We have a 2 year old!

I can't believe we can say we have a 2 year old! That makes us feel like we are starting to get old and actually be "grown-ups" or something.  Last Saturday Merrilee turned 2! I remember when she was born 2 years ago. She came 2 weeks early and unexpectedly after a long day of teaching. I was sick as a dog and we had nothing ready! Nevertheless, Merrilee decided to enter the world and join our family the night of Feb. 4. What a blessing she has been to us. She has always been such a happy, easy-going girl. We love watching her grow up!

Newborn 

1 year old

2 year old

Here are some of our favorite things about Merrilee as a now 2 year old:
-She copies what we say (We have to be careful!)
-She likes to sing songs with us.  She knows many words to many songs. Her current favorites are "I am a Child of God" and "Twinkle, Twinkle"
-She sits and very expressively reads books to herself.
-She says "Pease" and "Tankoo" and "You Kelcom" often
-She loves dancing!
-She gives the biggest hugs and kisses
-She counts to 10 and knows (can recognize) almost all of her letters!(Between all the reading she does and how many times she insists we sing the ABC's...She is basically self-taught!)
-She knows how to make Alice giggle and laugh and then gives her baby sister loves.
-She is so pretty! (We get comments from strangers all the time about how beautiful she is. Yes. That's right. We make beautiful children. :)


We put together a fun little birthday celebration for Merrilee.  The morning of her birthday was basically our usual morning routine. When we put her down for her nap, then we decorated and set up her "Big" birthday present. Right before she woke up, the power went out! Our basement doesn't get much "natural" lighting (as you can see from the two tiny windows in the picture), so this is what Merrilee woke up to...except a darker version. (I love how Alice is sticking out of the tent in both pictures looking at the camera! haha!)

Since the power was out, we decided to go outside for a walk to the park until the power came back on. These days, Merrilee wants Alice to do a lot of activities with her. She insists that Alice swings next to her at the park every time now!

When we got back from the park the power was back on, so we baked a cake, wrapped presents and let the girls play together in the new crawl and seek fun center!

We invited my sister and her family downstairs for a little "party".  We had cake and ice cream, watched Merrilee open some presents, and had a fun dance party!

After our little party we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Brewer's house. Merrilee loves her great grandparents! Every time we go over there she gives Grandma and Grandpa big hugs and likes to play with them. It was so nice of G & G Brewer to get Merrilee a present! Thank you! 

Reading the card

Giving grandpa a big "thank you" hug

Reading with Grandpa

It was a fabulous day for everybody and we still can't believe we have a 2 year old! We love you Merrilee! :)

January

A little recap of January...

New Years Eve: Went to the mall for a walk and our traditional photo booth pictures. Then we had fun hanging out with my sister and her family with games, food, and fireworks!

Alice went to her LAST session of physical therapy! I still need to do some exercises with her at home, but we don't have to go to therapy any more! YAY!

Ben had a Birthday! We don't have any pictures, but my sister watched the girls while we went out to lunch at Tucano's! YUM! It was nice to get a couple hours for a date together. We haven't been on a date like that in MONTHS! I got him a very nice electric razor...the first 'nice' one he's ever owned.  A few days later we had some friends over for a Chinese New Year/Ben Birthday celebration.  Again, not many pictures, but I went all out and even made some Chinese lanterns to hang for decorations to go with our homemade Chinese food. :)

Merrilee was just as cute as ever in January...preparing to be a 2 year old! Her vocabulary really expanded during January and she talks our ears off now!

I substitute taught a few times in January and I continue to teach piano.  I also started teaching my little niece guitar. Its fun to have teaching in my life again! I love it! :) 

Christmas

This year we had 3 Christmas celebrations.

Celebration #1--Orem, UT-- Little Brewer Family--December 19,2011

We decided to do our own little Christmas before we headed to the Northwest.  We sang songs, read the Christmas story while playing with our 'kid nativity' and let the girls open presents. We got Merrilee a few little books and a toy Xylophone (all from a thrift store in pristine condition! Yay for deals!) Alice got a little baby ball and Candyland to share with her sister.

Christmas #2--Ridgefield, WA--Dunn Family--December 21-25, 2011

We had a great time with my parents. They took us and the girls to see Santa. In the line leading up to him, Merrilee kept talking about Santa and seemed pretty excited, but as we got closer and closer, she got more apprehensive. By the time it was her turn to sit on Santa's lap, she had the death grip on Ben and was saying "No, no, no!" Finally she couldn't take it anymore and broke down screaming. Oh well, we'll try again next year. Alice, on the other hand, LOVED Santa! We got a cute picture of Alice with Santa (not on our camera, sorry). We did get some pictures of the girls in the line leading up to the Santa experience...

We 'did' Christmas with my parents on Christmas Eve. It was nice just having only us and my parents there. 

Alice in her cute Christmas Pjs

After we opened presents and put the girls to bed, we had a nice little Christmas Eve 'program' with my parents. One of my favorite traditions! On Sunday (Christmas) we went to church with my parents and then moved over to the Brewers for the rest of the week.

Christmas Celebration #3--Vancouver, WA--Brewer Family--December 25-29

We sure had a great time with the Brewer clan! All of Ben's (5) brothers except one were there with their families! It was a full house! We had a fabulous Christmas Seafood dinner with everyone and then opened presents and had a family devotional. (Unfortunately we didn't really get any pictures of the girls in their cute Christmas outfits, so if anyone else did, please send them our way!) This is the only one we got of Merrilee!

We loved spending time with everybody! It was so great to see Merrilee and Ashlynn play together again, now that they are both older! 

It was so fun to see ALL the cousins play together! There were lots of opportunities too...While the guys went golfing, the girls and the kids stayed home and played together. While the guys went to the Blazer game, the kids slept while the girls had a fun movie night! We all went to the new Vancouver library (Which is AMAZING!) and played together...and we also went to Aaron and Hoku's and played together. I think we need to arrange for more occasions for these cute little cousins to play together more often!

Cute Leah

Alice having fun at the library

Song had her nifty camera and took some pics of the cousins at the library!

Cute Ethan

Merrilee had a BLAST at the library!

Grandpa Brewer reading to Merrilee and Malia

The week in WA went by way too fast and we already miss everyone from both sides of the family. Thanks, all,  for making our Christmas celebrations so wonderful!

P.S.- Even though there are a lot of pics on this post, we didn't get as many as we would have liked of the girls with family members, if you have any, we would be so grateful if you could send them to us! 

A Little catch up...November

Its been a while since we updated so here it goes...

November was a great month (really, November is my most favorite month out of the whole year :) ) We had lots going on last month.  We got our family photos taken for the the first time ever since we were married. We figured two kids later, it was about time. Here are a few we really like...

Merrilee and I also got our photos taken for the local newspaper for an article about how literacy can save a child from all sorts of unfortunate life circumstances. Here is a link to the story if you are interested. It is a 3 part story. This is the first part. My amazing neighbor is featured in the 3rd part and I am in a picture in the background with Alice in the third part of the story. (if you want to see the pics bigger, click on the "images" tab  at the top of the story.) It was fun to talk about how much Merrilee loves to read and to advocate for reading to children.

In mid-November, Alice had her 6 month checkup. She is still just a tiny peanut in the 9% for weight at 13.8 lbs. She did great with her shots! She only cried when the needle was actually poking her, but after it was all over with, she started giggling uncontrollably and smiling! What a silly girl. Alice has also been continuing with physical therapy for her torticollis and we just got her a helmet last week to help fix her head shape. I must say it is a little hard to nurse her with that big hard helmet, but other than that, she's been doing really well with it and she is really CUTE in it too! Ben has dubbed her "Tron baby".

We also celebrated my birthday in November. Ben got me a sewing machine which I have been wanting ever since Song taught me how to sew when we were living in Virginia with them. I am so excited! I went to JoAnn fabrics on black friday and waited in crazy long lines to get some good deals and stock up on some fabric! I've already started a few projects. For the birthday celebration, Ben and the girls took me out to lunch and then we had some cake and ice cream at home with my sister's family. We also got out the Christmas decorations on my birthday (a few days before Thanksgiving). Since we will be gone for actual Christmas, we decided to put our stuff up a little early so we could enjoy it in our home a little longer before Christmas.

We had a nice small Thanksgiving here with my sister and family. My sister and I split up the food responsibilities and just had a great time cooking and eating together! All the kids thoroughly enjoyed it too.

Merrilee had fun eating

My awesome nephews

My cute niece Ellie

This is how Alice enjoyed the meal...watching everyone stuff their faces.

Adam and Kylie hung out with us a couple days after Thanksgiving and did some black Friday shopping with us. It was fun to see them. We look forward to them being on the same flight to WA with us for Christmas so we can all help out with each others babies. :) During the Thanksgiving break, Ben and I also took the girls to the nicklecade and redeemed our tickets for a cute little doggy piggy bank for Merrilee. It was genuinely very fun to just do this fun little activity with our little family.

Another fun thing I started in November is singing in the Orem Chorale (Local community choir). Its been way too long since I've sung in a choir. We've been preparing for a Christmas concert that we will perform this week. Its been great to sing again! It really just brings my heart so much joy to be able to sing with a decent choir.

Well, that about sums up November. We feel very grateful for all of our blessings and look forward to spending the Christmas holiday with family in the Northwest!