Peek-a-Boo

Happy Turkey Day (times 2)!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We spent Thursday out at Brining's house. Then, we had my family Thanksgiving on Saturday. We have so much to be thankful for and it was wonderful just spending time together as a family!

Gobble, gobble!!!! :)

Audrey thought Norah's hair needed a little brushing





 

Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Erin

Oh, what a baby will do to grown-ups!  Aunt Dinah and Uncle Kenny talking to Norah

Where has the time gone?

HAPPY 5TH ANNIVERSARY TO THE LOVE OF MY LIFE!!!!!  Five years has flown by and I look back at everything that has happened in the last five years and what a journey it has been.  And now to make our 5th anniversary that much more special, we get to spend it with our beautiful little girl!  We are so blessed!

Flashback to our wedding, 5 years ago today! 

Yes, we are alive! :)

Yes, we are still alive. Life since Halloween has been chaos. Between school, Masters work (which I am done in 4 weeks!!!!!! Whooooohoooooo!!!!!) taking care of Norah, spending time together as a family and keeping the house up I haven't had a spare moment to sit down and update the blog. So here it is. I have about 3 or 4 posts in one, so make sure you read through the whole thing. Lots of exciting things happening in the Brining household. Enjoy!

Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Erin were home a couple weekends ago to visit. It was great seeing them! It was the first time since they have been married and since they returned from their 'eventful' honeymoon!

Tira giving Norah kisses!



Tira: "What is this thing my Daddy is holding?"

We arrived at Bri and Kyle's on Friday night and
Bri made an excellent dinner for us.  Her spinach
and meat lasagna was so pretty I had to take a
picture!



Yummy, yummy lasagna!

Norah and her Uncle Kyle :)  Preparing him for his little one that is due in May!

Auntie Bri and Norah

ooooo.....just the big boy Gus!  He loved giving Norah kisses!

Auntie Lyndsey and Norah.  Lynds and Grant are
having their first baby in February.  They are
having a little boy....so Norah is going to have
a little boyfriend to play with!!!!! 

Bri is hardly showing (Due May 10th) and Lyndsey just has
a cute basketball under her shirt (Due February 19th)!!!

The girls enjoying their non-alcoholic drinks!

The boys, Kyle, Grant, and Drew

Norah started rice cereal on Wednesday.  She absolutely loves it!
She does such a great job eating off of the spoon.  I swear she has
gotten chubbier the last three days since she started eating it!  She
is just getting so big!

Norah slept in until 8:26am on Saturday.  We always have to wake her
up out of a deep sleep during the week to get ready to go to daycare.  I
have a feeling she is going to be a sleeper like her Mommy.  The difference
between her and me though...............

she wakes up a happy girl......me, not so much!!! 
Love her!!!

Our Lil' Punkin!

Norah celebrated her first Halloween tonight. We had a great time 'trick-or-treating' and seeing all of the kids stop by the house for trick-or-treating. It is always so fun every year seeing kids from school stop by to see 'the other Mrs. Brining' and myself. I told Drew today that it is wild to think that last year at this time I was about one week pregnant and now here we are with our lil' punkin all dressed up and almost 15 weeks old. Amazing!

Norah's first art project she did at daycare!

My first Halloween!!!!  :)

Smiley girl!

Our first trick-or-treating stop....Grammy and Papa's!

Our second stop....Grandma and Grandpa's!

Our third stop......Great-grandpa's, where Aunt Dinah and Uncle Kenny met us too!

Our Halloween hair!

Lilly, Norah, and Audrey....two strawberries and a 'pumpkin ballerina', I guess you could call her!

Drew and I laughed so hard at this picture.  Lilly just looks like she is talking so intently and Norah is getting ready to talk back!
Lilly: "And then we went to Grammy and Papa's and got lots of candy....did you go there?"
Norah: "Yeah, that was our first stop.  Grammy drew me a pumpkin and gave me some M&M's.  Aren't those your favorite candy?"



All of Norah's daycare friends.  Mrs. Nancy, Mrs. Karen, and Mrs. Heidi wrangling all of the babies up for a Halloween picture.



Excersaucer experience

Since Norah still hates tummy time (we are working on it and she is getting better, but still not her favorite!) we have been trying to strengthen her neck and back in other ways. Since she has been holding her head up on her own, I thought I would try her excersaucer. She didn't quite know what to do with it, but she loved looking at the little orange smiley face! I think she is going to get a lot of use out of this!

The two 'monsters' playin' together!  :)

"HHMmmmmm....what are all these new toys!?"






"AAANNNDDDDD....I'm done!"




Just had to add this picture because it is so adorable!



We made it!!!!

Well, we made it through our first day back to work and daycare. There were many, many tears shed in bed last night and then I broke down as soon as I walked in the daycare this morning. We got Norah situated in her room and by the time we left she was playing on the playmat on the floor, smiling and kicking! That made it easy for me to walk out the door without an extra tear. Nancy, her caregiver, called me at about 11:00am and left a message on my phone to let me know she had a great morning, took a good nap and sucked down her entire bottle. I had a great day at work and have a fabulous class. I am really looking forward to this school year and all the fun stuff we are going to do. I picked Norah up at about 3:45pm and she was a little overstimulated, I think. She was just sort of staring up at the ceiling and wouldn't even look at me. There were just a lot of new noises and things going on. I know she will get used to it. By the time we were out in the car her eyes were closed and she was ready to sleep. We got home, snuggled for a bit, she slept, I unpacked all of her stuff, Drew snuggled and fed her while I ran to the store, dinner, bath, bottle, bed. That was our night! The only thing that made me so sad was we didn't have very much time with her from the time we got home to the time she went to bed. Thank goodness for weekends! We are really looking forward to this one!!!! Thanks for reading everyone and for the kind and encouraging words today! We really appreciate it!

Us before we leave for work and daycare!!!

Daddy and Norah before her big day!



Phew.......we made it!!!  Both exhausted, snuggling on the couch!




Daddy's turn to cuddle.  This is how she was the rest of the night.  She woke up, had a bath, ate and went to bed at 8:30pm.  What a sweetheart!  On to the next day......