Pretty Girl

Brielle's marathon photo shoot with the blanket Gigi made for her...
I can't pick my favorites, so you get lots for your viewing pleasure...






She's just deliciously adorable, isn't she?

Videos

Argh, I always start blogging too late and have too much to catch up on and end up staying up past my bedtime. Morning comes early these days! But, then I get so close to caught up, I just want to finish...here's a video of Brielle doing her Army crawling and Joshua playing his pretend piano.

Growing up...

Our big boy!

Our big girl!
The happy fam

It seems like both Joshua and Brielle grew by leaps and bounds in the month of June. They are both looking and acting so much older now. Joshua got his second haircut, is using a fork and spoon relatively well, and had much verbal explosion. He's saying soooo many words - it's amazing! Brielle grew more hair, graduated to 6-9 month clothes, and learned to scoot around. She can get wherever she wants to now.

Joshua has also become a big helper. He makes it his duty to make sure the diapers get taken to the trash can outside.

(Love the look on his face - it says it all!)

Joshua and Brielle have started to interact a lot more too. Sis watches him wherever he goes and loves getting attention from him.
Josh likes to imitate the noises Brielle makes and sometimes reverts to crawling or lying on the floor to be like her. He also likes baby food, which we haven't decided whether it's a good way to get vegetables in him or a bad habit to start. He sometimes gets too rough, but whenever I rush in to rescue Brielle she's laughing and enjoying the rough-housing......pretty funny, but we still have to make sure Josh doesn't get carried away. "She's little, be gentle" gets repeated throughout the day!

The general consensus is that Briellie looks like Daniel. She's definitely got some similarities beyond looks with her easy-going, good-natured personality and loud bodily noises! The girl can fart, burp, and wail with the best of them!

Joshua is like his daddy too - can't help but admire a big catch!

Time flies...

when you're having fun!

We have been BUSY the past few months. In May, we had a lot of visitors. Starting with Aunt Janelle who kicked off her busy summer with a trip to the beach. While Janelle was here, we went to a cool breakfast spot downtown, The Cool Moose Cafe, hung out at the beach, and enjoyed some girl time.Next, the 'E' girls and Carita came for a "Wicked" weekend. These are some of Daniel's family's closest friends and it's always fun to see them. We were also able to get a picture with Brielle's namesake.

Brielle Joy & Brielle Joy

They were here to see the muscial "Wicked", and Daniel and I got to go too. It was our first time leaving Brielle with a babysitter. She did great (both the sitter and Brielle...and mom) except for refusing to take her bottle - lil stinker!

I've been walking with some other moms on Monday mornings, including our friend Erin and her daughter Elle. Sometimes when we walk there's Elle W., Elle F., Ella, and Brielle - CRAZY! Elle LOVES Brielle. She calls her Sis just like Josh does. Lucky for Elle and her baby-lovin' self, she'll be getting a little brother or sister in December.The next weekend, Kristen, my good friend from Iowa State, came to visit. Kristen and I became friends our freshman year and got each other through organic chemistry! She also got me into running, and I ran my first half-marathon with her our senior year. She's a food scientist and lives in New York City now. It was so great to catch up and to have her meet the kids.

The next visitor in May was Joel. Joel came on the perfect day for a "Joel Helms visit". It was raining outside and we were able to spend the whole day just hanging out. He always has LOTS of interesting and one-of-a-kind stories to share and it was fun to catch up leisurely.
And, apparently based on my video evidence, Brielle learned to roll over in the month of May. I have done a terrible job of memorializing all her "firsts"...good thing we have a daily planner and dated pictures to try to piece together the most important ones. In this video she "talks" and rolls over - she has got one good set of lungs!