Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Christmas, and we're going private!

Finally, I've decided it's time to update our sad blog! I'm so tired and grouchy lately that I haven't felt like doing much of anything. As of today I only have 30 days left and I don't know who's more relieved, me or Jake! It will be a challenge to have a newborn and a toddler but it will be so nice to not be pregnant anymore...
Christmas this year was a lot of fun for us. I only got a few pictures because the flash on our camera is broken! When we were in Denver I dropped it on the sidewalk (a few times) and apparently it damaged it permanently. It was so funny because at the time we thought it was so cool that it survived the fall! Anyways, we discovered the broken flash Christmas morning. Pretty sad that we didn't notice it before then...
Sayer is so much fun at this stage and so frustrating at the same time! He is finally grasping the concept of Christmas and Santa Claus, sort of. When we were putting up our Christmas tree I tried getting him to say it and all I could get was "trick or treat!". So for the whole season every tree was a trick or treat and every time he saw Santa, he said "trick or treat-thank you!". He was excited to open his presents this year, however!
Santa brought Sayer a little trampoline this year. Unfortunately, he forgot to assemble it so Santa's helpers (aka, Mom and Dad) had the pleasure of putting it together Christmas Eve! It went fine, except when we discovered some holes that were missing in the bars and had to go track down a drill at 11:30 that night to fix it. But it was an adventure and he was so excited to see it!
Once again, sorry about the image quality. We're working on getting a new camera before Sari gets here!



Notice that he has a ring pop on each hand. He got two of them in his stocking and insisted on having them both opened. So he walked around most of the morning with them on his fingers and we had to hide them so he wouldn't try to take them to Grandma's!

He had so much fun opening presents! He also got his very own tools (which are VERY noisy) and some other fun toys. Jake and I were supposed to go easy on gifts for each other since we went to Denver last month, and of course he didn't listen and bought way too much! I got a new Fossil watch and some boots, along with a bunch of smaller gifts and all poor Jake got was new shoes, some clothes, and a game for the Wii.

We had a great morning at Lilya's opening presents and spent some time at Grandma Davis's too; it's kind of our tradition. After we left there we went home to take a "short" nap and ended up sleeping til six that evening! My mom finally called us wondering where the heck we were and we ended our Christmas with them. It was a good day and I realized how much I didn't really care what I got; it was so much more fun to see Sayer opening his gifts and to see others open our gifts for them! Such a change from being a spoiled teenager :)

Now that the holidays are over, we've embarked on a new adventure: potty training! Sayer is doing pretty well; he has some bad days but I think by the time the baby comes he'll be pretty well trained. He is loving his "unnawear" and being a big boy!


Sayer has also discovered doing dishes. It's now one of his "chores" and I have a hard time dragging him away from the sink! He loves it!


He and his dad are such good friends. He used to be a mommy's boy, but he's discovered that Dad does some pretty cool stuff and loves hanging out with him now. Besides working on Grandma's house, he's discovering the "snowmo" this year and last weekend, he got all his clothes and begged Dad to take him for a ride on the "snowmo"! How can you resist that?



The goggles he's wearing aren't his actual snowmobile goggles. They actually came with a toy tool set, but he found them and put them on. They're fogging up in this pic but he refused to take them off because he was going for a ride on the "snowmo"!

Isn't he cute!

So that's what we've been up to! And as for the "going private" part, we've decided it's time! Leave a comment with your email, or email it to me at mcbramy@isu.edu. We'll be making the switch at the end of the month to give everyone time to get us their emails. Don't be shy about sending me your email; if you're reading my blog I'm probably stalking yours too! We just want to prevent strangers from reading about our kids, so as long as we know you you're welcome to an invite!

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Baby update

I have been a little lax on my blogging for the past little while. The last month of school was really stressful and busy and I didn't really have time to do fun things like blogging and oh, sleeping, for a few weeks! I will take the time later to update everything we've been up to, but I just wanted to post a quick update on our baby girl.

I went to the doctor yesterday and everything is right on schedule! I'm 31 weeks along right now. She is growing like crazy and sitting really high right now; last month I grew 7 centimeters when I should have only grown around 4. So I'm a little miserable with cute little feet, hands, and elbows in my ribs, but I'm glad she's healthy. At our big hospital ultrasound around 24 weeks, she was all ready measuring a week ahead of her due date and she's still growing. I have a feeling she's going to be bigger than her brother!

Yesterday was also the day we scheduled the big event. It was a little hairy at first. Dr. Larson told me we'd take her two weeks early to lessen the chances of me going into labor, and because my dates are so good he decided to let me go a few days earlier than that since my 38 week mark is a Sunday. So we decided to try for February 5, which is a Friday. The hospital only schedules C-sections on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. He warned me while we were talking that the hospital only does one C-section on Mondays and Fridays, so if someone all ready had it scheduled we'd have to pick another day.

Of course, knowing my luck, someone had all ready scheduled the 5th, but we decided to try anyways. They wouldn't let me schedule Monday the 8th as a backup, so I was a little nervous that someone would snatch that day up and I'd have to wait until the 10th (not that I wouldn't love for her to share your birthday, Em Harding :) I just got the call that they've decided to allow an extra C-section that day, so our daughter's birthday is officially the 5th of February! (That is, assuming she waits until then and doesn't decide to surprise us.)

We've also picked a name: Sari Louise Lilya. (Sari is pronounced like "Sara" with an "e" on the end). Louise is the name of my grandma who was baptized a few months ago. We felt like this was an appropriate tribute to the lady we love so much! And yes, I do realize that Sayer and Sari begin with the same letter and are very similar. Just FYI, this wasn't done on purpose. We aren't trying to be cutesy and make all our kids' names match; we just happened to like Sari and so that's the name we settled on! And yes, I also realize that I'll probably spend half my life mixing them up. We don't really care about that. ;) If you haven't guessed yet, we've gotten a lot of these types of reactions from people so far!

So it's official: six weeks from Christmas day our baby girl will be here! We can't wait!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?!?!?

If you're my friend on Facebook, you've probably been seeing my status updates about going to Denver for Monday Night Football. (If you're not my friend on Facebook-why the heck aren't ya?)

My family are huge NFL fans, even though we all support different teams. A few months ago, we found out that some friends of my parents were chartering a bus to Denver to watch the Steelers v. Broncos game this week. They are all HUGE Steelers fans (as is my dad)! My parents, Sean and Diana, and Jake and I decided to join the fun and bought our tickets for the Steelers Express.

Jake is a lifelong Broncos fan and it's always been a dream of his to see them play live. It worked out perfectly being so close to Christmas and we just decided to make this our Christmas to each other since we never get to go anywhere without Sayer and it will be so much harder with another baby!

I am a Patriots fan but of course I supported the Broncos. Sean and my mom are both Cowboys fans but also wore blue and orange for the game, and Diana doesn't really care so she just followed Sean's lead :)

I have so many pics that this post will probably be huge, but the experience was so awesome I can't really cut it down!

Jake on the bus ride there. He was so excited!!!


Diana somewhere in Wyoming


Most of the 53 people on the bus stayed in the same hotel. Most of them were also Steelers fans. We kind of bombarded the lobby all at once and it took us an hour to get all checked in! These are just the check-inners...the rest of us were behind me watching the Sunday Night Football game.


I told them this reminded me of the two brothers who fought on opposite sides of the Civil War :)


Our first view of Invesco Field

My cousin Jake lives in Denver and luckily didn't have to work Monday. He wanted to hang out with us so he took us all to the 16th Street Mall, which is just a long road with lots of shops and restaurants for us to play in.


Walking to the mall...we got a lot of honks and shouts because of our Steelers fans!


The rest of us walking to the Mall...the Steelers fans here are the Reeds (Jeff, Ginger, Chandler, and Keegan). They're good family friends who are a blast to hang out with! We were excited they decided to come with us to the Mall. I about ate it walking backwards to take this pic.


It was beautiful weather in Denver! We were really lucky.


Jake's my train man. He was disappointed we didn't get time to go into Union Station.


Here's the girls waiting on lunch at Hard Rock: Mom, Chandler, Ginger, and Diana. You can see Jeff in his Jeff Reed jersey (the kicker for the Steelers is also named Jeff Reed...how cool is that?)


Just waiting to order


Jakey and Mom


If you look really hard you can see the Hard Rock Denver sign behind us


All 11 of us...we had the nicest server who suggested standing on a chair to get this great pic! Talk about earning a tip!


Mom and Dad

After walking back to the hotel (I was pretty much over the walking thing by now, and we still had to walk to the game!) it was game time! We walked (AGAIN...so so much walking and my body wasn't liking it) to Invesco Field and stopped to snap a few pics.

Now, you have to know the story behind our attire. Diana and I were talking about how expensive NFL gear is and how we needed to find something cheap to wear. Jake and I went to Fanz that night and found these shirts on clearance for six bucks! Luckily they had all our sizes so I called Diana and snagged them up-so yes, we all matched, but we also had the cheapest outfits at the game. As Diana said, "It's six bucks!"




My belly EXPLODED in Denver...it's almost as big as Jake's now, ha ha :)


So sickeningly cute


Mom and Dad...we think they need marriage counseling to sort out their football differences :)


Our first view of the field...we were on the 37th row so we could see it really well!


Sean and Diana




"Big Ben" warming up (black hat)


ESPN dudes doing the pre-show...we think the guy on the right is Steve Young. Sorry this is such poor quality...I was taking it through binoculars! Very inventive and even more difficult...


We were on the Steelers side. It got a little ugly :)


I got a little better with the binoculars. This is the opposite end of the field!


The Bronco tunnel. It was awesome and they put it up in about two minutes!


It was beautiful weather in Denver. We didn't even need coats for the game!

It was a quick trip but so much fun. The bus ride home was a little miserable (we had some bus problems and got stuck in Rawlins, WY for awhile while they fixed it) and we didn't get home until 10:00. But all in all, we had a blast and hope we can do it again!

Halloween

I am a little behind on my blogging. My lovely husband crashed my computer last week and I was without for about four days. Talk about withdrawals!!! Luckily, his bro was able to retrieve our pics and documents before he reset the whole thing. So, here's Halloween a little late :)

Sayer was a lion for Halloween. He's really into Madagascar right now and loves to roar like Alex the Lion. It took FOREVER to get his costume on but we did it and headed over to our trunk-or-treat! It was over really quickly, so we decided to visit Grandma and Grandpa Lilya's ward and ended up staying for theirs as well...it was fun to have all of the grandkids except 2 there together!


This is the best pic we could get of him all night. Cole was taking him around for the costume parade before the trunk-or-treat and I yelled at them to stop so I could get one picture!


After the candy gathering, we trick-or-treated Bampa McBride (Bama was out of town, darn it!). Say got even more candy there, but he was a little sick of his costume by now.



Our last stop for the night was "Bama Dabis" (Great-grandma Davis). We ran into a lot of Jake's family there and ended up talking for awhile before we headed home.

Halloween is always so much fun for us! Here are Sayer's past costumes:

Last year he was a missionary...


And for his first Halloween he was a little chick. We always have so much fun choosing costumes...might not be so much fun when he has an opinion about it!

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Grandma's Baptism

Yesterday our family was privileged to witness my grandmother's baptism. What an amazing woman she is! She will be 70 next month and just started going back to church about a year ago, after receiving an amazing blessing from the Lord that enabled her to make it through an extremely risky surgery with no complications. The experience touched her so much that she started going to church and thanks to an amazing bishop and ward and the support of her family, she entered the waters of baptism last night.


Grandpa Gene baptized Grandma, but she was worried he wouldn't be able to lift her out of the water. So Bishop Packham suited up to assist.


Grandma and Gene with some of their great-grandkids, plus my cousin Paige on the far left


Grandma and Gene with three of Grandma's eight kids: Uncle Billy, Uncle David, and Mom. Sayer wouldn't let go of Grandma, so he snuck into a few of these pics!


Four generations-too bad Sayer wouldn't look at the camera :)


Grandma was really tired of pictures by this point, but we had to get one of the two of them! We are looking forward to going to the temple with them in a year and being sealed eternally to our beloved Grandpa and Grandma Wowo :)

We are so proud of Grandma and her decision to be baptized! How blessed we are as a family to have this lady in our lives.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Family Pics part 1

Just a quick preview of some family pics Kandice took of us this weekend! Jake and I have never had family pics taken with Sayer; we always had excuses not to because we both hate pictures. But these look pretty darn good, I think! They are unedited, so some of them need to be cropped and such, but I just wanted to post the few she's gotten to me so far!








Saturday, October 3, 2009

Happy birthday, Bampa!!!

I'm a few days late with this because we don't have internet hooked up at our new house yet (I'll explain that in a later post when I get pics up), but I just wanted to wish "Bampa"(That's what Sayer calls his grandpas) McBride happy birthday!!! My dad's birthday was Thursday. He was traveling home from a business trip that day, but we still got to make him dinner and his favorite oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to greet him when he got home.

Here's a few reasons why we love "Bampa" :

He LOVES his grandkids. Sometimes Grandma has to tell him to settle down because he forgets he's not a kid, too!



He has lots of fun toys for us to play with, and he's always willing to take us!



  • He's willing to do whatever the Lord asks of him, even if it means giving up life's comforts for a few days.

  • Like I said. He forgets he's a grown up sometimes :)


Happy birthday Bampa Mac! We love ya lots!