We Miss You Grandpa!

On July 19th my Grandpa Nacey passed away. Oh, we miss him! We had his funeral yesterday and it was so fun to celebrate his life. He sure lived!!! He was an incredible man and left such an amazing legacy for us. Wasn't he handsome?! This picture was taken after the funeral. We got a four generation picture with my grandma, my dad, me and Brooklyn.

Here is Kyle and Mya wreaking havoc after the funeral. I swear these two trouble makers are inseparable! Even though they see each other almost every day it's such a drama every time we part them. Kyle is protective of his cousin, too. He does not like other people touching Mya and he'll let you know about it! We love having Jason and his family live across the street!

There is my beautiful mother and my beautiful daughter!

Now here is a group of boys you don't want to mess with...and I'm serious! From left to right there is Josh, Bart, Christian, Justin, Jason, and Kurt.

Here I am with my sisters and mom.

Because of the funeral we were able to get our entire family together. This hasn't happened in a long time. We were lucky to get Rachael and Justin here all the way from NY. It was SO wonderful to have the whole family together. I'm going to attempt to name everybody below!

The very left guy is my younger brother, Kurt. Next to him is Justin and Rachael. Above them is Jason, Rachel and their boy, Dax. Their two little girls are Kaylee and Mya right in front of my mom. In the middle is my Mom and Dad. Behind my dad is Josh, Jesika (their little boy is still cookin') and their two little girls (Kenady and Presley) are in the front in the black and white dresses. To the right of my dad is Bart, Melissa and Bailey. And we are on the right. Christian is holding Brooklyn and Kyle is in the front with all the girls!
(For anybody interested, my actual siblings are as follows: Joshua, Jason, Melissa, Rachael, Me and Kurt)

Potty Trained!!!!!!!

So I don't know when you consider someone officially "Potty Trained" but I think Kyle is pretty much there, and I couldn't be happier!!!! He wears his underwear all day, even on our outings. I don't even really have to remind him to go. He is really good at just telling me he has to go, and sometimes he just goes without even telling me first! He still needs to wear a pull-up at bedtime so some may not consider him potty-trained, but it's good enough for me! We're saving a fortune each month on diapers!!! I've mentioned before about the crazy amounts of water he drinks everyday and I was worried that that would make it super hard to potty train him, but I actually think it has helped. I was reading that often when parents are having a hard time potty training they limit their water intake, but what they are actually supposed to do and have them drink lots and lots to increase the size of their bladder. I think Kyle has a bladder the size of a camel. He can hold it for a long time! Yeah for my big boy! I just noticed the wipes and diaper in the picture...I promise that was from changing Brookie right before!:)

Brooklyn Laughing

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

Petite Little Princess

Brooklyn had her 9 month well-check a couple of days ago and she is measuring up pretty small! She is in the 15th percentile for weight and 5th percentile for height. Hmmm...I wonder where she gets that! We also learned that she has a milk allergy. We had suspicions, but it was confirmed. The doctor said that most kids grow out of it by two, so hopefully Brookie will! She is pretty sensitive to it so that made the doctor a little nervous, but we are to just wait it out until she is two. If she hasn't out grown it then we will have to go see an allergist from there. On a happier note, she has been doing something kind of funny lately. She grabs her cheerios with her index finger and thumb and takes bites of them. She'll take like 3 or 4 bites of one little cheerio! I don't know why that is so funny to me! I finally finished decorating her room...at least for now. Here is the wall I painted. My dad painted the pink for me and I did the brown stripes. I also painted the magnet board and her name. You can't really see the sparkles on the letters, but they are super cute.

I fell in love with this board as soon as I saw it. It's hanging up over her window.

Christians step-mom, JoDeane, helped me re-cover the glider chair (okay - she did the whole thing)!

Deadwood, South Dakota

We had a few other really annoying setbacks on our way home, but all-in-all it went well! The kids did amazing! We had so much fun visiting with family while we were there. We saw cousins we hadn't seen in 7 years! My grandparents house brought back a flood of memories! The picture below is the first day we were there. Kyle felt terrible and zonked right out on the couch. He was sick pretty much the whole trip, but he was such a good boy! Kyle and the girls!! These are Kyle's cousins and as you can see, he's way out numbered. I don't think he minds it, though. He LOVES his cousins so much. They have a ball together!

Here is my whole family (except my sister, Melis and her husband and baby girl) Everyone is looking at the camera except our little family!

Here are all the grand kids, except Bailey

Here are my twin brothers, Josh and Jason. Josh is a knucklehead and will never smile for the camera. I demanded a smile and this is what I got!

And there is my beautiful sister, Rachie (she's the one standing)! She came all the way from New York and it was so much fun to see her! We miss her terribly when she's gone! Jesika is sitting and she is Josh's wife and is 5 months pregnant with a little boy. Yeah!

Drama, Drama, Drama

You know the saying "Deer in the headlights look?" Well, we got to experience that literally, and then .02 seconds later we got to see the "deer on the windshield look!" We drove to South Dakota for a family reunion and have had all kinds of drama. It's about an 11 hour drive, but a lot longer than that when you have to stop constantly because your 2 year-old threw up about 5 times in the car. We drove all night so that the kids could sleep and got there at about 5:30 in the morning. When we were about 20 miles out we hit a deer and it was very, very scary. I screamed like a crazy woman (I was driving) and then woke the kids up to join the heavenly choir! We feel pretty blessed that nobody got hurt. Our car suffered a little bit of damage, but I've heard of some pretty crazy stories about deer causing very serious accidents. We are just so grateful that we weren't hurt and that our car still runs. I'm not really looking forward to our drive home tomorrow (especially since Kyle just threw up again after we put him down tonight) but hopefully all will go well and we will make it safely! We will post pictures of our trip here soon.