Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Santa came to our ward Christmas party.  It was a MUCH better experience this year.  No tears for either of them -- of course Briella was too young to know what was going on.  Braxton even tried to tell him what he wanted for Christmas--so cute!  Since the party, we've been to the mall twice and he has to walk by Santa several times each trip and keeps trying to run to him saying, "I get Santa".

O Christmas Tree

I love my tree.  I wish I could keep it up all year long.

November & Thanksgiving

Early in November, Briella started smiling a lot.  Of course she won’t do it with a camera in her face yet.  She also gained a lot of neck strength, so she can sit in some fun toys.  She also is starting to take interest in rings and other stuff that go straight to her mouth!  But here are some of the almost smiles I caught.

We spent Thanksgiving week up in Park City with Brian’s dad, grandma, uncle & cousin. We stayed in a great condo. It was the first time the four of us have stayed in the same room together and it worked just fine. The only problem was getting Braxton to bed quietly, since Briella was already asleep. It was good to just relax, hang out, & watch movies. I also got to shop like a crazy person on Black Friday at the outlet mall. Shopping goes SO much faster when you are by yourself, but I was on a dead run for the whole 2 ½ hours between Briella’s feedings. I felt like I was stealing clothes! At one store, between the Black Friday deals and my coupons, I only paid 10% of purchase price. Like whole outfits for $1-$4. CRAZY!

The week after Thanksgiving, Brian took off work and we headed down to St. George to visit my parents. They moved into a new house, so Brian spent some time moving furniture around and I helped my mom do her Christmas cards and such. I LOVE St. George. I wish Brian could eventually find a job down there. Here’s a picture of Brax getting in the hot tub with the big boys. All in all, it was busy & great November with lots of family and traveling.

Halloween

Braxton has really loved the Toy Story movies and particularly Buzz Lightyear this year, so we wanted him to be Buzz for Halloween.  We ordered his costume online because by the time we decided on Buzz, they were sold out of Buzz costumes in Utah County in his size.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get the costume in time for our ward Halloween party and we had to come up with something else that night.  Brian screen printed a BYU logo on a white polo shirt with the name Coach Neilson, which he wore with navy blue sweatpants.  Coach Rob Neilson is a men’s BYU volleyball coach who lives in our ward.  We didn’t tell him about the costume and it was so funny when Rob showed up to the party in pretty much the same outfit since he just came from work.  We wondered if people would get it, so it worked out great that they looked alike.  Rob’s wife, Sarah, took a picture of the two Coach Neilsons.

We finally got Braxton’s real costume the day before we took off for Idaho to spend Halloween with family. He LOVED being Buzz and would run around really fast like he was flying. We went trick-or-treating with my brother’s kids, Sienna & Savona. Their neighborhood is so fun and I actually ran into a guy I used to work with that moved in around the corner from my brother. It really is a small world.

The trick-or-treating experience wasn’t great this year. It was SO cold and at the second house we went to, the teenage boys who lived there answered the door with scary masks and roared. Brax totally freaked out and wouldn’t go up to any door until it was open and the candy bowl was lowered by a nice normal person. Then a couple houses later, my poor niece Sienna threw up all over her coat and costume. She went trick-or-treating at her preschool that day and ate way too much candy and felt really sick. Poor girl!!

Briella was a butterfly. We borrowed the costume from our friend Ashlie and it worked great. It kept her nice and toasty and she slept through the trick-or-treating back at my brother’s house, since it was way too cold for her outside.

We had a great week in Idaho with the family. Brax even got to cook his own hotdog over the fire.