Happy Birthday Brenna!

Hooray! Brenna is two today! We love her so much and can't believe how much she has grown up! We are excited to celebrate today with her. We started the day out with some birthday Mickey Mouse pancakes and plan on playing with her new kitchen playset and going out for pizza tonight! Brenna's new favorite movie is Finding Nemo so we made her a Nemo cake. She loves it!!!
Happy Birthday Sweetheart! We love you!




Here is a look at our Christmas! We enjoyed the holiday here at home this year. Grandma Nilson, Grandpa Nilson, and Aunt Kati spent Christmas here with us. Brenna was excited for Santa to come. I don't know if she fully understood who he was but she says "presents, candy, and toys" whenever we talk about Santa Claus.
It was fun to see the wonder in Brenna's eyes on Christmas morning. She was so cute as she opened each present. Her unwrapping skills have improved greatly from last year so she had a blast tearing paper and discovering what was inside. She was so excited by each gift and we all were very entertained by her all morning.



It was a very Merry Christmas!

A Name and a Blessing

This past Sunday we blessed Matthew. It was so fun to have all our family up to visit and participate in the blessing. We feel so blessed to have such wonderful family. We love you all! We love Matthew so much and we are so grateful for him. He is a chunky little guy but he sure is a sweetheart. Here are some pictures of this special day.

Goodbye Fall

It seems like fall just vanished and winter blew right in. But before the snow fell this year Brenna loved playing the leaves.


Our leaves fell really late at our house so it was pretty cold, but we still had fun playing in the piles in our backyard and at Grandma and Grandpa Monson's house.

Halloween 2009

Halloween is one of our favorite holidays to celebrate and this year was no exception. We had fun carving and painting pumpkins and decorating the house with spooky decorations. I made these fun paper lanterns that we lit along our driveway on Halloween for the trick or treaters to enjoy. We ate loads of candy and of course went all out dressing up in costumes on Halloween night.
Brenna loves Minnie Mouse so I made her a Minnie dress and she has loved wearing it all month long. Brenna's friend Micah dressed up as Mickey Mouse this year so we had their family over for lunch and pictures.



Matthew was a very "little" league football player and gave us some fun smiles for the camera.


Brandon made a great Phantom of the Opera and I was a gypsy.


It was Brenna's first year to go trick or treating. Brandon had fun taking her around our new neighborhood. We were glad it wasn't too cold. She came home saying "Trick or Treat", "Go Walk", and "Nobody's Home" for the rest of the night. I guess a couple of our neighbors were not home, but she sure got a whole bunch of candy that she can share with Mommy and Daddy.
Happy Halloween everyone!

Welcome to the World!

Our little boy has arrived!

Matthew Brandon Monson was born on Monday October 12th. He weighed 8.0 lbs. and was 21 inches long.
He is a little angel and we are so excited to have him here! Everything went great during delivery and Mommy and baby are doing very well. Brandon was such a great support through everything and is so thrilled to have his son finally here!







Brenna is very excited to be a big sister. She gave Matthew lots of kisses when he came home and she loves to help hold him and read him stories.


Thank you to all the wonderful family we've had here to help us out these past few days. We love and appreciate you all so much. We feel so blessed to have such a healthy happy little baby boy join our family.


Welcome to the world Matthew!!!

Craziest Month Ever!!!

Wow!  What a month we have had!  June has had to be the craziest month ever for us.  We have had so many big things going on that blogging has taken a major back burner for a while.  But I finally have some time to give an update.   The biggest news of all is that we now are homeowners!  


We bought a house up in Smithfield and we love it!  It has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and feels like a mansion to us compared to our little apartment.  It is on a quiet street and it has a big fenced backyard that Brenna is loving to run around in.  There is even room for a garden someday and we have a cherry tree and two apple trees.  It has been a massive task to get moved in, especially with all the work we have needed to get done.  We replaced all the carpets and put tile in the kitchen and replaced all the baseboards. Flooring is definitely a big job to redo.  We couldn't have done it without all the help from our families and friends.  We have had my parents and Brandon's parents and siblings up here one after another helping us do it all.  Thanks so much everyone for your help!  There is a mile long list of other things we would love to do but we have to remember to pace ourselves and not bite of any more than we can chew (much easier said than done).   We will have plenty of projects to work on for the next few years.   We feel so blessed to be able to live in a house and to raise our family here in Cache Valley.  It is exciting, but also kind of overwhelming!

If moving in to a new house isn't enough we packed the two weeks before we moved with some major summer adventures.   Brandon's whole office at work earned a trip to go on an Alaska cruise so from June 12-20th we got to go north and take a cruise!  We left Brenna with her two grandmas and we got have a getaway with just the two of us.  We got to see a glacier and go whale watching in Juneau, visit a gorgeous rainforest filled with bald eagles in Sitka, see lots of totem poles in Ketchikan, and visit some lovely gardens in Victoria B.C..  The cruise boat was amazing.  We loved the food and the entertainment.  We had a wonderful time.  







Here is a slide show of our trip.  

Three days after we got home from Alaska we closed on the house and then that afternoon we drove up to Bear Lake for a four day - three night reunion with Brandon's family.   We rented a cabin up in Garden City and had a blast hanging out with Brandon's brothers and sisters.  His mom was injured in an ATV accident just a week before the reunion so his parents could only come up for a day, but we were so glad they could come for even a little while.  She is doing better now, but it sure was hard to see her in a wheelchair and unable to get around without a lot of pain.  We spent the weekend swimming, playing volleyball, and playing on the beach.  We rented a boat and a jet ski for a few hours one of the days. It was a lot of fun to be out on the lake.  Brenna loved playing in the sand.  She was content for a solid hour just playing with a bucket and a shovel.   Thanks to everyone for such a fun reunion this year.



  

Crazy huh?  We have been having a lot of fun, but it sure is a lot of work.  Traveling and moving can be very exhausting, especially back to back to back, but we sure have felt blessed to have had so many great experiences already this summer.  Now that we survived June, July has been nice to settle in and find a routine again.  

It's a.........BOY!!!!!

We went in to the doctor yesterday and saw our little baby on an ultrasound. It was so amazing! Technology is incredible! We found out that we are going to be having a little boy! We are very excited. Now we will have one of each, (just what we wanted). It was fun when we saw his arm he had his little hand in a perfect thumbs up. I guess he was telling us that everything was good and that he was healthy and happy in there. Here is the picture of it. We can't wait until October to have him here!