Halloween 2009

Halloween this year was alot of fun. We went trick-or-treating all day! We went with some good friends to downtown Logan, a couple of grocery stores, and the mall during the day where they had the fire trucks out passing out candy to the kids. And then ended the day trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. It was long an tiring, but we made it. I also had a halloween party with some of my friends earlier in the week and here are our awesome costumes.

Jackson's 4th B-day

For Jackson's birthday, we took him to a corn maze and rode the tractor through the haunted scarecrows cornfields. It was alot of fun and I can't beleive my little buddy is 4 already. He is such a little ball of sunshine everyday. It amazes me how cheerful he is all the time. His favorite things are: his cars, his transformers, his blue blanket, his big sister Skyler, and his computer time.

2nd grade and new baby is healthy!

It's a BOY! We took Skyler with us to the ultrasound to find out. She was less than thrilled to find out it's a boy, but has come around to the idea now. I have to admit, I was really hoping for a girl, but thought Jackson would at least be happy. Nope. He was the most upset out of anyone, and for days following the appointment, he would get mad at anyone who called the baby his brother, because he was having a baby sister, and he wants two of them. I don't know where all that came from, but now that we're throwing names around, he's a little happier. They did a more extensive ultrasound, as they have classified me as a high risk pregnancy, and we were so releived to hear (in their words) that we had the most boring ultrasoud of the day. The technician told me that most of what they do is deliver bad news to people, so to be boring is a very good thing. Everything looks good, and they can't see any problems with the baby. So we are very happy and excited to show you our very boring pic of Baby Boy Bragg: Skyler started 2nd grade! She loves her teacher so far and we happy this year. We got her a bunch of new school clothes, the only new thing she wanted to wear were her shoes, so here she is in her favorite outfit on the first day of 2nd grade:

End of Summer Fun

Well the summer ended badly for the Bragg family, first my burn: and I hesitate to even post this ugly pic, but some people really didn't beleive me. The day before school started I took the kids to Bear Lake for the day with some of my friends and their kids. I am 35 and just never seem to learn that the sun just isn't my friend. I sprayed my hands and the kids good with sunscreen, set up the rest of our "camp" and just forgot to spray the rest of me. For those of you who don't know I have a condition known as vitiligo where I loose more and more skin pigment every year and we think that because I'm pregenant, it spread a lot more this summer and hit my feet for the first time. Well it caused a 2nd degree sunburn and my feet swelled beyond unbeleif. The burn actually caused some nerve damage in my feet that we're still not sure will go away. I was unable to walk or put any pressure on my feet for about 5 days, and was bed ridden. Thankfully the burn has healed now, we have cleaned up the house from the kids taking advantage of my perdiciment. I hopefully have truly learned my lesson and do not plan on spending anymore time in the sun w/o sunscreen. This pic was taken on day 5, after most of the swelling had gone down, but it's still UGLY, so sorry.
Well just as I was recovering from this burn we all 4 got terribly sick and in the doctor's office to find out we all had broncitis (sorry, I don't know how to spell it). Aaron's, because of his Ashma, has now turned into phenominia, and we just found out that Skyler has Strep throat. Jackson has seemed fine through it all and we hope to get everyone better soon, but what a way to end summer and start out the school year!

Jackson helping Grandpa with our garden. This was a great year for our garden, we had a lot of yellow and green zuchinni, tons and tons of cucumbers, our herb garden, 3 types of tomatoes, and corn for the first time. So far I have talked grandpa into canning pickles with me (this was a first for me), and we plan to make more salsa this year. We had frozen peaches from Brigham City last year and I picked up some raspberries from Bear Lake so I also made a bunch of peach, raspberry, and rasppeach jam this year also. The kids love the garden, I just wish we could get them to eat the food!

Aaron has a new hobby: GeoCaching! He takes the kids out quite a bit to look for "treasures" they love it. We're the Braggsters for all you other geocachers out there. Here we are the Hyrum State park after finding a few caches, we let the kids play. It's the end of summer, and wow, are my kids blonde.

In August, we took a day trip to Bear Lake with some friends. We set up a volleyball net, ate lunch, and had a good time at the lake. We could take the red tube out pretty far and it was still pretty shallow, but Jackson always the careful bug, wouldn't let me get too far before he'd come running after me and pull me back to shore. It's amazing to me how different my kids are. We've always had to keep a real careful eye on Skyler not to stray too far from home. She is just full of adventure, spice, and a real curiosity for life. Jackson had never strayed too far past mom. He is much more careful with a sweet demeanor. However, we used to think he a bit on the shy side. That is not the case anymore. Thanks to the infulence of his big sister whom he adores, he has become more outgoing with other people and has become quite the chatterbox just like Skyler. Here's some pics of our day at Bear Lake.

Have I mentioned that Jackson can sleep just about anywhere?! And here he is with my missing diet sunkist that he loves so much.

Skyler's Birthday party! Skyler turned 7 in July, and we decided to do a "girls" late night party, with pizza, an ice cream bar, games and then watched the movie Tinker Bell. It was a lot of fun. Skyler was sad to not have all her boy friends there(she has promised to marry 4 boys in the neighborhood), but this way by far the simpelest, easiest, and way fun party that she wants to do again next year.

July 4th!

Amazed! So am I. Grandpa is trying to teach Skyler to play the violin. She doesn't have much of an attention span, but we'll see how things go. Here she is at her first lesson.

Here's Skyler and Jackson ready for our annual neighborhood kids parade!

Kristi and I took the girls to Stadium of Fire for July 4th while my brother Kalun and Aaron stayed home for a boys night with all the little kids. Here's our pictures of events:

SheDaisy performed first. They were really good.

Skyler and her cotton candy at the Show.

Here we all are ready to leave for Stadium of Fire! Did you know that the Stadium of Fire is the largest Stadium fireworks show in the United States! Pretty amazing.

Here the girls are in front of the Jonas Brothers trailer. Skyler wanted to get their autograph, but we never saw them up close. Kyli, Brianna, & Skyler.

The Jonas Brothers Perfoms live at Stadium of Fire! They even performed the original version of Sweet Caroline and encouraged all the parents and grandparents to get up and show the kids that we still got it. It was probably the loudest song with the most audience participation. The Jonas Brothers put on a great show. I may not be a teenie bopper anymore but they were still awesome!

Kristi, Kyli, Brianna, & Skyler watching the fireworks!

Here we all are at Stadium of Fire 2009! With Kyli back, my sister-in-law had the great idea of us taking Kyli and Skyler to Stadium of Fire this year. The Jonas Brothers were performing this year and we thought it would be a fun girls night out! Fred's grandaughter Brianna was here this week so got 5 tickets and took all the girls. It was a great night and we had a lot of fun! There were some college age girls who sat in front of us and they really liked the girls, so they let them stand on their seats to see the concert. And Skyler for one, screamed through the entire concert she was so excited. And so excited that by the time the Fireworks started, she was too tired to enjoy them and just wanted to go home. By the time we got back to the car, Skyler was practically asleep and she and Kyli fell asleep within minutes of leaving. We had some great seats and I learned that Nick is Skyler's favorite. The fireworks were amazing and we got to see them retire the flag that was made for the 2002 Olympics. It was a great weekend, and we are so thrilled to have Kyli back with Kalun & Kristi again. I feel as though my sister can finally rest in peace. For now, all is right with the world. We have much to be thankful for.


If you didn't know already, baby #3 is on it's way! Due January 16, 2010.

The good news is that I made it to 12 weeks just fine. I was starting to get nervous because I am usually horribly sick and just haven't been this time around. So we go to our 2nd appointment almost as nervous as my first. The student doctor checked for the heartbeat and couldn't find it. She said not to worry because they can be hard to find when they are this small. So my doctor came in and she couldn't find it either. My heart just dropped feeling like we may have lost another one. So they took me back to do another ultrasound and my doctor said there was a very good reason they couldn't find the heartbeat. On the picture we could see very clearly that this baby was jumping around and kicking all over the place so they couldn't find the heartbeat. It is just fine, just active. All I could think was thank goodness, and great that's all I need another overlyactive child. But all is good, and my doctor says that making it this far is good and things will most likely be fine.

Well I spoke too soon when I thought I was feeling good. So we had a few hours of excitement after this appointment and then I started to feel horribly wrong and spent the entire night having what I can only describe as hard contractions. Not having any sleep, and being in horrible pain, we called the doctor in the morning who said not to worry. She sees this with 3rd & 4th pregnancies. The uterus is not contracting just all the other organs in your body are. Oh, is that all! Everthing is moving around to make room for your expanding belly. There's not much they can do to help, just drink plenty of water and get some rest. Things are fine now, and I hope that night was the worst of it. I am now feeling my normal pregnant self and throwing up as usual. And for that I am truly grateful.

Hogle Zoo June 2009

I just love the Hogle Zoo! We had a really good time. Jackson loved the crocodiles & elephants, Skyler loved the giraffes, and I love the penguins. Grandpa came with us and the kids had a great time with him. We bought kettle corn popcorn which Jackson couldn't stop eating. I took him to see the Orangutangs, and when we got back, Aaron fibbed and told him the popcorn was all gone. Later Jackson found it in the stroller and we couldn't ever get the bag away from him again. Aaron kept rushing through the park and I was trying to call to him to come a different way or we'd miss the apes. He of course "couldn't hear" me, so in the middle of a large crowd, Jackson screamed the top of his lungs "AAAAARRRROOOONNN!!!" and well that got the attention of not only Aaron, but everyone around. I couldn't help but laugh. Skyler was really tired that day and spent most of it in the bike trailer/stroller while Jackson literally ran through the entire zoo, excited to see what was next. It was a great day topped of by dinner at Famous Dave's BBQ, my fav. Mmmm. . . mmmm.....

June 2009

Skyler finished up the First grade! Yea! They sang lots of songs about all the things they learned this last year, and I was really sad to see my little girl grow another year older. The best part of the assembly was a rock song they sang with their cardboard glitter gutiars. Skyler headbanged throughout the entire song. Made her mama proud. I received several comments for that one.

Summer is here and we have enlisted Skyler into gymnastics at the University. (I'll post more as this progresses). She has only attended one class so far and already loves it. She climbed the rope to the top to ring a cow bell and can do cartwheels with the help of her teacher. Hopefully this will help keep her occupied.

Skyler and Jackson have taken to many of our kitchen items for play. Here they are with my oven mits used for boxing each other. Skyler usually lets Jackson win, but he plays dead until she counts to 10 for a knockout.

This is Jackson posing as a transformer.

Just random stuff!

Skyler doing her homework. Somedays it's no problem, other days it a drop down drag out war.

Not Halloween, just another night at the Braggsters.

Bestest Friends! They love each other so much, we have to seperate them sometimes when they fight, and they both throw a fit about that because they just want to be together all the time. I hope they always stay close.

They love Grandpa! This was Grandpa Bragg's 70th Birthday!

This kid can sleep just about anywhere. Do you love the art work on the chair? Compliments of Skyler when she was 2. That would be my new project.

Potty Training! I am so not enjoying this. Jackson thinks monsters live in the toilet, so he hates sitting on it. We got him a training toilet, but my darn kids with their father's long legs, it's almost too small for him. He loves Mater though, so here he is showing off his "dry mater" bum.