Natalie." :)

Presents around the Christmas Tree

Many of you know that we replaced the carpet in our house in May and I'm happy to say it has been unscathed since then. No spills or accidents of any kind. Until today. I was just checking a friend's blog when I heard a gagging sound. I had given Natalie a banana a few minutes before and I looked over toward the Christmas tree just in time to see her throw up a banana on my carpet. :( I was so sad about the carpet and a little worried about Natalie. :) She was totally fine. I guess she just gagged on something and couldn't control it. Three times. :( At least I have a carpet cleaner and some great stain remover, Folex! :) Not exactly the kind of presents you want to find around the Christmas tree.

We set up our tree and decorated on Monday for Family Night. It's beginning to feel like Christmas even though it doesn't totally look that way. There's no snow here but I have about 10,000 huge yellow leaves on my lawn, on my walkway, on my driveway, on my porch, and on my welcome mat. I should probably do something about that. :) But it's way too cold, so I'll sit here and blog and watch more yellow leaves fall outside my window. ;)

Catching Up... Thanksgiving & Family Vacation

Ok, so I've waited too long to post again but here goes the catching up...

Jill joined Daisy Girl Scouts and just received her official daisy pin and is enjoying getting to know the other girls.
We decided that for our 10 year anniversary, we would have a family vacation to Sea World. Jill seems to get heat exhaustion on all of our summer family vacations, so we figured November in San Antonio would be ok and it was! :) We asked our friends to come with us, since they were too far from family for the holiday and they accepted. We had a traditional Thanksgiving meal at their house the Sunday before our trip and it was SO good! I made a pumpkin pie that turned out great and I brought some other things as well and my friend made the turkey (which Ben is STILL talking about) and all the rest of the fixings. It was fun and I'm glad we didn't miss the "feast" part of Thanksgiving. :)
Jill had her kindergarten Thanksgiving program and it was great. And yes, I did get teary-eyed. She was sick on Monday but well enough to go back to school Tuesday for the program. Yay!

We went down on Wednesday and checked into our hotel. It was small but worked great for us. All of the girls slept great in the hotel and that was a great relief! We went to Sea World on Thursday and Friday and then went to the San Antonio Zoo on Saturday before returning home. It was a nice, relaxing vacation that we all thoroughly enjoyed. We crossed paths with our friends in Sea World and had dinner with them once but we kind of did our own thing, which was nice because then we could all do what we needed to for our own families. We got to the park earlier, they liked to stay later, we wanted to do the zoo, they wanted to go shopping (and got killer deals, so I probably should have gone with them!), but overall it was just a great time.