Surprise!

I have a big surprise for someone special but you are going to have to read through this entire post to find out who, what, where, when, and why.

Let's start with the who and the why shall we.  The who is my Grandma Becky.  I finally call her by her name and I like her a lot.  She is fun to play with.  The why is because it is her birthday.  My mommy asks me who birthday is coming up and my response every time is, "It's my birthday coming up".  Even after she corrects me I still say it is my birthday coming up. 

I hope you are just as excited as we are to see you tomorrow Grandma!

Let's move onto the what, where, and when.  My mommy and Auntie Jill decided to do something fun for my Grandma Becky.  Since it is her birthday we are going to get together to help her celebrate.  I would say it is going to be a girls weekend but in reality cousin Parker and I are going to be there too.  We are going to go up to Owatonna and stay at this really fun hotel that has a water park in it.  Conveniently Auntie Jill found a hotel that is close to the Medford outlet mall so I am sure we will find time to make a stop there too.  We sure hope Grandma is surprised and she better find this post yet tonight because she needs to be on the road to meet Mommy and me by 10:00 tomorrow morning. 

So Grandma Becky pack your bags because we are going to meet you tomorrow (Friday) morning to drive up to Minnesota.  Cousin Parker and Auntie Jill are going to drive down to meet us too.  The hotel reservations are made so you are going to need to pack some clothes and especially your swimming suit so we can have fun at the water park. 

I love you Grandma Becky and am excited to see you tomorrow!

More Christmas

 Brayden was so funny this Christmas as he was not interested in opening presents but when we started to open them he was curious as to what was inside.  These are just a few fun pictures of him opening/enjoying some new gifts.  Most of all we had fun being able to be home with Brayden and enjoy spending time with him.

 Hmm, I wonder is inside.

 Brayden playing with his new "tracter"

Getting a turn to play Wii baseball all by himself.

 Sitting in his new chair from Santa.   Now Brayden has a reclining chair just like Daddy. 

Reading his new music book.  He knew just how to open it and put the cd's in.  One of Brayden's favorite activities (well after playing cars of course) is to read and I love that he will sit down and flip through books randomly throughout the day.  It makes me so happy!

Grandma Becky had this Hawkeye towel made for me and I love it.  It has my name and the number 5 on the back.

Christmas at Great Great Grandma and Grandpa's House

Here are a few pictures from when we went to Great Great Grandpa and Grandma's house to celebrate Christmas.  Cousin Parker got to go to so it was fun to play with him.  Here are some pictures from the day.  It won't take long to figure out what my favorite thing at their house was. 

 We went to the basement and Parker and I found the piano and we both sat and played it together.

 Great Aunt Linda showed me how to stack these boxes back at Thanksgiving and when we got to Great Great Grandma's house I immediately went looking for the boxes so I could stack them and drive my cars on them like a ramp.

 Cousin Parker and Auntie Jill being silly.

Parker thought my ramp was a good idea and he decided he wanted to try to help too.

Great Great Grandpa Norbert and me posing on his favorite chair. 

Santa brought us a...

Wii!

When we were opening our presents from Santa there was one final present to open that didn't have a name on it.  Brayden and Mommy decided to open it to see what it was.  We found out it was a present for our whole family.  It was a game we can all play together.  It was a Wii.   We have the couple of games that go with it and it is a lot of fun and even Brayden loves to play.   Daddy's favorite game is tennis.  Brayden loves to play baseball.   It is amazing how quickly Brayden learned to play.  He knows how to wear the wrist strap and hold the remote.  He even watches the screen and tries to play by himself.   It is a fun game for us to play together. 

Brayden's favorite game to play is baseball.  He is so sweet and will let others take a turn too.

He so takes after his Daddy.  When opening the Wii box Brayden immediately found the batteries.  He then went to the drawer and found the screwdriver.

Brayden and Daddy playing tennis together.

We have all created our Mii's.  We must have made them look pretty real because Brayden can identify them by looking at the screen.

Merry Christmas Part 1

This post is best described in pictures so here we go...

 Before we left for Christmas Santa made a quick stop a our house. Brayden's favorite presents were the little construction vehicles he received.  There were 2 outside of his stocking  and then more inside and once he figured out there were more he was very interested in looking in his stocking.  His favorite is the loader and the bulldozer.

 At Oma's house, Brayden and Grace were interested in all of Oma's Dept 56 houses she had set up.  Grace made sure Brayden didn't touch the "pretties".

 Grandma Becky was putting together boxes of cookies so Brayden decided to help.  Their job was to use all of the different kinds Grandma made together.  Brayden took this job very seriously.  He would even try to count the cookies as he put them in the box.  Then he would decide which one to do next in the box.

 Sledding at Grandma Becky and Grandpa Marc's house.  Grandpa blew up the inflatable tubes so it was a much smoother ride.  Brayden didn't like having so many layers on and the snow was so fluffy it was hard to walk in but once we got him on the sled he loved it.  Although upon getting to the bottom of the hill Brayden would say " I carry you."  I wish that is what he meant because I could have used some help getting up the hill but in reality he wanted us to carry him up the hill.

 Brayden got a doctor dress up kit for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa and he loves it.  He thought that the the vaccination looked like the thermometer they used at the doctors office so he was putting it in his ear to check his temperature.  He also would check Grandma and Grandpa's temperatures too. 

 Papa had a Harley train that he decided to put under their tree just like my train by the tree!  Brayden was so excited to be putting up a train.  It even goes automatically just like Brayden's geo trax.   Brayden and Grace loved watching the train go around the track.

 I got lots of Cricut cartridges for Christmas and I love them all!

 Brayden got a new bike from Oma and Papa and he was so excited.  I rode a bike early and Brayden loves going on bike rides so this was a great gift for this summer.  When Papa wheeled the bike out Brayden started jumping up and down and ran to the bike.  It is still a littler big for him but I am sure he will be riding before we know it.

 Brayden and Daddy love playing together!

Oma has a keyboard in her playroom and Brayden wanted to get it out and play it.  He sat down and played the keyboard for a long time.  Andrew tried to play and Brayden informed him, "No play now Daddy".  Apparently he wanted it to be just his turn. 

Stay tuned more pictures to come.

Baking Cookies

Brayden loves to do anything that we do, which includes baking!  So for Christmas I decided to take the easy way out for time purposes and we bought some prepared dough so all we would have to do was line them up on the pan.  Brayden thought that should be his job so he carefully counted all the way to 8 before losing track and starting over again.  He put them on the pan and then stood by the oven door as they baked.  When we took out the baked cookies he jumped up and down.  Next came the fun part frosting and sprinkles.  I did the frosting and let Brayden sprinkle the cookies.  Before starting we talked about how you would shake a little bit to decorate the cookie.  Brayden thought he needed to turn it upside down and then shake as hard as he could so he ended up covering the cookies in sprinkles.  Hopefully Santa likes cookies with extra sprinkles.

Arranging the sugar cookies on the pan.

Hi Mommy!  This is fun.

Brayden was so proud that he was doing this all by himself. 

Almost done.  Ready for the oven.

Checking on the cookies since the oven buzzer went off.

Let the sprinkle fun begin!  Half a bottle per cookie sounds good to Brayden.

We got through almost all of the cookies and then Brayden got concerned because he saw we didn't have many left so as I put them in a container Brayden picked one up took a bite and then giggled when I turned around.  He knew he wasn't supposed to have one and that he was sneaking a bite. 

Swimming

The other day I had swimming lessons and I asked Andrew if he would bring Brayden and when I was done with lessons I would take Brayden swimming.  Andrew and Brayden got there and I was sitting in the office and when Brayden saw the pool he got very excited.   I asked if he wanted to go swimming and he said "yeah".  We went swimming while Andrew went down to the gym to play basketball.  We swam for about 30 minutes and had so much fun.  Brayden was starting to get cold to we decided to get out.  We were getting dressed and this is the conversation I had with Brayden.

Me:  Brayden, I had a lot of fun swimming with you today. 

Brayden:  I had fun swimming with you too Mommy!

I love how quickly Brayden's vocabulary is growing and how he is able to communicate and have a conversation with us.  Brayden didn't want to leave the pool but when I said we were going to go downstairs to the gym to find Daddy it was suddenly ok.  As we were walking out the door Brayden said, "Bye pool I'll see you later". 

I didn't take any pictures of us swimming but I will add a picture just for fun.