SO BEHIND

Holy Moly I'm so behind on posting! And I so don't have the time to be doing it now - my parents will be here in a few hours and I really need to finish cleaning. Anyways I wanted to share a couple of pictures of Brianna in her pretty Easter dress. I was a little disappointed to not be able to get her pictures taken out on the green grass with spring flowers everywhere - there's still like 2 feet of snow on the ground. Oh well she's still a doll! Man I love this little squirt!!! I also braved making prime rib for Easter dinner for the first time. Even though it was a little hectic getting everything together it turned out really really good. Considering my terrible cooking skills, I think I out did myself. :)

Wow - can you believe that this little monkey will be 1 year old tomorrow. Seriously, where did the time go. It's so weird to think that I would be going into labor tonight 1 year ago. Crazy!!!

Anyways I really need to get back to work but I just wanted to give a quick shout out to my little bro that had a birthday yesterday. Brad really should have been us girls older brother cause in a lot of ways we all really look up to him. Also congrats to both him and my cute sister-in-law, Hilary, who just found out they're having a little boy! I'm so excited for them - they're going to be such good parents.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUSTIN FACE!

Just wanted to wish a Happy Birthday to my favoritest person in the whole wide world. Man I love this guy!!! I know everyone thinks their husband is the best - but I think I've got you all beat (at least in my mind anyways :)). I am so lucky that he's mine and that he picked silly old me to spend forever with. And even though he's pretty rough around the edges he's the most loving, thoughtful and generous husband any girl could ever ask for. Not to mention he's my bestest best friend. He's a great father and he loves his little "poop stick" (his new nickname for Bri at the moment???) more than anything. We hope you have a great birthday. And we LOVE you for ALWAYS!!!

BRIANNA NEWS

Little Miss Brianna has become a Little Book Worm these days. She loves looking at her books - it's so cute. I'll notice that she's being really quite (which usually means she's gettin in some kind of trouble), but every so often I find her just flipping through her books. Nana Walker and Aunt Aubrey got her a couple of really sturdy books and she loves them. The ones Aubrey got her are those Touch and Feel books. At first she wasn't interested at all with feeling the different textures - but now if you look through the books the "hair" on all the animals is sticking straight out because she pulls on them so much.

We took Brianna on her first four wheeler ride on Saturday. Even though it was about 25 degrees outside we only lasted about 10-15 minutes. It wasn't that it was too cold outside, it was the little bit of wind that we created that was freezing. I ended up turning Bri around to face me so the wind wouldn't hit her in the face. But she seemed to enjoy it - she was looking around at everything and talked to me the whole time. I'm sure we were a sight to see - two bundled up adult with and even more bundled up baby smooshed in the middle. Even though it was short, it was really fun to get her out riding.

She also is getting over her first cold. We're lucky that she's gone almost a year and has never been sick, but it's still sad to see your little one not feeling well. She ran a fever for a couple of days last week, she was really clingy and basically slept all day long on my shoulder. But then she seemed to get better for day, but now has really bad runny nose. It was so sad, one morning she woke up to eat and she couldn't breath through her nose. I bulb suctioned it out to see if that would help, but she still couldn't breath very well. She'd try and suck, turned bright red, and then finally take a deep breath in through her mouth and start crying because she was so frustrated - she eventually figured it out after a few rounds of this. :(

And finally I had to add these cute pictures of Bri. Her Great Great Aunt Jeanie gave her this outfit and I thought she was so stinkin cute. Although she wanted nothing to do with this adorable hat on her head, I distracted her long enough to snap a couple of pictures.

NEW NEIGHBORS

Living in Alaska we sometimes get some new neighbors that decide to move into our yard temporarily. These two were here pretty much all day Thursday and Friday - which made taking the dog outside a very interesting task. But they did some free pruning while they were here, so I guess it's okay. :)

Here's momma moose right outside our kitchen window.

And here's baby moose. I was actually only about 5 feet away from him inside the truck - I literally could almost "pet" him. I actually got stuck in the driveway for about 10 minutes because I was afraid if I moved I would tick off the mom because I was so close to her baby.

(On a sad note we think baby moose got hit by a car Friday night after they left our house.

:( We're not sure if he was okay or not - moose tend to be the ones that walk away from the accidents rather than the cars and their drivers.)

And we've also had a couple of these running around. Just in time for Easter! Pretty cute. :)

BIRTHDAY WISHES

Just wanted to wish one of my bestest friends a Happy Happy Birthday!

Chantel has been one of my best buds for forever! Sadly we met because we were both friends with a way stupid girl (we will call her "V" :)) - but luckily she introduced us so we could be friends. She's always makes me laugh - even when things aren't so funny to laugh at. She's a very thoughtful friend, a good listener, and a great mom - I just wished we still lived closer to each other. But here's to Taco Head, the hatchback, licking your face, getting dressed in a hot small sweaty closet at Lagoon to get old western pictures of us together, "GO EAST" (gotta love naked Lima), being roomies at Cobble Creek, and holding hands with your man at the same time you did. Love and miss you! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

ICE PARK

Last Saturday we ventured out to see the annual Fairbanks Ice Park. We had waited until the last weekend it was open to see if we could get some warmer weather and luckily it was about 25 that day. It was really fun - even though we only made it half way through the park because Brianna and her daddy were getting cold. (Yes - Justin was cold and I wasn't!!! I did have on long underwear, 3 shirts, winter boots, gloves, and my huge winter parka - so I was nice and toasty. Justin on the other hand thought he'd be fine, but he was freezing after about an hour. So I finally got the chance to tease him for once about not wearing the "proper gear" outside. He, he, he!) I can't believe how talented these people are that carve these amazing sculptures. We really wanted to go at night because they light all the sculptures up, but we didn't want to go after it got dark because it would be way too cold. But here are a couple of pictures we took that day - okay a lot of pictures.

This is the gateway to get into the park. It was a huge fort with an archway that you had to walk under.

Here are some of the sculptures that we saw.

I don't know if Bri had much fun. This was the look on her face the whole time we were there. Like, "Hello, I can't move (she did look a bit like Ralphy from the Christmas Story) and it's cold. Can we go now."

I think this was the only "smile" I got from her the whole time we were there.


We stopped in at the snack shack to warm up and grab some hot chocolate. This was a huge sledding hill made out of ice. I wished Bri was a little older so we could have taken her for a couple runs - it looked like a lot of fun.

Instead I took her on one of the little kid slides. It was so fun - and actually pretty fast considering it was made for younger kids.

Riding on the ice-snow machine. One last quick smooch after taking off all our layers to get back in the truck.