Long Overdue Update

So to start off this is going to be a long post.  A lot has gone on and I haven't had time to blog, so if you just want to see pictures and video, ignore all the words.  

As many of you know we were planning on moving and it fell through.  I am pretty burnt out on the real estate market right now, we have had 2 houses fall through in the last 2 years and it is frustrating.  So we decided to put some money into the house we own now and just upgrade it.  I was able to get a state appliance rebate, so we replaced the dishwasher and oven/stove and also put in a micro hood.  Since we had already gotten my dad a ticket to come out and help us move, we postponed that to a time when my mom could come and started working on our house.   As a surprise for Bryan for fathers day, I switched his office and Bradley's room.  Bryan generally runs two computers at a time when he is working from home and the office he had would get really hot.  So we switched rooms and I got him a window air conditioning unit.  I wouldn't put it in his original office because you would have seen it from the street and I may have went to North High, but I do not live in the 08.  So while we were switching rooms, we painted both rooms and made them both amazing.  Bryan never wanted me to custom paint anything since we don't plan on being in this house forever, but it looks so good he is coming around.  Bryan's room we stuck with a black/grey/white theme.  I made a big chalkboard calender from Martha Stewart, custom curtain and bed pillows.  Because of the size of the room and the size of Bryan's desk, I took Bradley's twin bed and painted it black.  Bryan really liked it.  It was as much of a surprise as I was hoping for because he guessed, but I kept denying it and even got him other stuff for fathers day, since it would be done until the next week.  Bryan was out of town for work the week after father's day, so that is when the magic happened. 

Bradley's new room has a BYU theme.  I am not one for characters and it is hard to find nice bedding for little boys.  So I decided to try my hand at making it.  BYU fabric was hard to find, but I found it on ebay and since I bought all the gal had, she gave me a really good deal.  I even went to the fabric district in LA and they guy that sells college fabric said it was no longer being printed.  Since we moved Bradley's twin bed into the office, we gave Bradley the queen that was in the office.  It is actually the bedroom set I got for high school graduation from my parents, the bed had just been on a metal frame because the wooden head/foot board are huge and it all didn't fit.  We were able to use the head/foot board, but the dressers and nightstands we use in our master, so Bradley is using the dressers that were in his old room.  I made Bradley a duvet cover, 4 decorative pillows and a curtain.  I also had found a BYU magnetic dart board at an outlet store in Grapevine and my dad so graciously painted 3 colors in his room and put up shelves.  We have textured walls, so my amazing dad did so much work on the blue stripe.  I think Bryan is really excited how it turned out and I think he secretly wishes he had a BYU office. 

The white curtains that hang long are black out curtains.

I also painted and added some polka dots and stripes to the kids bathroom.  That bathroom never really had anything done to it because I couldn't decide what I wanted.  I was using a black and tan shower curtain I had gotten when we got married that I really liked and would use leopard accessories with, but that really isn't for kids and I hadn't been able to find good leopard stuff.  I came across the wall decals and fell in love.  It works great for a boy and girl.  I still need to embroider their towels, but my computer died right before my parents came out and I just replaced it a few days ago so I haven't had any of my embroidery programs to work with.

My dad added some shelves and tripled my hanging space in the laundry room and it just needs to be painted.  Also I plan on decorating our bedroom and bathroom at some point.  I have decided to make a quilt for our bed, I saw fabric in a picture on JoAnn's website that I fell in love with and they apparently don't make it anymore.  Also I am thinking about making custom slip covers for our couch and love seat.  It will be cheaper than replacing them and I don't think it will be to hard to do.  We also replaced the light that was in our garage, it had broke and needed to be rewired.  Since my dad is amazing and can do anything, we put in a long industrial light. 

While my parents were here we took them to a couple of our favorite restaurants out here.  We went to Chef's Point Cafe and Babe's.  My parents seemed to like them both and my dad especially like Chef's Point.  He ordered a ton of food and wanted to go back.  If you haven't been the food is amazing.

Alex also has started walking.  She is months ahead of Bradley in most things, I figure it is because she tries to keep up with him.  She can now say Mama, Dada and Papa.  Bradley and Alex call both mine and Bryan's dad Papa and it absolutely melted my dads heart.  She gives kisses and if you ask her were the sweet baby is she will lay her head on you and give you hugs.  Alex has 6 teeth and is growing like a weed.  After much consideration and debate and talking with the Dr we switched Alex to formula around 9 months.  She had lost all interest in nursing and just quit nursing one day.  I felt really guilty since I had to force Bradley to quite nursing cold turkey at 14 months but it was definitely the right decision. She is so much happier.  She likes to be able to see what is going on while she eats.  She will eat anything and everything.  She seems to be very independent and strong willed.  She doesn't like it when I tell her no and usually ignores me anyways, again I think she learned that from Bradley.  I have already started to move things to higher ground.  I was hoping to have one child that was mild, but it doesn't look like it will happen.  Her hair is still red and when it is wet is curly.  I am sure she will live up to the red hair.  Her and Bradley seem to run into each other and she always is getting knocked down and around and she never cries.  She just gets back up and goes back for him.  These videos are several weeks old.  She will now stand up without holding onto anything and can squat grab something and stand up and keep on moving without putting her hands on the ground.

Bradley is getting to be such a little boy.  He has started playing World of Warcraft with Bryan and is actually pretty good.  He really likes when is Uncle Sheldon and Uncle Joel are on.  We tease that we could leave while he is playing with them and they could babysit virtually.  He has the game figured out.  He can create new guys and navigate through it all.  He has even started to ask Bryan to find him quests.  Bradley is too smart for his own good and is very independent.  If he asks for something and you don't get it for him right away, he will get it himself.  He helped himself to a bowl of ice cream today and made sure he didn't spill it and he even put his dirty dishes in the sink.  He was so proud of himself.  There is nothing that kid can't figure out.  He knows what channels the cartoons are and he knows which ones he likes and he can even use the remote.  He says some of the funniest things and remembers everything.  Yesterday we were talking about why he shouldn't try to carry Alex, my reason was she probably weighs more than he does and he will drop her and he said "it's fine, I just put my arms in her pits and lift her."  It was pretty funny.  He loves to negotiate and will negotiate everything.  I don't negotiate with him, but he continues to try and try and try.  He is generally really good with Alex but now that she is more mobile, he seems to be getting more rough with her.  She really doesn't seem to mind.  Bradley can spell his first and last name, tell you the city and state of where he lives and he knows his phone number. 

These are pictures of Bradley at the Children's Museum in Memphis.  If you are ever in Memphis I highly recommend it.  It is not expensive and amazing.  They have so much to do.  The guy selling tickets apologized for it being really busy because they had a ton of school kids there and he said that he recommends to call the day you want to come or a few days before and see what they have scheduled.  Bradley ended up in the middle of a Jr high special ed class and I wish I knew what school they were from.  They were all boys and very well behaved and very nice to Bradley.  I did tell the teacher they were behaving great and he seemed a little shocked.  He asked me if I would like him to have his class move to a different area so they weren't around Bradley.  I was shocked he would even ask.  I figure that since the kids aren't your average junior high school kids maybe people have asked him to relocate his class. They kept giving Bradley turns, when it wasn't his turn and helping him with things. All the other school kids there were very young and outta control.  I kept trying to get Bradley to find something else to do, but he was having fun with the big boys.  Only one of the boys had a little melt down and started to get upset and one of the other boys ran and got the aide and she calmed him down.  The class seemed to be mostly kids with some sort of Autism.  It was also the only class were the teachers were paying attention to the kids.  It seemed like several of the kids did not have great vocal communication and they loved Bradley, because he never shut up.  We also ate at the best BBQ restaurant in the world called Rendezvous.   I am not a very good person to critique restaurants because I generally like everything and am not that picky.  But this by far was the best BBQ I have ever eaten and we eat a lot of BBQ.  We picked up some sauce and dry rub for us and my brother n law that is the chef.  It is so good.  Bryan was working out there and we tagged along because it was the Memphis in May BBQ Festival.  We had a really good time.

This was a video game thing and you surfed or snow boarded and you saw your self on the screen and had to go around trees and do jumps.  You could also race with someone else.

They had this cop car with the doors removed that the kids could crawl in and out of and I think the dad was having more fun posing in it and having people take his picture than the kids were.  Bradley did not stop moving the whole time we were there.  They have a water area, a TV area, a kids bank, a recycling area, a grocery store, a weather area that has lighting and thunder storms, a huge Fed Ex area with a plane and engines and so much more.

Bryan's job is going really well.  They are super busy and his team is getting bigger and bigger.  The department was small when he started a few years ago and I knew everyone he worked with.  It has gotten so big that I hardly know anyone.  He just got back from their Deep Sea Fishing trip in Mexico and was telling me a story about a guy and I asked if he was new, because I had never heard his name before and Bryan so no, he has worked for DealerSocket for probably about 6 months.  He really enjoys what he does, who he works with and he works for a great company.  They are continuing to grow and are constantly hiring.  Bryan was able to go on the last recruiting trip to BYU and seemed to really enjoy it. 

We have both started running in hopes of running a marathon in November.  Bryan is better at sticking with the schedule than I am, but I am doing a lot better running than I thought I ever would.  I can run for 30 minutes in a row now.  That is 30 min longer than I ever could.  I am working on loosing weight and have lost 15 pounds so far.  I am now below were I was before I had the 2 miscarriages and had Alex.  I hope to be down another 20 - 30 pounds by the new year. 

We leave for Idaho tomorrow for a week and have some other travel coming up.  We are going to San Fran in August for my birthday and Cancun in October and of course we will be spending a lot of time in Cali.

There seems to be some problems with the blog being private so for now I am making it public again and if I feel like people I would rather not look at it are looking at it, I will make it private.