Happy Birthday Daddy - we celebrated Scott's birthday this year with some chicken voila (the microwavable dinner kind) and a redbox $1 movie - I had visions in my head of making a cake and having Bryanna help mix the batter but we didn't have any bowls or utensils...there is always next year!


We finally moved in to our new house (well, partially)! Tonight will be our 3rd night sleeping here, the house looks like a disaster, there are boxes everywhere, we still don't have cabinet doors (still have to paint those) and I have no clue where to put anything! I know we will get everything figured out, eventually, but I hate looking at this mess. To finish off the living room, we need base molding, molding around the ceiling, molding around the window and door and I have to paint the baseboard cover. We finally got our refrigerator in last night with the help of one of Scott's friends. Nothing is ever easy, so he had to take off all the doors on the refrigerator to get it in the house - 1.5hrs later they got it in - I never thought I would be so lost without a refrigerator! I cooked our first meal tonight, it's been a while since we have had a healthy, home-cooked meal - we've pretty much been living off of Burger King for the last few weeks! The kitchen is painted, except for the cabinet doors, which is the last thing that needs to be done to finish that room. The dining room needs to be sheetrocked, painted and the baseboards need to be painted too. Bryanna's room needs to be sheetrocked and carpeted, the fireplace room needs a new stove and to be painted and the spare bedroom needs to be painted - got all that! There is so much left to do and we are trying not to get overwhelmed, but it's hard!

Bryanna had her 18 month appointment on her 18month birthday. She cried harder when she saw the doctor than when she got the shots! There are a few men that scare her and he is one of them! She is in the 75th percentile for length and weight - so pretty consistent there. I voiced my concern about her not walking on her own yet and with her being so verbal, walking by holding onto one finger, and cruising around everywhere, he isn't concerned at all. He mentioned she has good leg strength and thinks she is just scared and has to gain confidence first. If she isn't walking on her own by 21 months, he will refer us for PT. Her latest thing is walking around everywhere on her knees - not sure if that is progress toward walking but from what I've read online, a lot of perfectly healthy babies walk late and some knee walk first so we will see!

She is really good at putting her socks and shoes on - she is growing up too fast!

loves measuring things, just like Daddy

our happy girl

We have spent the last month going back and forth between houses, cleaning, painting, putting up drywall, getting new windows put in, getting our hardwood refinished, cleaning again and painting some more! We feel terrible about it, but we have had no time to get a tree or put up any Christmas decorations - what a terrible time to buy a house! Everyone keeps reminding me that Christmas is this Sunday - I just can't believe it! We went to Lowes the other day to look for a tree and they literally had 5 trees, they were short and bare - we thought about just grabbing one up and calling it our charlie brown tree but thought we could get something better. Today was the day to go see Santa and get a tree. We got to the mall, waiting in line for 30 minutes to see Santa, and everything was great. Bryanna was blowing Santa kisses from the line and waving and smiling at him, then all hell broke loose. Once we got up close, I think she realized it was a person and started screaming! I knew this was going to happen, but wasn't totally sure because of how excited she was to see him. We actually don't care that it isn't the perfect smiley picture - it portrays perfectly how she was at the time and shows how much of a scardy cat she is! LOL Next was tree shopping. We went to Sears and Target thinking that maybe we could get a cheap fake tree, since we are only going to have it up for a few days anyway, but you can't buy one under $150, so a live tree it was. We tried Lowes again - all gone, next was Walmart - all gone too, our last stop was the local garden store and they were open! So, $40 later, we have a tree, a very wet tree at that, but at least we have one! You can't have Christmas without a tree because how will Santa know where to put the gifts?

Killing time, waiting for Santa

Santa


Lowes - no trees

We've had such an exciting week this week - my new niece, Audrey Ann Miller, was born December 10th at 8:50pm, 7lbs 11.5oz and 20 inches long. She is healthy and Jess and Audrey are doing good. I can't wait to hold her, only 15 more days!!!


I was at the new house today and Bryanna was combing my hair - I was laying on the floor looking up at her and I saw her slowly stand up...I couldn't believe my eyes! (where is the camera when you need it!). She stood all the way up and balanced herself for a few seconds and then crouched back down. It was such an emotional moment for me and we have been waiting for this moment for MONTHS now! She got all excited after she did it and gave me such a big and tight hug - I could tell she was proud of herself and she knew how proud I was of her.

Grandma and Grandpa Neal came to visit this week - thank you so much! We were able to get some painting done and Dad and Scott drywalled most of the dining room. The windows are almost finished and the floor guy is coming Thursday to refinish the hardwood floor - then we can move in! I can't wait to finally have a minute to relax!

best buds
 

The house is coming along. It's so hard to get anything done when you have a little one that wants to get into everything! I basically have to pick a room and either clean or move things around - then naptime isn't long enough! The sheet rock guy came today to do the kitchen - it looks so much better already! I can't wait to get the place painted and moved in, it is starting to feel like our own home.

In the kitchen we knocked down that interior roof looking stuff and took down the beam, primed the cabinets (they look decent in the pic but were disgusting!) and added two lights. The cabinets are going to be an off white with a light glaze on the doors and on the wish list is a new counter top and stainless steal appliances. We will eventually redo the whole kitchen but this will hold us over until then. I'm just excited that we have counter space now!


Thank you sooo much Dave & Kelly for coming last weekend - it was such a help! Bryanna had 2 whole days with Grammy Kelly all to herself! Scott learned so much from Dave and we got so much done that we would have never done if they didn't come.

Bryanna is getting to be such a big girl. She is so smart - to keep her busy while I was cleaning, I told her that her baby pooped and needed to be wiped, so she grabbed a rag and started wiping her baby - saying her baby was dirty...LOL, she really knows how to point out all the dirty things.

She started calling me Mommy yesterday. She was saying mama and then meme right after and then finally got it. I'm so proud of her but it just means she is growing up and I miss mama already.

One thing I forgot to write in the last few posts was that Bryanna is really good at her animal sounds. You ask her what sounds does this animal make and she makes the sound. She can do a cat (for some reason she says meow really softly and laughs after she says it), monkey (ah ah), lion (rar), and elephant (puts her hand to her mouth for the trunk)
We finally closed on our house last Wednesday (16th). We've been working hard on cleaning, tearing the kitchen cabinets off, and Scott has been tearing down the paneling and faux interior roof - it was def. a surprise as to what we found underneath!

beautiful pieces of different types of paneling and no sheet rock

kitchen cabinets removed, hardware removed 
and cabinets are stripped - now priming and painting!

copying Daddy hammering

Her new favorite word is dirty (diday). A couple of weeks ago we were pointing out something that was dirty and she said it - now she says it all the time, especially at the new place because everything is diday!

 She is getting really good at eating with a spoon
We continued our tradition and walked down to the Walnut Beach Creamery to see the Walnut Beach Witch. We got our free ice cream and some candy and then paraded around the block.


We finally got around to carving our pumpkin today. Scott carved it while Bryanna and I just watched. Of course she was scared of the pumpkin guts, and backed away instantly...she is such a scaredy cat!



fall photo shoot from today
One of Bryanna's new words is up. Now that she has learned that word, it seems like that is all she says these days! I'm sitting at the computer, trying to get some work done, and all that I hear is up, up, up. She has been so needy lately and hardly plays by herself anymore - not sure what to do about this! Another one of her words is hot. It's kind of nice that she knows that word and also knows what it means because she stays away from something if you tell her it is hot - and then she will repeat "hot" and nod her head. She also says help (elp or ep) - she usually says this when she gets frustrated after trying to do something.

You can ask Bryanna anything and she nods her head yes or no. It's a fun game to play because even if she doesn't know what you are asking, she will try and answer it with a nod.


Saying hi to all the kids at the playground

Her new favorite thing is to take her babies clothes off and then ask you to put them back on - a fun game at first...now we just need to teach her to put them back on! She tries so hard to put her own clothes on, she will mostly try and put everything around her head but she tries to put her pants, socks and shoes on too. I was doing the laundry a few weeks ago and looked over and she had a pair of my underwear and Scott's boxers around her neck (they were dirty clothes keep in mind!)...eeewwww!

blowing her nose

blowing babies nose
We had great weather for the Alzheimer's walk, and there were so many people there this year. They gave out flowers to every group who registered and for every $100 raised, you got 1 flower. The purple flowers were for people that have died of Alzheimer's and the yellow were for people who had a family member or friends with the disease. It was so sad how many purple flowers there were. There were a few speakers but one who stood out to me was a guy who is in the early stages. You would never know he had Alzheimer's by the way he spoke, it was very sad.



I've had a loooooong week (photographing kids from a school took a lot out of me!) So today was my day of rest and to hang out with Bryanna. But what do I do?! Instead of resting at home and playing with Bry, I decided to get her hair cut and run some errands...I don't know why it's so hard for me to just hang out and relax! Well, thank God for neighbors because I locked myself out on the way out the door! Bryanna and I spent the next hour and a half outside on a blanket playing with Sandy's 20yr old toys that she had when her granddaughter was young. Bryanna LOVED the kitchen toys, so I think we are going to have to get a kitchen set for her - who knows where we are going to put it! She really loves to "pretend play," especially with her babies. Today she was trying to put her sweater on her baby and then would rock it.


Loves her babies
I've been so busy this week with photo shoots, I had to leave Bryanna with my friend Beth and her daughter Elsie for a few hours. It was so hard leaving her - I've never left her with anyone before and I wondered how she would do. She was fine at first and then when Beth's husband came down the stairs, she started crying. I don't know why, but for some reason she is scared of men! She warmed up to him after a little bit and everything was all good - when I picked her up she didn't want to leave and told me bye bye. 

I had to strap her into this baby chair during a cake smash photo shoot - I heard her in the back ground saying yummmmm mmmm yummm and I knew if she had the chance she would take over the photo shoot. She actually liked being in this rocker - I might have to get one of those to keep her contained!


still very cautious about walking, but we are getting closer!

newest sound for today...silly girl!

We are walking in the Alzheimer's walk tomorrow morning and I wanted to thank everyone so much for your donations. I feel like I'm doing something so good by doing this every year, and helping fight Alzheimer's. As many of you know, my grandmother has it and it's so heartbreaking to see. Every time I visit her, her state of mind and memory has worsened. I can remember even 5 years ago being able to have a conversation with her, and talk to her on the phone for an hour - things have changed so much and it's hard for her to understand one sentence now. This disease runs in my family and I pray so much that they find a cure. I feel that (and would like so hard to believe) that by raising some money (even though it's not that much) will help out. Every little bit counts, right? I love you grandma!
Bryanna had her 15 month appointment yesterday. She weighs 24lbs and is 31.25 inches long. Although she isn't walking yet, the doctor isn't concerned and said he is very happy with her development. He said that she focuses more on talking and her fine motor and mentioned she has the vocabulary of an 18 month old. Her new words are more (mo) when she wants more food, elbow (belbo), bye bye and hi. She is so good at pointing to all her body parts, her new ones are elbow (points and says elbow) and knee. 

She woke up with a little red bump below her eye. We were at the playground the night before, so I was nervous that she got something from that but he said it is a stye and it will heal on its own.

She has been such a hugger the past couple of days. Scott and I were in bed the other night with her and she kept going back and forth hugging us. Then when we were at my friends house the other day, Bryanna kept hugging her little boyfriend Ty...she is such a lovable baby!

Every since we have been back she has been obsessed 
with her chair - she loves to climb all over it and will just sit in it,
I don't know how this is amusing to her, but it is!
  

She's been missing her Daddy the past couple of days. All day she will point to the door and say Dada, Dada. Or she will point to his picture and say Dada, so I gave her a little photo book with our pictures in it and she started kissing it...awwww

She likes to push her stroller around on her knees and today 
she kept doing circles into the kitchen and into the living room.
 







 


We are down to one nap a day. One day last week Bryanna wasn't tired at 10am, then 11am came around and she still wasn't tired, so now I am putting her down around 1pm. She still only naps for 2hrs or less, and struggles around bedtime...I'm hoping she will start taking longer naps, because it is a long day!!! She is waking up later though!

We had a nice visit with Grandpa and Kelly (Lala as Bryanna says). We got some of our Christmas shopping done (yes, we were doing Christmas shopping already, as if it's any of your business! - inside joke LOL). We made some pizza on the grill, which came out AMAZING - I highly recommend making pizza this way - we will never go back to the oven again. 

My favorite pic
Ok, this is going to be a long one! Wow, so much has happened in the last month, and I'm sure I am forgetting so many things, but here it goes!

We headed to Bishops Orchards for some Peach picking a few weeks back. It is one of our favorite past times…when we get there, we usually do our picking first, then check out the animals and hit up the grocery store (which is fun to browse around all the unique foods, great produce, baked goods, and maybe do some wine tasting!). It was a fun day and I made some peach crisp when we got home…yummy!

So, I decided in the best interest of our family to drive to central NY to avoid the hurricane that was headed our way. Scott stayed back to “weather” the storm (stubborn man!) – the weather men, news channels, parents and everyone we came in contact with told us to LEAVE the area! Major disaster was expected, but I guess Scott thinks he is psychic and can predict the weather better than the experts. We came to find out that he was kind of right…right in the fact that it wasn’t going to be as bad as expected, but there was still major flooding, trees down and electricity out for 5 days! I stand true to our decision to leave, I don’t know what Bryanna and I would have done without power for 5 days anyway!!!


The original plan was for all of us to head to central NY on September 2nd , Scott would drive back the 6th and I would fly back with Bryanna on the 11th. When I booked the flight, I didn’t even think about it being September 11th (10th year anniversary of Twin Towers) – I would rather NOT fly on that day!  We got to spend some extra time with family and visit with my sister, who lives in Nevada whom we haven’t seen since Christmas! She is 25 weeks pregnant with her first child…so it was nice to be able to spend a little extra time with her as well.

Our two week trip consisted of time in Red Creek, lunch with Grandma Wetzel, visit with Shannon & kids, State Fair with Grandpa and Grandma Neal, Jess, Jake, and Melissa, Grandma and Grandpa Wetzels house for a gathering and back to Red Creek for the remainder of the week.

In Red Creek, we had a nightly dance routine where everyone would sit around the living room and watch Bryanna dance...she loves dancing!


Bryanna loves Grandma and Grandpa Neal's puppies. One of her new words is puppy, which she says very softly for some reason. She also learned how to shush the puppies (putting her finger in her mouth and blowing). Another words she says pretty good is Papa (for Grandpa)...she tries saying Grandma but it turns out baba.

 If you even mention puppies, she shushes them! LOL
 

Loves the puppies!
 

Bryanna isn't walking yet...she is such a cautious little girl. She seems to get scared very easily, including any animal that is bigger than her. She is actually crawling everywhere now, cruises around the furniture pretty well, and walks with her walker.

Bryanna experienced her first State Fair - a family tradition on the Neal side that we wanted to continue.

 

I was able to do some maternity pictures of my sister too, so glad I got to take pics for her of such a special time in her life!





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