Carving Pumpkins!

*last year*

Awe, looks like I had another pumpkin in my belly!
I can't believe how much has changed in one short year.
So. . . .

.bittersweet.

*this year*

On Tuesday, the whole family got together & we carved pumpkins!

I was sooo excited, cause it was Bransyn's first time (even though he didn't carve, haha)
But I thought he would love to feel all the 'guts' & seeds. . .
Ha, not so much.
Camden, however, had a blast playing in them ;)

Here are some pictures from our night!

Mr. B pickin out his pumpkin!

Look how cuuuute that face is! (:

Our family of pumpkins!

Grandma is goin to Vegas for Halloween, so she gave Bransyn & Camden their Halloween treats early. They got these buckets that had: 3 different toddler snacks, crackers, a realllly cool snack bowl, hat & mittens for winter and a glow stick! (:
I think he was a little more excited for that pumpkin, though! haha

His first ever feel of pumpkin guts!

haha, those don't taste so good, buddy!

haha, he eventually threw that on the floor cause he didn't want it on his tray.

Camden playin in all the guts!

Me & Ryan workin on our pumpkins!

Manda.

Ash.

Riley.

This is what the boys did while we were workin' hard! (:
(I guess Bransyn doesn't think he gets enough fiber?! haha)

He refuuuused to touch those again, so I just had to put a big 'ol glob on his arm.

Daddy showin Bransyn his 'scary' pumpkin.

All of us with our pumpkins!

FINISHEDDD! (:

It was fun to get with the whole family to do something, since it hardly ever happens.
I cannot wait until Bransyn is old enough to carve his own pumpkin & also to do all of the other fun Halloween activities!
But I can't believe this is his last first holiday :(

But I am SO excited for tomorrow!
My little monkey is gonna be sooo dang cuuute (:

11 Months! (& then some. . .)

Well, we're down to the last month of Bransyn's first year!
(okay, so I know I'm a few days late -- or a week -- on this post, but every time I sit down to do it, Mr. B wakes up, needs something or, I have to do something else first. But here it is now ;)

I still cannot believe how fast time has gone since he has been born. I seriously have to convince myself all the time that this is not a dream & I'm not gonna wake up to my 2 week old baby anymore. Even though I DO miss him being a newborn, I am SO loving this stage! He is the funnest, cutest, smartest, CRAZIEST little boy I have ever met! & I am beyond proud to be his mommy (:

So this past month, I have realized what a monkey my little man realllly is! He climbs on EVERY thing! We have to block him in the living room at home, so that he won't go into our entry room & eat the fake 'berries' off of one of my moms plant. So we were using those plastic storage tub things, lining 2 of them up from one wall to the other. (haha, tacky I know. . . but baby gates do NOT fit one spot in our house. Unless we were to spend like $300 for a huge one.) Well, he learned to climb over those! Now we have to stack them 2 high. Yeah, even more tacky ;) haha. I also have to block him into the living room at the house I babysit at, and he has figured how to climb over everything that I use there, as well! He climbs into the basket on the back of his stroller whenever it's out. He also climbs on the front part. He'll step on the little foot rest, pull up on the tray & just hang out there! He thinks it is H I L A R I O U S ! This morning he climbed on the table. haha, okay. . . it was a little kid table, but still. He got on the chair, & then up onto the table! He is starting to get up onto the couch. He likes to use his box of diapers as a stool. He knows how to lift the box (a full, unopened box of diapers! he's strong ;) & carry it over to the couch so that he can climb up to the couch! He climbs in & out of the excersaucer. What a stinker. Now do ya know why I was sooo determined to find him a monkey costume?! (:
He is obsessed with balls! He started playing with our big huge exercise ball, jumping on it, rolling it, anything. Then he went out into the garage with my mom one day, & kept pointing to a soccer ball that was out there. So they just had to bring it in! Shortly after that, he learned to say his new favorite word, BALL! Well, it sounds like he is saying 'bahh' but if you listen very carefully, you can her the L at the end. He knows exactly what a ball is, but he likes to call everything else a ball now, as well! haha. One day we were at walmart, & he kept pointing up to the security camera's saying ball, so we went over to the ball section & got him a big blue ball (: That's his favorite one!
He points at EVERYTHING. That's how we know what he wants now, & its actually pretty nice! But every time we take him over to what he wants, we tell him what it is so that he will learn to say it & not just point all the time. I'm scared that he'll get lazy on talking if we don't do that!
He gives kisses! That is my absolute favorite thing, and the best kisses ever (: The first time he did it, he thought it was the funniest thing. So I got about 25 kisses in a row. And I was actually the only one he would kiss for a while! He's given daddy a few, but I don't think anyone else yet. But I'm okay with that, since it seems like everyone's getting sick now!
He's still doing amazing with feeding himself 'real' food! He has 3 meals a day, that he feeds himself. Except he does have yogurt sometimes & I have to feed that to him, since he can't use a spoon yet! He really is loving all of this food! He's also doing SO good with his sippy. He knows that he has to tip it to get anything out. & he knows how to use his straw sippy, as well! He doesn't make me hold it for him anymore, he was refusing to hold it himself before! He's also holding his bottle himself. I know that seems really late for him to hold his own bottle, but since he was breast fed for 10 months, he's only been using a bottle for more then supplements or pumped milk, for a little over a month now!
He says 'OW' ALL the time. & even knows how to use it. If he falls down, or something he'll say ow. Or he'll smack me & say ow (for me! haha)
The other day when we were laying in bed, I had my eyes closed & he kept smackin my face saying 'UP!' haha. He also makes car noises! When he plays with a toy car, or gets on his little sit-on rider thing that grandma bought them, he says 'brum bruuummm!' It is the cutest thing!
He says mamama allll the time, & definitely knows that I'M mama.
I'm trying to teach him which face parts are which. He will point to my nose when I say 'where's mama's nose?!' & I've been working on mouth with him, he's starting to get it more, but gets confused a bit still.

Well that's an update on my little (big!) eleven month old!
Just over 3 weeks until he will be a whole year old!
Sooo bittersweet!

♥

Update on sleep training!

So it's been a few weeks since I started sleep training Bransyn, & he is still doing really good!
We've had a couple times that he'll wake up at 3 or 4, but for the most part, its between 5-7.
These past 2 days have been really good though, waking up at eight!
It's been so nice!

But I am still waking up to check on him, it's still freaking me out that he's sleeping that long!

He does still cry sometimes, but when he does, it's for literally 10 seconds, and then he is out.
That's usually just at nap time, though.
At bed time, he's pretty tired so it's pretty rare that he doesn't go right to sleep.


Sometimes he makes me just want to cry when I put him down, though!
When I walk him over to the crib, he will start holding onto my neck, & kind of whimper & cuddle me. He knows it's bed time, but he just wants to play & hang out with us!
It breaks my heart, so I just want to be able to rock him to sleep cuddling me. . .
but I know this has to be done.

Good thing he is SUPER happy in the mornings, or else I would feel even worse!
Every time I go get him out of his crib, I am greeted with a huuuge smile, arms up in the air & him saying 'mamama!'
That really is the best part of waking up. . . . ;)


After we wake up, we usually hang out in my bed for a while. We cuddle, he watches some 'toons on the TV (for like 2 minutes) and he climbs allll over me!
The other day, he actually kept telling me 'up!' when I was laying down, haha he was ready to go play! (:

My little animal!

A few weeks ago, we got some costumes that were marked down at Costco (Well, actually Teresa got them for us! haha) Since I was set on Bransyn being a monkey, I didn't choose any of these. But me & my mom still tried them on him for fun! He looked SO cute! He is the cutest little animal (orrr, multiple animals - haha!) That I have ever seen!

Here are a few pics :

Zebra!

Isn't the back of this one so cute?! I love the little tail (:


Cheetah!

And this one, obviously, is not an animal. . . but we still had to put it on him! (:
He wasn't too fond of it.

Pumpkin!

Isn't he so stinkin' cute?!


Can't wait to show off this little monkey next week
:D

Halloween cake!

So I decided to post pictures of the Halloween cake I just made to practice for Bransyn's birthday cake! ONLY because I decided to do a different design on this one. (: hahah.

It's definitely not perfect but, for my VERY first fondant cake AND layered cake, I think it turned out pretty good. I am SO glad I decided to practice before making Bransyn's real one. Because I have already learned a lot of things I need to do differently.

It was SO fun to make! I usually don't have fun cooking or baking, but I actually enjoyed this.

It did take quite a while to make, though.
I wanted to make the fondant a few days before I used it, because the recipe I used says that it usually turns out better if its refrigerated for a few days.
So I made that on Thursday night, after buying all the ingredients.
I think this was the funnest part.
It was SO gooey, & stuck to my hands a lot. I love playing with things like that!

Then I made the cakes on Friday, so that they could cool overnight.
I did a chocolate one & strawberry one.
I know, weird combo. I wanted to do chocolate & white, but they didn't have white cake. So I got strawberry.
The chocolate cakes came out PERFECT. I had to do the strawberry twice.
the first time, the middle of the cakes stuck to the pan, & completely ruined them. So I just threw them out. I thought it was maybe because they were still pretty soft. So the next time, I made sure to spray the pan EXTRA good (I did that the first time, too. But decided to do a bit more just to be sure it wouldn't stick) And I cooked them a little bit longer.
I took them out of the pan the next day, & what do ya know. Those ones stuck too!
What the heck?!
But they weren't as bad, so I just decided to stick the 'broken' parts back into the middle of the cake & make it work. I was out of cake mix. haha.
It ended up working okay, though.

So onto putting the cake together.
I frosted the cake with the buttercream icing & put the 2 layers together, then frosted the outside of it so that the fondant would stick.
It took me about 6 times to figure out how to get the rolled out fondant from the counter to the cake. Finally, I realized that I could roll it towards the middle on both sides, then lift it & move it onto the cake. That worked perfectly.

After getting all of the excess fondant off around the edges, it was time to do the top part!
So I got those cakes all cut out, frosted, layered & all that.
Then had to dye the fondant orange. (as well as my hands, haha)
That took a while, cause I couldn't get it dark enough.
When I finally did, I put that on the rest of the cake.
Then it was time to decorate.
I did all of that free-hand, so that's why it doesn't look like the lines are even or with the same amount of space between them. haha,

But I did use something for the circles. But they kept sticking to the counter, so they got kinda mis-shaped when I pulled them off to put them onto the cake.

It took probably around 3+ hours to just put the cake together. I don't even wanna imagine how much longer its gonna take to do Bransyn's, since his will be a lot neater & put together more carefully.

But here is the finished product!

I frosted the cake as much as the instructions told me to, but it was still way too much! you can kinda see how it's collapsing for that reason & also because the fondant was rolled a little too thick! The fondant being too thick also made it crack a bit. But since I already had it on the cake WITH frosting, I couldn't take it off to roll it more.

Things to remember for next time:
• roll fondant thinner.
• don't put so much buttercream frosting on the top & sides.
• make my OWN frosting, it's thicker.
• do not store cakes on top of each other after taking them out of the pan. the top one smooches the bottom one, making it thinner. Which makes the whole bottom part of the cake thinner.
• MEASURE the space between the stripes & get those straight.
• don't get corn starch on the top of the fondant. It's kinda hard to blend, haha!
• when layering the two cakes, put the bottoms together, or else it makes a big space in between the cakes. & it looks better.
• smooth the fondant as MUCH as possible!

I think that's all that I need to do differently, for the next cake to turn out better.

Here are some pictures of Bransyn licking the cake pan that Grandma gave him. He LOVED it.
He kept pointing the the real cake, cause he wanted more! haha

At least it was only the strawberry one, & not the chocolate one! haha
Or else mama would of never let that fly ;)

(you can kinda see my ruined cake in the background!)

So I decided on Bransyn's Halloween costume & got it! (:
He is gonna be the cutest monkey, ever!
This is what the costume looks like.

And boy, was it stressful trying to find this thing!
I went to the Halloween store in the mall, cause I knew they had it.
I looked all over for it, but couldn't find it.
So I asked someone that worked there if they had any left.
She found out, but it was size 2T.
Yeah right. Like my kid that is barely getting out of 6 month clothing is gonna fit in
a size 2T.

So I go to the other Halloween store in town.
No such luck.
They actually didn't have very many infant/toddler costumes to begin with.
(But 100's of adult ones, no joke. 2 HUGE walls covered, & about 10 isles.)

Well, I could not find ANY other cute costumes! I was determined to find this monkey.
So I went over to Partyland, they usually have a good variety of costumes.
I look at the infant section & they have the monkey I want!

But not at the price I want.
$40, not including tax.

SERIOUSLY?!?! I am not paying that much for an infant costume that my son is gonna wear once. I don't even pay that much for his outfits!

None of their other costumes seemed to be cute enough,
so I leave empty handed.

I thought about ordering online, but with all the shipping costs, it would probably be more then the $40 one.


I had pretty much given up on the monkey idea, so I began looking for other ideas.
I went back to the 2nd Halloween store I went to, & found a lion.
I was not that into it, but it was the best they had.
I was SO close to buying it, cause I was just so ready to be done with trying to find a stupid costume.

But I decided to look online again, to see if I could find any good deals.
Well, that same night was the night we went to the mall to get Bransyn & Camden's pictures done at Sears.
While the lady was getting them ready to view, we went out into the mall.
I went back into the Halloween store to see if I could find anything else in there.
(since I didn't really look for anything but the monkey the first time)

And guess what.
They must of got a whoooole new shipment of costumes within the past 3 days, cause there were about TEN monkey costumes!
And half of those were in Bransyn's size!

Ahh, I cannot tell you how freaking happy I was.
I could of swore the price was $25 the first time I went in,
but I ended up paying $30 for it.

Still to much to pay for an infant costume, in my opinion.
But I didn't care at that point.
I was just so happy that I found one.


Sooo, this is what lil man is gonna be dressed up as for his very first Halloween!
Don't worry, I'll post about a million pictures cause it looks SO cute on him ;)

1 down, 234785 to go!

I finally got Bransyn's birthday party invitations made!
Well, not quite MADE yet.
But Monday, I took my design into Steam Roller Copies & told the lady exactly what I wanted.
She said she'd get them made, send me a preview & they'd be done in a couple days.
Since I had it all drawn out & the pictures on a disc & labeled, she said it'd take MAYBE half an hour to get everything laid out & ready for me to see.

Hmm. Day 3.
Still no preview.


I am getting VERY impatient waiting for this preview!
I'm pretty sure I've checked my e-mail about 80 times in the past 2 days.

I want to make sure everything is perfect so that I'm not sending invitations out 2 weeks before his party. I would of LIKED to have them out 6 weeks before the party, but had to wait for Bransyn to turn 11 months for the picture.


ANYWAYS, I'll stop complaining about the invitations taking so long.
It feels good to have at least that much done. . .

That is until I think about how much I still have to plan & get done.

• I found a design for a cake that I am going to try to make.
It's made with fondant, & I've never made a cake with that before. & to tell you the truth, I'm not even close to being the worlds best baker.
I suck at making cakes, actually.
BUT, I really am gonna try my best!
I really want him to have a great cake for his first birthday.
(and I definitely can't afford to have someone make a nice one)

I'm gonna do a 'test run' this weekend with the same design, just do it in Halloween colors (& without his name & a big 1 on it, haha)
That way I'll kinda know what I'm doing & have a teensy bit of experience before I make the important one!
Hopefully it turns out good!

MAYBE I'll post pictures of how this test run goes. . . I might want it to be a surprise of what his cake is gonna look like.
But who knows, maybe if it turns out good, I'll be so proud of myself I'll have to post pics. ;)
Here's to wishful thinking that it'll turn out good!

• I still gotta think of what his 'smash cake' is gonna look like.
Hmm.


• I know the colors & 'theme' I'm gonna do.
I'll get everything I need for that probably after Halloween is done with.

• I have absolutely NO ideas for games/activities, ect. to do.
If anyone has ANY ideas, please please please share!
I'm open to any! (:

I want to do a pinata for all the kids, but since we're having the party at my house, I don't know where that can be done at :/
I'll figure it out!


• I haven't gone shopping for even ONE of his birthday gifts.
I suck.
A few months back, Ryan & I decided on everything we were gonna get him, but some of the things I don't think he'll be interested in anymore. SO, I don't have very many ideas on what to get him now.


• I need more ideas on party favors for the kids.


I know there's more, but I think these are the most important ones!

I'm have so much to do, & so little time!
Can you believe my lil man is gonne be one in LESS than a month?!

My genius.

Earlier today, I was in the hallway getting some towels out of my bedroom & the bathroom to wash. Bransyn came with me & was just sittin there playing with cup. I asked him, "Bransyn, where's your ball?!" And he says "bah? bah?" & takes off back down the hall into the living room. I just thought he was going to play. But to my surprise, he comes back carrying his soccer ball, saying "bah!" & then started laughing!
I was SOOO proud of him. He is reallly starting to understand things a LOT better now.
He also knows where 'nose' is. I'll say to him "nose?" & He'll point to my nose, or whoever else is around! haha, he won't do it to his own quite yet, but it's still good. (:

It's crazy how you can be so proud of someone for doing something so little.
I don't think I have ever been more proud of anyone for doing something, then I am of B when he does new things.

Staheli Farm!

Yesterday, Me, Ryan, Bransyn, Amanda, Bryce, Camden & Kalei went out to Staheli Farm out in Washington.
I wanted to get some pictures of Bransyn & Camden in their matching outfits that my grandma got for them. Which, by the way are 3-6 months & are just NOW fitting both of them perfectly! We got lucky on this one, since the outfits are meant to be worn in cold weather! Anyways, so I wanted pictures of Bransyn with all the pumpkins, so I thought it would be fun to do both of their pictures there! I'll post those pic's as soon as I'm done editing a few.

We got to go on the 'wagon' that took us up to the pumpkin patch.
I always love goin on that, I think it's so much fun! haha

Not knowin what to think!

The 3 of us (eh, don't mind how icky I look!)

Bransyn was SO curious about everything that was going on! He just kept looking around trying to figure out where we were at. But he loved the ride (:

Kalei was a little scared to go on the wagon at first, but then she had fun! She kept telling me 'Look, no hands!' haha

Manda, Bryce & Cam!


After we took pictures, Ryan, Bransyn, Kalei & I went over to the petting zoo to see all the animals. (Manda, Bryce & Cam left)

Bransyn looking at the little pony's!

And the chickens. . .
Turkeys. . .
Kalei with the goats & sheep.
B pointin at the goats!
Lookin at the biiig fat piggy!
Bransyn & daddy with some more goats & llama's!


After we saw all the animals, Kalei wanted to go on the 'cow train' so I went with her. I was SO excited, cause I secretly wanted to go on it reallly bad ;) haha

Before the ride. . .
Just startin to go. . .
Annnd, after the ride. We both had a blast!


Kalei got to go on this little horsey ride. There's like 5 'horses' made out tires, & it just goes in circles. It was pretty cool & she was so excited!

Me & my handsome little man!


I had so much fun & I love doing things with family! (even though it was only a part of the fam)
I took over 200 pictures! But I guess we DID have a little photoshoot! haha, but I love having the memories! I really wanna go back before the end of the month. And maybe go through the corn maze. The normal one. . . the haunted one is too scary for me now days. hahah
I can't wait for Bransyn to get older so he can enjoy these kinds of things a little more, even though he did have fun. (: