⚡ Match Highlights: Match Update & Schedules

and am starting to love photoshop! I have become a KSL and garage sale junkie ever since we moved into our new house. I don't ever want to pay full price for anything again!! :) I found this cute little table and chairs on KSL. It's nothing fancy, but I've wanted something like this for a while now and figured that for $15 it wasn't a bad deal. Eventually I want to add 2 more chairs and repaint the table and chairs, but for now it works great in our playroom. After we picked it up today, the girls couldn't wait for me to take it upstairs to try it out. I thought they looked so cute so I grabbed the camera and took a quick picture...

or make that 2 pictures...

So now why I am starting to love photoshop.... I bought photoshop elements a few months after Kayley was born and got excited about using it until I tried it out and got frustrated and overwhelmed because I had no idea what I was doing and so I stopped using it altogether. A few months ago I started thinking about how I missed learning and would love to take a class and it was just a few days later that I got a pamphlet in the mail for UVU's CE courses that were held at the new West Lake High School less than 5 minutes from my house. As I was skimming through, I found that they had a photoshop class and got so excited. I've never done anything like that before and decided it was time to do something for myself. My mom signed up with me and we've gone to 3 out of the 6 classes so far. The teacher isn't that amazing and I still don't know very much, but it has still been fun and we have learned a few cool things. We actually haven't learned how to do this in class yet, but just from becoming more familiar with photoshop, I learned to do head swaps and was so proud of myself when I took Brinley's smiling face from the second picture and put it in the first one.

Aren't they so cute? :) I love my girls!

PS I hope you don't die of shock when you see that I've posted twice within 1 weeks time! Miracles do happen! :)

PPS Wasn't Conference amazing?! I wish that we could have it once a month!

** Warning- This is the longest post I have ever written, probably the longest post anyone has ever written! It is extremely long! Most of it is just for me and for journaling purposes, so please don't feel obligated to read all or any of it. **

I decided instead of doing 50 million posts that I would just do one big, long post of the past several months to finally kind of catch up. So this is like 10 posts in 1! :)

It has been so fun to have two precious little girls at our house. Kayley loves having a little sister and is so cute with Brinley. She loves getting Brinley toys to play with, hand her or read her books, give her her blanket, stuffed animals or anything else that she wants/ or doesn't want. :) She is very sweet and any time Brinley cries Kayley will say "Happy, happy", and want to give Brinley her beloved bear or bunny to make her feel better. She beams from ear to ear any time that she makes Brinley "happy" or makes her laugh or smile. It makes me so "happy" to see the special bond that my girls have and I hope that they will always be best friends throughout their lives.

Christmas Season

Four generation picture we took on Christmas Eve with my mom and sweet Grandma Hill

Kayley in her Christmas dress from Grandma Hall

Trevor's Birthday

We went to see Avatar in 3-D. Brinley thought it was pretty boring and slept through the whole thing. :)

Kayley Meisers and Brinley Jeansers (Nate's nicknames for the girls)

Brinley's Blessing

We blessed Brinley on February 7. ( "We" meaning Nate of course....usually when I say we, it means Nate. "We" need to take the garbage out. "We" need to mow the lawn. We need to change Kayley's poopy diaper. Ect.) Nate gave Brinley a beautiful blessing. He blessed her that her body would grow and develop properly and that a young age she would gain a love for the scriptures and a desire to develop a relationship with Heavenly Father through prayer. He also blessed her with a desire to gain an education and a love for reading. If it be right, she was also blessed to serve a full time mission and always have a love and a desire to share the gospel throughout her life. She was blessed to find a worthy priesthood holder to take her to the temple and there be sealed for time and all eternity and that she will always strive to keep the commandments so that she'll be worth to return to live with Heavenly Father.

I wish that I would have taken more pictures so that I actually had some good ones of Nate and me with the girls, Nate's parents with Brinley, my parents with Brinley and so on, but I was so worried about the luncheon afterwards and getting everything done for primary that I was lucky to at least get these pictures.

I couldn't decide which one I like better...

Brinley Jean

Brinley has been such a sweet, good baby. I can 't believe she's already 5 months old. It's gone by so fast! Brinley is our little chunkers! Kayley always was and still is pretty skinny and so it's kind of fun to have one of both. Brinley was in the 75% for weight and length at her 4 month appointment and Kayley was in like the 10% for weight. I loves her big chipmunk cheeks. I could kiss them all day long. She has been sleeping 12 hours through the night for several months now, which I have greatly appreciated and is all-around a happy girl. She has the cutest, most contagious laugh. I love when babies start laughing. She loves Kayley and is so content watching her play. I took the cutest video the other day of Brinley laughing at Kayley. I'll have to upload it and post it soon. It was so stinkin cute! She also loves her daddy and is always so happy any time she gets to see him. She is a huge fan of her hand as well as you will see in the pictures below. No need for a binkie or toys to suck on, she is very satisfied with her hand! :) The only thing that she really doesn't like is tummy time. No matter what I do she basically just cries the entire time that I have her do it. There have been a few times that she's lasted a few minutes without crying, but usually she cries the second I lay her down. Sometimes I can only last a few minutes before I break and pick her up or turn her over. She's pretty close to sitting up unsupported so I think she'll sit up before she ever rolls over. She is such a wonderful addition to our family and brings such a special spirit into our home. I love my sweet Brinley Jeansers and am so grateful to be her mother!

My sweet friend Jessica who lives in Arizona made this adorable onesie for Brinley and so I told her I'd take some pictures of Brinley wearing it. They turned out super cute! Look at those rolls!

Once again I couldn't decide which one I liked better.

One of the few times she wasn't crying when I layed her down to do tummy time. This only lasted about 2 minutes!

She loves those fingers!

Kayley Mei

I haven't been as good about writing in Kayley's journal after she turned one and my 1 year calendar was all used up so I've been making a list in my phone for a while now of some of the things that she has been doing for the past few months. There are several more I could list, but here are some of them.

After her little sister was born, Kayley would walk around burping all of her babies, stuffed animals, Mr. Potato Head or anything else that she can hold and pretend is a baby.

She loves to give Brinley kisses and hold her and have her sit in her purple chairs in her room.

She is obsessed with throwing things away, putting things away and cleaning up. Give her a cloth and she will spend 15 minutes or longer walking around the house cleaning the wall, the floor, the windows, the furniture, my pants, Brinley's face or anything else she thinks needs a good cleaning. Also, if she gets anything on her hands, she will hold her hand out and say "hand, hand, cloth" and won't continue eating until I wipe her hands off. She is also funny about putting things away. If I get the milk out to fill up her sippy cup and don't put it back in the fridge immediately she will start saying, "away, away" and won't stop saying it until I put it away. (What have I done to my child? I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes it's great and sometimes it drives me nuts!:)

She is my little helper and usually will help me with whatever I ask her to do.

In the middle of playing she will stop what she's doing run over and give me a hug and then go right back to playing. I love it! She's so sweet. The other day she ran up to me out of no where and gave me a big hug and said, "eye a" (I love you!) I have been waiting for the day for a long time. I love hearing her say I love you.

She plays really well on her own and for the last few weeks/months (I have no sense of time) will finally go in her room and play by herself while I clean up the kitchen or cook or fold laundry or whatever.

She loves talking on the phone. I can't quite figure out where she got that one from! :) She is constantly asking me to call Gaba (grandma) or Raw (Robb) or her daddy.

She loves looking at the family book of pictures we got for Christmas and can point to everyone and knows all of her cousins and aunts and uncles names.

She calls herself KayKay.

She is a little chatter box and just recently started forming little sentences. She usually likes to feed herself, but this morning she looked at Nate and said, "Daddy feed KayKay."

She is very smart and has an amazing memory, especially of association. Silly example, but Colby was at our house once forever ago and used the ranch dressing, and now every single time I pull it out or she sees it, she'll say, "ColCol".

She is a great eater and eats like a horse. She especially loves fruits and vegetables. She started crying once because I offered her a brownie and she wanted corn instead. She definitely doesn't get that from me. She obviously likes treats too though and if I offered them to her more often that's probably all she would eat.

She gets so excited when I tell her on Monday that it's family home evening night. She always runs over to the closet and says, "book, book", and wants me to get the special FHE book we read with her out. When we read family scriptures together she always wants me to read to her the stories about Jesus. She loves pointing to Him in all the pictures and telling me what He is doing. She also teaches her stuffed animals how to pray and fold their arms and loves when I let her hold them on her lap to join us for family prayer. I love hearing her repeat her personal prayers ("KayKay prayer") and think that it's amazing that at 18 months she always remembers that we need to say them before she goes to bed.

She loves books and spends half the day having me read to her, looking at books on her own, reading them to her stuffed animals and managing to get every single book she owns spread across the floor of her room. Why can't she be more adamant about putting her books and toys away like she is in being so concerned about putting the milk away?

She can be super shy and cry if someone looks at her or if they try to hold her and she doesn't want them to and she can also be really outgoing and friendly and say hi to everyone. I'm never sure how she's going to act around people because it's never the same. Sometimes she's totally fine and couldn't care less if I'm there and other times she's extremely clingy.

She loves to point at everything that she knows how to say and tell us what it is. She especially likes to point to Brinley's eyes, nose, mouth and ears. Brinley doesn't always enjoy it as much as Kayley does. :)

She's getting better with counting to 10 now and can say all of the numbers, but for a while the only numbers she would say were 2 and 8. No matter how hard I tried to get her to say 1,2,3, she just wouldn't do it. She would only say 2. It was hilarious one day when she was playing with her doll, she said, "two, two twooo"(instead of one, two, threeee) and then threw her up in the air.

She is my precious friend and I love spending every day with her. She has the cutest little personality and is very entertaining. I love her more and more every day and am so grateful to be her mommy!

This isn't the best picture because I took it with my phone, but this was the first time that she actually stopped and smiled at the camera when I asked her to. It was a miracle!